Post-Launch App Maintenance Costs | Budget & Support Plan (Basic vs Pro)

Introduction: Launch is not the finish line

Your app is finally live. The first users arrive, your marketing team posts the launch on LinkedIn, maybe you run an ad campaign. For a short while, everything looks calm.

Then reality kicks in:

• New iOS and Android versions roll out.
• Some older devices start crashing on key screens.
• A campaign pushes traffic beyond what the app has ever seen.
• Review scores in the app store start dropping because of performance issues.

Right here is where most teams suddenly ask: "What is our app maintenance cost after launch?" "Who exactly owns the responsibility when something breaks?"

If you haven't decided this early, every bug becomes a negotiation, every outage becomes a mini-crisis, and every invoice feels like a surprise.

This article is written to turn that uncertainty into a clear structure:

• Which costs you must expect after launch.
• How a Basic vs Pro maintenance & support plan looks in practice.
• What a realistic budget for the first 12–24 months should be.

We'll also connect you to other app strategy articles in the Olymaris hub, like:

• Ordering an app the smart way
• How much it costs to build an app

So you see how build cost and post-launch support fit together.

Why post-launch maintenance matters more than launch itself

Treat your app not as a static product, but as a live service.

Everything around it keeps moving:

• iOS and Android push OS updates.
• Browsers change security rules and performance characteristics.
• SDKs and third-party APIs deprecate features or change pricing.
• User behaviour shifts as you run campaigns, add markets, or change your offer.

If you only focus on "getting something shipped", you create a gap:

• On the business side, there is an expectation: the app "just works".
• On the technical side, the codebase and infrastructure need active care.

Without a clear app support retainer and SLA for app support:

• Your costs are unpredictable. You pay nothing for months, then suddenly face a big emergency invoice.
• Your risk is high. When an incident hits during a campaign or peak season, you're competing for attention with other clients. There is no guaranteed response time.

In the article "App Development Contract Checklist: What to Lock Down Before You Sign" we talk about the development contract itself. A big part that often gets under-specified? What happens after go-live. This piece focuses on exactly that missing chapter.

The four pillars of app maintenance cost after launch

To make decisions and budget properly, split post-launch costs into four clear pillars.

3.1. Support retainer and SLAs: who responds when things break?

The first pillar is your app support retainer – the maintenance & support plan that defines:

• Who is on the hook when issues occur.
• Through which channels you can reach them (ticket system, email, messaging, phone).
• How fast they must respond and act (SLA for app support).
• How many hours per month are already included in your fee.

A good maintenance & support plan does three things:

Without this, you may face the worst combination: slow reaction and unpredictable invoices.

3.2. Infrastructure costs: hosting, database, monitoring & incident response

The second pillar is infrastructure and operations. This goes beyond "we have a server".

Typical components:

• Hosting cost for app backend and APIs (virtual machines, containers, or PaaS).
• Database and storage.
• Content delivery network (CDN) for assets.
• Monitoring & incident response tooling:
  • Uptime monitoring.
  • Performance metrics.
  • Log aggregation.
  • Alerting to reach humans when thresholds are crossed.

Many decision makers try to minimise this part and only see it as "DevOps overhead". In reality:

• Without proper monitoring, you only discover outages when users complain.
• Without good logs, any bug fixing service becomes slow, expensive, and guess-based.
• Without alerting and incident response, weekends and campaigns are a lottery.

Costs here scale with:

• Number of users and traffic.
• Regions you serve.
• Availability requirements (is "99% uptime" fine, or do you need 99.9%+?).

For small and medium apps, infrastructure might start from a few dozen euros per month. For high-traffic or multi-region apps, it can move into the hundreds or thousands. The important thing is not the exact number, but to acknowledge it as a core part of app maintenance cost after launch.

3.3. Day-to-day operations: bug fixing and OS updates support

The third pillar is operational work:

If you don't assign capacity to these tasks every month:

• Minor issues accumulate until they become major.
• Developers need extra time to re-familiarise themselves with the codebase.
• Your backlog becomes a mix of old, unclear, and urgent tickets.

That's why mature teams bake these tasks into their maintenance & support plan: small, steady effort beats occasional, expensive "emergency sprints".

3.4. Growth services: security, scaling, roadmap iterations

Once your app is stable, the fourth pillar becomes essential: growth and protection.

Key items:

These are not "nice-to-have" extras for serious apps. They are the difference between:

• An app that quietly rots while the world moves on.
• An app that becomes a stronger asset quarter after quarter.

For more on risks that quietly eat time and budget, see: "10 Common App Project Risks That Burn Time and Budget"

Basic vs Pro support plans: two rails, not a thousand options

To make decisions easier, most teams should choose between two clear rails:

• Basic: guarantees stability at a minimal level.
• Pro: protects revenue and supports growth.

4.1. Basic plan – "keep the lights on"

A Basic maintenance & support plan typically includes:

• A limited app support retainer (fixed hours per month).
• SLA for app support at a reasonable, but not aggressive, level.
• Basic monitoring for uptime.
• Bug fixing service for critical issues.
• OS updates support to keep the app usable on new versions, but not deeply optimized.

Who is Basic for?

• Apps that are useful but not mission-critical.
• Early-stage products where user numbers are still modest.
• Teams with tight budgets that still want a safety net.

4.2. Pro plan – "protect the business and grow"

A Pro plan goes further:

• Higher support retainer with more hours included.
• Stronger SLA: faster response and resolution, including for high-priority issues.
• Advanced monitoring & incident response, including logs and performance dashboards.
• Regular performance optimization for key flows.
• Security hardening and periodic security reviews.
• Continuous roadmap iterations in small increments (not big rewrites, but steady progress).

Who is Pro for?

• Any app that directly drives revenue, operations, or customer experience.
• Businesses where downtime is expensive (lost orders, lost trust, failed campaigns).
• Teams that see the app as a strategic asset, not a one-off project.

From a strategic point of view, if your app is central to your business, trying to "save" money by choosing a Basic plan can be a false economy. One nasty outage during a big campaign can cost more than the difference between Basic and Pro for an entire year.

What to actually budget: realistic numbers, not wishful thinking

Two practical questions come up in every serious discussion:

• How big should our maintenance budget be compared to build cost?
• Should we think monthly or yearly?

This usually covers:

• Support retainer (Basic or Pro).
• Hosting cost for app and core infrastructure.
• Monitoring & incident response tools.
• Regular bug fixing, OS updates, and light performance optimization.
• Some capacity for small roadmap iterations.

Crucially, ask your vendor during discovery: "Please include a realistic estimate of our mobile app maintenance cost for the next 12–24 months." The article "App Discovery Workshop: Deliverables, Cost & Timeline for an Accurate App Quote" explains why a proper discovery phase is not a luxury – it is how you avoid being surprised later, both in build and in maintenance.

Structuring your maintenance & support contract

Beyond headline numbers, details in your app Wartungsvertrag (support contract) determine how good your real-world experience will be.

Key points to lock down:

This contract should sit next to your development agreement. The checklist in: "App Development Contract Checklist: What to Lock Down Before You Sign" is a good starting point before you commit to any agency or vendor.

How app type and timeline decisions affect maintenance cost

App maintenance cost after launch is not independent from choices made on day one.

7.1. App type: native, hybrid, or web

Your choice between native, hybrid, or web app shapes:

• Complexity of OS updates support.
• The number of codebases to maintain.
• How easily you can roll out performance optimization and security hardening.

In: "Native, Hybrid or Web App: Which One Is Right?" we show how to pick the right option for your strategy. From a maintenance perspective:

• Two fully native apps (iOS and Android) mean more OS-specific work, but best platform integration.
• A hybrid or web-based solution can simplify certain kinds of maintenance, but brings its own trade-offs.

7.2. Timeline and initial build quality

In: "How Long Does It Take to Build a Website or App? A Realistic Timeline" we argue against unrealistic timelines.

If you compress the initial build too hard:

• Less time for testing.
• More technical debt.
• More bugs and performance issues after launch.

That means:

• You may "save" a little on build cost or timeline.
• But you will pay with more intensive bug fixing service and performance work later.

Similarly, in: "How Much Does It Cost to Build an App? A Pricing Guide for Small and Medium Businesses" we explain the cost side of the build. This article is the second half of that equation: understanding what happens after your app hits the store.

Why a long-term partner is cheaper than switching vendors

On paper, switching vendors and shopping around for the lowest rate can look attractive. In practice, every change of vendor comes with hidden costs:

• New teams need time to learn your architecture and code.
• Missing documentation or poor handover destroys efficiency.
• Trust resets to zero, and communication friction goes up.

A long-term partner that:

• Has been with you through discovery,
• Helped choose the right app type,
• Designed the architecture with your roadmap in mind,

can usually:

• Fix issues faster.
• Pre-empt risks via monitoring & incident response.
• Integrate roadmap iterations more smoothly.

At Olymaris, this is exactly the model we aim for:

• We help you order an app the professional way
• Then we support it with a Basic or Pro plan so that your app stays an asset, not a problem.

Conclusion: from vague "support" to a clear, budgeted plan

Summing it up:

• App maintenance cost after launch is not an optional extra – it is part of the real price of having a live product.
• You can structure it calmly, with a clear support retainer, defined SLAs, and a predictable monthly budget.
• Or you can ignore it and pay through panic, outages, and damage to your brand.

Next steps you can take now:

1. Decide how critical your app is to your business.
2. Ask your existing or future vendor for a concrete maintenance & support plan with Basic and Pro options.
3. Reserve 15–25% of your build cost per year as a starting point for your maintenance budget.
4. Make sure your contract includes proper SLAs, incident classes, and clear rules for infrastructure, monitoring, and roadmap iterations.

If you want help mapping your own app into these categories, the simplest move is to walk through your current situation (type of app, user base, market, and revenue role) and design a plan that fits your risk level instead of guessing.

FAQ – Post-Launch App Maintenance