App maintenance & support
Mobile app maintenance services that keep your app live, fast and compliant
Our mobile app maintenance services keep a live iOS or Android app working through every OS release, store deadline and dependency update, with monitoring and agreed response times when something breaks. We maintain apps we built and apps other teams built, for businesses in the USA, UK, UAE, Europe and Australia. An app left alone does not stay still: the platforms move every year, and the app has to move with them.
- Planned around the annual Apple and Google cycle
- Crash and performance monitoring with alerts
- Support tiers with agreed response times
- Your code, your repo, your store accounts
Why apps need maintenance even when nothing is broken
A web page from five years ago will usually still load. A mobile app that has not been updated in five years has often been hidden from new users or can no longer ship an update. Apple and Google raise their minimum build requirements every year, change privacy rules, deprecate APIs and ship OS versions that alter how permissions, background work and notifications behave. An app that is not updated gradually breaks, then gets hidden from new users, then cannot ship even an urgent fix because the toolchain is too old.
The most expensive maintenance situation is the deferred one: a team that skipped two years of updates and now needs a security fix. Instead of a one-line change, they face a toolchain upgrade, broken third-party libraries and a round of store rejections before the fix can go out. Steady, planned maintenance avoids that.
Maintenance is part of our wider app development services. If you want to understand budgets first, our guide to app maintenance cost and a maintenance checklist breaks down what drives the annual spend.
Platform deadlines: planned work, not emergencies
Two store rules set the rhythm of every maintenance year. Google Play raises the required target API level each 31 August (from 31 August 2026, new apps and updates must target Android 16, API level 36, according to Android’s target SDK requirements), and Apple raises the minimum Xcode and SDK for uploads (Xcode 26 and the iOS 26 SDK since 28 April 2026). Miss the first and the app stops reaching new users on newer devices; miss the second and you cannot upload a fix.
Every plan includes both, put in your roadmap at the start of the year. The full calendar, beta testing from WWDC and the billing-library schedule are covered by our OS update compatibility support service, which runs inside every maintenance tier or on its own.
Behind on OS or store updates?
Send us your app’s store links and repository access. Within one business day you get our view on what is overdue, what is urgent and the next step toward a maintenance plan.
What a mobile app maintenance retainer covers
Scope is agreed in writing before the retainer starts. A typical maintenance plan includes:
- Annual iOS and Android compatibility updates, tested on the new OS before public release
- Google Play target API upgrades ahead of each 31 August deadline
- Keeping the project building on the current Xcode and Android Gradle Plugin
- Monthly dependency review and upgrades for SDKs, libraries and framework versions
- Security patches for vulnerable dependencies, prioritised by severity
- Crash and performance monitoring with alerts, plus a monthly health report
- App bug fixing services for reported issues within the agreed response times
- Backend upkeep: server OS and runtime updates, SSL renewals, backups and restore tests
- Store compliance: privacy labels, data safety forms and policy changes
- A set number of hours for small improvements, rolled into the monthly plan
Support tiers and SLAs
We describe support by response time and coverage, not by a price list. The right tier depends on how much revenue or operations depend on the app. The tiers below show how we typically structure support; the exact scope of each is agreed per contract, and pricing is quoted per app after we review it.
| Tier | Best for | Coverage | Response commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | Stable apps with low change, internal tools | OS and store updates, dependency and security patches, monitoring | Next business day for all issues, Pakistan time |
| Growth | Customer-facing apps releasing regularly | Everything in Essential, plus a monthly block of hours for fixes and small features and a monthly release | Faster response for critical issues during business hours; next business day for others |
| Business-critical | Commerce, booking, fintech or health apps where downtime costs money | Everything in Growth, plus on-call cover for critical incidents and a named lead engineer | Agreed out-of-hours response for critical incidents; exact targets set in the contract |
Exact response targets, hours and on-call windows are written into each agreement. We do not promise round-the-clock cover we have not agreed and staffed. Pakistan Standard Time is UTC+5 with no daylight saving, which gives near-full overlap with the UAE and strong overlap with UK mornings.
How we define severity, and what happens first
Response times only mean something if everyone agrees what counts as critical. We use four levels, written into the agreement with examples from your app. Mobile adds a constraint web teams forget: a fix to the app binary still needs store review, so the first action is often on the server.
| Severity | Example | First action | Getting the fix to users |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | App down, users cannot log in or pay, or data exposed | Work starts at once within the tier’s cover; broken feature switched off by remote config or a server-side flag | Hotfix build with an expedited review request to Apple where it qualifies; staged rollout halted on Google Play if a new version caused it |
| High | A core feature broken for many users, no workaround | Investigated next after any critical issue, using crash reports and logs | Hotfix release, phased on the App Store and staged on Google Play |
| Medium | A feature broken for some users, or a workaround exists | Logged, reproduced and estimated | Next scheduled release |
| Low | Cosmetic issues and minor improvements | Added to the backlog | Prioritised with you |
Apple accepts expedited review requests for extenuating circumstances such as a critical bug fix. Halting a Google Play staged rollout stops new users getting that version; users who already have it stay on it.
Monitoring: knowing before your users tell you
Good maintenance is mostly quiet. Monitoring lets us act before a problem reaches your inbox or your store reviews, and we set alerts below the levels where the stores start to penalise an app.
Crash reporting
Firebase Crashlytics or Sentry, with alerts on new crash types and on any drop in crash-free sessions after a release, split by app version and OS.
Performance
App start time, slow screens and network latency from real users, compared release to release so regressions are caught early. Deeper fixes run as app performance optimization work.
Backend and API health
Uptime checks, error rates, slow queries and certificate expiry alerts. Our mobile app backend development team maintains the server side.
Store signals
Android vitals in Play Console, App Store Connect metrics and new reviews mentioning bugs. Google’s thresholds are a 1.09% user-perceived crash rate and 0.47% ANR rate (8% on any single phone model), so we alert well before an app gets close.
Dependency alerts
Dependabot or Renovate flags vulnerable and outdated packages in your repository, so upgrades are small and regular.
Monthly health report
Crash rate, performance trends, what shipped, what is overdue and what the next platform deadline is, in one page.
Dependency updates without drama
A typical app depends on dozens of packages: networking, analytics, payments, maps, push notifications and the framework itself. Each releases on its own schedule. Updating them little and often is cheap; updating them all at once after two years is a project.
We review dependencies monthly, apply patch and minor updates through CI with the regression suite as a safety net, and plan major upgrades (a new Flutter or React Native version, a payments SDK rewrite) as scheduled work with testing time. Backend runtimes follow the same rule. Node.js and Laravel both publish fixed support windows, so we schedule upgrades before security support ends rather than after.
If your app uses a framework that has reached end of life, such as Xamarin, maintenance alone will not fix it. That is a migration, covered by our app modernization and rescue service.
Taking over maintenance of an existing app
Many maintenance clients come to us with an app built elsewhere. Onboarding follows a fixed sequence.
Access and NDA
NDA signed first. You grant access to the repository, store accounts, backend hosting and monitoring tools under your company’s ownership.
Health check
We build the app from source, check toolchain versions, dependency health, crash data and upcoming platform deadlines, and confirm signing keys and store roles sit with your company. You get a short written report of what is urgent. Apps in serious trouble go to our failed app project rescue process first.
Stabilise
Fix anything blocking a release: outdated SDKs, signing issues, missing CI. Set up monitoring and alerts if absent.
Agree the plan
Choose a support tier, set the annual update calendar and agree severity definitions and response times in writing.
Run and report
Monthly releases or as agreed, regression on each new OS via our mobile app testing practice, and a monthly health report.
Mobile app maintenance services: FAQs
What happens if we stop maintaining our app?
It degrades gradually. On Android, missing Google Play’s target API deadline means the app stops being shown to new users on newer devices. On iOS, you cannot upload updates once your toolchain falls behind Apple’s minimum Xcode and SDK. Meanwhile third-party SDKs age, security issues accumulate, and the first urgent fix becomes a much larger project.
Can you maintain an app another agency built?
Yes. We start with a health check: building the app from source, reviewing dependencies, crash data and upcoming deadlines. If the code is in reasonable shape, we move straight to a maintenance plan. If it has deeper problems, we tell you plainly and recommend a modernisation or rescue plan before committing to response times we could not meet.
How much does app maintenance cost?
It depends on the app’s size, the number of platforms, the backend, how often you release and the support tier you need. We quote per app after a health check rather than publishing a price list. Our blog post on mobile app maintenance costs explains the main drivers and gives a checklist you can use to budget.
Do you offer 24/7 support?
Only where it is agreed and staffed in the contract. Our standard support runs on Pakistan business hours with a reply within one business day. For business-critical apps we can agree on-call cover for critical incidents outside those hours, with exact response targets written into the agreement rather than promised loosely.
Are small new features included in maintenance?
On the Growth and Business-critical tiers, a monthly block of hours covers fixes and small improvements such as copy changes, minor screens or analytics events. Larger features are scoped and estimated separately, so maintenance hours are not consumed by roadmap work and the platform updates always get done.
Who owns the code and accounts during maintenance?
You do. The code stays in your repository, and the App Store, Google Play, hosting and monitoring accounts stay under your company. We work through invited access with appropriate roles. If you end the arrangement, you remove our access and keep everything, with a handover document describing the build and release process.
Put your app on a maintenance plan
Book a 30-minute call. We will look at your app’s current state, the next platform deadlines and the support tier that fits how much depends on it.