An app that works today stops working on its own if nobody looks after it. Apple and Google raise their requirements every year, such as the Google Play target API level, certificates expire, dependencies stop building and store deadlines pass. Operation means someone catches that before your users do, and deals with it. My standard offer is Full Service: I keep the app current and safe, ship new versions to the stores and fix bugs. If all you need for now is updates and security, start with App Care; it does not include releases. If you also need someone to own the tech, Your Technical Lead covers that.
Three tiers, fixed monthly prices
The entry point: stays current and safe
App Care
$1,400 a month
3 months minimum
- OS and SDK updates, security patches
- Adapting to new major iOS and Android versions
- Store deadlines tracked, store listings maintained
- Round-the-clock monitoring, backups with tested restore
- Fixes for security bugs and outages
Releases, fixes for other bugs and new features are not included; they come by change order with their own price.
Your app runs, I take care of the rest
Full Service
$2,900 a month
3 months minimum
- Everything in App Care
- Releases: new versions shipped to the stores
- Bug fixing for all bugs, not only outages
New features by change order with their own price, never as an open item on the monthly bill.
Someone owns the tech
Your Technical Lead
$7,200 a month
6 months minimum
- Everything in Full Service
- Technical responsibility: roadmap, architecture, release and store decisions, talks with third parties, a fixed monthly meeting
- Up to 4 supplier questionnaires from your customers answered per year
New features by change order with their own price.
Included in every tier
- Emergency handbook and account register, kept up to date
- An annual handover test: you or a third party you name check against a checklist that the handbook and the accounts are right
- Exit plan: what is handed over if you cancel, data return, removal of all my access
- Supplier pack for your procurement or your customers: service description, list of subcontractors, incident process with response times, exit plan, data return, answers to common supplier questionnaire questions
- Response times: critical outages within 4 hours on business days, everything else within one business day. That is when work starts, not a promise of when the issue is fixed.
- Hosting and third-party services at cost, by usage
How operation starts
I do not take over responsibility for a state nobody has looked at. Operation starts after one of these steps:
- Takeover: your developer or agency is gone; the App Takeover from $10,500 moves every account into your name and ships a store update first
- Rescue: the project stalled or an AI prototype has to carry real users; see rescue a failed app project and vibe-coded app to production
- Setup for Care at $3,500: if the App Check shows the app green or yellow, I check the accounts, set up access, monitoring and backups with a restore test, and write the emergency handbook and the exit plan
- A build of mine: after a First Version (MVP) or a Market-Ready App, operation starts at the latest when the 90 days of free bug-fixing end
Looked after, not locked in
There is no named stand-in, and I will not pretend otherwise. What you have instead is written down and tested. The emergency handbook in your repository shows step by step how the app is built, released and restored from backup. The account register lists every account and who has access. Once a year a handover test checks both. And the exit plan says what you get if you cancel, including the removal of all my access.
When your customers ask about you as a supplier
Every tier includes the supplier pack: service description, subcontractors, incident process, exit plan and answers to the questions that keep coming up in supplier questionnaires. With Your Technical Lead I also answer up to four questionnaires a year for you. More on the vendor security review page.
All prices are net; the tax treatment is clarified before contract and stated in the offer. Hosting and third-party services are billed at cost on top. Full price list on the pricing page.