Mobile App Maintenance: Hidden Costs You Need to Plan For

The 20% Rule

Industry standard: Expect to spend 20% of your initial development cost annually on maintenance. If your app cost $50k, budget $10k/year.

Hosting, database, and storage costs scale with users. Startups might pay little initially, but success increases bills quickly.

SaaS subscriptions add up: Analytics, push notifications, payment gateways, emailing services, maps APIs.

Apple and Google update OSs annually. Apps often break or look dated. You must update SDKs and test against new versions.

All software has bugs. New devices introduce new edge cases. Ongoing QA and developer hours are required for stabilization.

Customer acquisition and retention are ongoing costs. Support staff are needed to answer emails and reviews.

Stale apps die. Budget for fresh content creation, creative assets, and feature enhancements to keep users engaged.