Why Is App Maintenance So Crucial For Businesses? How Much Does App Maintenance Cost?
App Maintenance number of smartphone users in 2020 stood at 6.95 billion, which is likely to reach a staggering 7.41 billion user base by 2024. A striking increase in the number of mobile users suggests the growing demand for mobile applications.
Developing an app is simply an excellent business investment for a brand or enterprise because more and more consumers want their problems solved in the shortest possible way. Visiting an app gives them the convenience to do so.
But you can’t just launch an app and expect it to do wonders; it requires maintenance and constant optimization to fetch consumer data and information efficiently while providing a seamless user experience. According to a study, 70% of the users will abandon an app if it takes too long to load.
A survey conducted in 2019 shows how most users had more than 10+ apps installed on their smartphones. It gives us an idea about the level of competition that exists between various apps. Most brands and businesses are shifting their focus from a mobile-friendly website design to building a high-quality app because their customers make frequent interactions with their products or services.
If consumers communicate with their company regularly, then that app needs to be maintained. Developers need to fix new bugs so that it operates at its optimal speed. Their customers share sensitive data with the company like order status, billing, saved cart items, etc.
Due to these reasons, a company might want to develop an app that provides a seamless transition. Therefore, app maintenance is a crucial factor that can determine a company’s future growth.
A big reason why apps need further rectification is the emergence of glitches and bugs. These uncertain issues or broken strands can harm the app’s safety features, lead to security issues, crash the app, and create a poor user experience. Hence, the need for app maintenance arises.
How Much Does Mobile App Maintenance Cost?
Well, we zero down on a specific number, for that matter. The cost of app maintenance depends upon the technology and platform on which the app is built. Apart from that, the complexities that exist within the app also determine the cost of maintenance. Similarly, multiple factors escalate the cost of maintaining an app. Many Android and iOS experts suggest that it can be anywhere between 20-25% of the total app development cost.
What Is The Cost Of Running An App?
As discussed above, decoding a single figure or estimation is quite tricky. Running a mobile application can bring in completely unexpected costs. However, developers and experts can roughly predict a future amount while building the app. Still, there are so many aspects that influence the cost of running and maintaining an app that we can narrow down on a precise estimation. Let’s look into these aspects.
What are the expenses? If you hire an app development company, the total cost may differ from hiring a part-time developer. But a dedicated app development company brings in loads of other helpful services to the table. You also have an added advantage of hiring a complete team because a team of experts is better than a part-time developer.
A team of experts will be more efficient, precise, and practical, for that matter. For, e.g., look at how Saffron Tech designed an IoT-based fitness app that gave their client a competitive edge in the industry of wearable devices. Please read the complete case study to know how they managed to personalize the user experience on their app.
As we mentioned earlier, there are predictable expenses that can be estimated during the app development; this amount can be anywhere between 10-25% of the total cost of app development. According to Clutch, the average price of developing a mobile app was between 37,000$ to 172,000$. For premium and high-performing apps, the cost can go even higher.
So, if we had to mention a rough bracket for the cost of maintaining an app, we would say that the average cost of maintaining an app can lie somewhere around $400 to $900 per year. Why this vast variation? Simply because there are tons of other factors involved such as the technology used, location, platform, number of users, type of software up-gradation, etc.
What Are The Benefits Of Maintaining An App?
- It will safeguard your application against bugs, glitches, hacks, and fluctuations.
- Maintaining an app will help you in upgrading its UX/UI as per the latest market trends.
- It allows you to introduce new features that can boost audience engagement.
- Improve the app’s security features, especially when payment gateways are involved.
- It increases the reputation of your brand and business among the users.
- Regular updates prevent app crashes and downtimes that can affect your revenue.
Concluding Thoughts
Closely observe the market, you will see almost every brand hiring an app development company. What does this imply? The competition in the app market is severe, but acing success is not impossible! Brands and businesses want to make sure that they don’t miss out on any potential opportunities. They are trying to build applications of the highest quality that provides supreme assistance to their customers. Hence, competition is getting more strenuous and more challenging at each step of the ladder.
You have two options, either you step out of the app market, or you work towards improving your app. However, the latter will incur several kinds of costs. For the same reason, you must plan your app development costs as per your business objectives. Moreover, you need to hire a robust app development company that provides you the best value for money.
Saffron Tech specializes in app development with experience of over 12+ years in the app market. They have developed more than 500+ apps that are currently functioning in the app market. They create user-friendly, scalable, and high-performing apps while using an innovative approach. From fitness apps, real-time ticket status managing apps to subscription-based taxi holding apps, they have created apps for all kinds of platforms. From ideation, UX/UI design, wireframing, core development, app maintenance to app marketing, they cover almost every aspect of mobile application development.