Maintenance is an important part of ensuring security, efficiency and reliability of your application: no less than providing a good UX and other end user-facing features. In short, to make your app successful, you can’t stop at simply putting it on the market. It’s only the first step to the application’s success, and the next one is constantly watching over its performance.
Fortunately, there are a few options for mobile application maintenance that will help you to keep it in line with your business needs. Let's take a look at different types of long-term app maintenance, as well as the importance of outsourcing this service.
Why is mobile application maintenance important?
Despite dynamic development of web and mobile apps, it seems that only a few organizations have understood the importance of investing in long-term app maintenance. But everyone should and let this trivia be a wake-up call: in the first half of 2021, over 813 000 of apps were deleted from the Google Play the iOS Store (Pixalate report, 2021).
And why is that? Mostly because they didn’t comply with policy and privacy changes but also design and functionality requirements. And how to make sure that your app fulfills them? Mainly by maintenance, of course.
Many small and medium-sized businesses don’t know the repercussions of neglecting maintenance during application development. To name just a few of them, the most important are decreased user appeal and, as a result, limited profits.
However, the advantages of mobile application maintenance are numerous. To name just a few of them, thanks to good maintenance you can:
- Avoid rebuilding your app due to insufficient functionality
- Reduce technical debt
- Prevent hacking and security breaches
- Prevent computer breakdowns and, as a result, loss of revenue
- Save time: updates are scheduled and done when needed
- Reduce version numbers of the same component to improve productivity
- Make the application evolve at the same pace as the users' needs.
Moreover, by performing maintenance operations, you guarantee a higher level of expertise for your products, since you can count on a team entirely dedicated to this specific task.
What is the cost of mobile application maintenance?
According to data provided by AppInventive, it is estimated that a company should invest between 12 and 25% of its budget to ensure proper maintenance. However, there are obviously no stiff rules for this matter. The percentage of the budget that should be spent on maintenance and upgrades varies depending on the size and complexity of your application.
When providing estimation for our clients, we always consider the following aspects:
- Applied technologies
- App’s complexity
- Integration between the application and other systems
- Presence of open source components
- Type and frequency of cyber threats
and more. This is why it’s difficult to estimate the budget right away, as it needs to be preceded bywith careful business and technical analysis. However, mobile application maintenance is an investment that will certainly pay off. After all, as athe team that has delivered manydozens of successful mobile applications, we assure you that it’s always better to pay for prevention than for the cure.
4 types of mobile application maintenance
Even before investing in these operations, it’s beneficial to know the different types of maintenance. There are 4 main ones that can ensure an optimal and safe experience for your users.
Corrective maintenance
Corrective mobile application maintenance is used throughout the life of your software or application. It is used when your product malfunctions and affects your users' experience. Thus, this type of maintenance is used in response to a problem encountered after the delivery of your software or application.
Corrective maintenance includes:
- The analysis of reported anomalies
- Application of necessary changes to fix the error
- Extensive testing to verify that the problems are successfully resolved.
Preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance covers all actions that ensure easier maintenance on an ongoing basis through active monitoring.
This includes:
- Continuous monitoring of the system to ensure a better level of security, stability and performance for your users
- Infrastructure monitoring
- Automated testing of your system's regression level
Adaptive maintenance
Adaptive mobile application maintenance can be seen as identical to preventive. However, the difference between the two is that adaptive maintenance requires modifications to the system and its components. These modifications are made in order to comply with a major change in the application or software environment.
By adopting this type of maintenance, you are being proactive. It is indeed a good way to avoid future complications (and numerous calls to the technical department!). The objective is that your application or software remains agile and usable, even in an environment that is bound to change.
This includes:
- Software updates that respect your license limits
- Modifications that ensure your constant compatibility with the new versions of mobiles, computers, tablets or browsers.
Evolutionary maintenance
Evolutionary maintenance is also a way to prevent long-term problems. You can add additional modules to make your application or software more agile, ergonomic and efficient. This type of maintenance can be performed by the service desk or by the project office, depending on the scope and complexity of the update to be performed.
In short, it is a necessary evolution that allows you to avoid several long-term maintenance operations.
Evolutionary maintenance allows you to:
- Improve existing functions in the application or software
- Develop features to meet new expectations of users, customers or administrators.
Good mobile application maintenance should be holistic and include a few specific steps, such as automation, technical support, security testing and advanced monitoring. If you’d love to learn more about how to provide maintenance to a successful mobile application, read our best tips for long-term app maintenance.
Boost your business with mobile application maintenance
Here, at Appunite we believe that the performance of an app is strictly related to monitoring it after the first couple of weeks on the market.
One of the solutions is to outsource your app maintenance so:
- You don’t need to worry that you don’t have the expertise or time to address the matter correctly
- You can prevent most maintenance issues
- You can get help to recover from the issues in case they appear, and provide your business with invaluable know-how for the future.
Our dedicated teams are here to provide you with high-quality app development and long-term app maintenance after the release. With the experience we’ve gathered from a multitude of delivered projects, we will do our best to ensure you reap all the benefits of app maintenance.
Contact our team now, and we will be happy to provide you with any additional information customized specifically for your project’s needs.
