Maintenance & Support
Maintenance is the ongoing work that keeps working software working: security patches, dependency updates, monitoring, backups, and someone who responds when it breaks.
Most vendors in this space sell the rescue and stop there. Month two is the part nobody writes about, and it is where apps quietly decay — dependencies going stale, certificates expiring, platform APIs being deprecated, backups that were never actually tested.
This is the lighter option for products that are stable and do not need continuous feature development, but do need to not fall over.
This sounds like you if…
- “It works and I want it to keep working.”
- “I don't need new features, I need it not to break.”
- “I have no idea if my backups actually work.”
- “Something went down last month and I didn't notice for two days.”
- “I keep getting security alerts from GitHub and ignoring them.”
What this covers
- Monitor uptime and errors, and tell you about problems before your customers do.
- Apply security patches and keep dependencies current, in reviewed batches rather than all at once.
- Verify that backups exist and can actually be restored, which is a different claim from backups existing.
- Renew and rotate what expires: certificates, tokens, API credentials.
- Respond to incidents within agreed hours.
- Handle small changes as they come up, within a defined monthly allowance.
Worth knowing
Maintenance & Support — questions
What counts as an incident?
The app being down, data being at risk, payments failing, or customers being unable to do the main thing your product exists for. Cosmetic issues and feature requests go into the normal queue, and the agreement spells out which is which so it is not decided in the moment.
Do I need this if my app has barely any users?
Probably not yet, and it is fine to say so. Low-traffic apps with no sensitive data can reasonably run unattended for a while. It becomes worth paying for once real customers or real data are involved.
Not sure how bad it is? That's the normal starting point.
Tell us what you built and what's worrying you. If the honest answer is that you don't need us, we'll say so.