What the industry says
Search this question and you'll find a dozen agency blog posts. They mostly agree:
- Small apps: £3,000 to £10,000 per year, or £500 to £1,700 a month
- Mid-size apps: £20,000 to £80,000 per year
- Rule of thumb: budget 15 to 20% of what the app cost to build, every year
- First year often higher, sometimes 40 to 50% of the build cost
Then almost every one of those pages ends the same way: contact us for a quote.
Why those numbers are so high
They aren't lying. Those figures are real for what they're describing.
An agency maintaining your app is carrying a team: a project manager, a developer, a QA person, account management, an office. Their monthly fee has to cover all of it whether or not anything broke that month.
They're also usually maintaining custom-coded apps with servers, dependencies, security patching and infrastructure. That's genuinely expensive work.
If your app was built by a large agency, on custom code, serving thousands of users, those numbers are what it costs. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Why most small business apps don't need that
If your app was built on Adalo, Bubble, Glide, Softr, FlutterFlow, or generated with an AI builder like Lovable or Bolt, the picture is different.
The platform already handles the hosting, the servers, the security patching and most of the infrastructure. That's what you pay them a monthly fee for.
What's actually left is:
- Fixing things when they break
- Keeping up with Apple and Google requirement changes
- Handling it when Stripe, Maps, or another integration changes something
- Small changes: text, prices, a new field, a screen adjustment
- Someone noticing there's a problem before your customers do
That's real work, and it needs someone who knows what they're doing. It just isn't £10,000 a year of work.
What I charge
Billed yearly. No long contract, cancel with 30 days' notice.
Essential
£490/year
- Monitoring, so you find out before your customers do
- Fixes when something breaks
- Platform and app store requirement updates
- Response within 3 business days
Standard
£990/year
- Everything in Essential
- Small changes and additions
- App store submissions handled for you
- Response within 24 hours
Priority
£1,990/year
- Everything in Standard
- Priority response
- A larger monthly allowance for changes
- Priority contact for urgent issues
What actually costs money, and when
Some honest detail, because most pages skip it.
Things that are usually cheap or free
- A text or price change
- Adding a field
- Resubmitting a build to the app stores
- Most bug fixes on a no-code platform
Things that cost real money
- A new feature. That's a project, not maintenance.
- Migrating to a different platform
- Rebuilding something that was built badly in the first place
- Emergency work outside normal hours
Things you pay someone else for, not me
- Your platform subscription (Adalo, Bubble, Glide, etc.)
- Apple Developer Program, £99/year
- Google Play Console, one-off £25
- Any paid integrations your app uses
Anyone quoting you a maintenance fee that quietly includes those is padding the number.
What happens if you don't maintain it
Apps don't sit still, even when you don't touch them.
- Apple and Google change their requirements every year. Builds get rejected, then eventually pulled.
- Platforms push updates. Screens break, features stop working.
- An API you depend on changes. Payments or logins fail.
- Certificates and keys expire on their own schedule.
None of it announces itself. You find out when a customer tells you, or when you notice the payments stopped arriving.
The cost of not maintaining an app is never the maintenance fee. It's the week your checkout was broken and nobody told you.
How to decide what you need
You probably need Essential if your app is stable, has modest usage, and you'd mostly like someone watching it.
You probably need Standard if you make small changes regularly, or your app is in the app stores and needs resubmitting.
You probably need Priority if your business stops working when the app stops working.
You probably need an agency, not me if you have a custom-coded app with its own infrastructure, thousands of daily users, or compliance requirements like HIPAA.
Start with a free review
Before you pay anyone anything, find out what state your app is actually in.
I'll look at what you have and send you, in writing:
- What your app does and how it was built
- What's broken now
- What's fragile and likely to break next
- Whether it's worth maintaining or worth rebuilding
- What either one would cost
Free, no obligation. If the honest answer is that you don't need me, I'll say so.
About me
180+ products delivered for clients in the US, UK and Australia. Certified Adalo Expert and Community Leader. Webnux Ltd is a registered UK company.
More relevant here: I've spent years supporting apps after launch, not just building them. I know what breaks, when it breaks, and what it costs to leave it broken.
Common questions
Do you maintain apps you didn't build?
Yes. That's most of this service.
What platforms do you work with?
Adalo, Bubble, Glide, Softr, FlutterFlow, AI-generated apps, and custom web apps.
I don't have access to my own app any more. Can you still help?
Yes, and it's more common than you'd think. Getting you back in control of your own accounts is usually the first thing we do.
Why are you so much cheaper than the agencies?
Because I'm one person with low overheads, and because no-code and AI-built apps genuinely take less upkeep than custom-coded ones. I'm not cutting corners, I'm not carrying an office.
What if nothing breaks all year?
Then you've paid for monitoring, updates and someone on call. Most years are quiet. The plan exists for the years that aren't.
Am I locked in?
No. 30 days' notice, any time.