Stop hiring a developer for the odd update

Your app is built and in the stores. It does not need new features every week, but every so often something has to change: a store rule, an operating-system update, a small fix. The obvious answer is to hire a developer, or keep one on speed dial for when something breaks. Both feel cheaper than a retainer. Both usually cost more.

Here is the case for the third option, a managed service that runs the app for a fixed monthly fee, and why it tends to win for an app that is finished but still has to keep working.

The developer you cannot keep busy

A capable mobile developer is not cheap, and the odd update will not come close to filling a role. You end up paying a full-time salary for a few days of real work a month, or you hire someone who is bored and gone inside a year, taking everything they learned about your app with them. Mobile is also wider than one person: two platforms, the backend they talk to, and the build and release tooling around them. A finished app needs that breadth occasionally, not a single pair of hands full-time.

The contractor who goes cold

The lighter version is to call a contractor only when something breaks. It dodges the salary, but it buys three new problems. The person who learned your app forgets it between jobs, or moves on, so the next one starts from zero on your time. Their rate for occasional, urgent work is the highest rate they charge. And the incentive runs backwards: the only time anyone opens your app is when it is already broken, which is the most expensive moment to start looking.

The bill with no number on it

Both routes share a deeper problem: you cannot budget for them. Pay by the incident and every quarter is a flat line of nothing followed by an invoice you did not see coming, sized by how bad the surprise was. The work that actually keeps an app healthy, the steady upkeep, is the part that never gets approved because it never feels urgent, right up until it is. We put real numbers on that in what it costs to keep an app alive.

What a managed service changes

A managed service is the same work, reshaped. Instead of a salary you cannot fill or a bill you cannot predict, you pay one set monthly fee, and a team that already knows your app keeps it current: store and operating-system requirements, security and dependency updates, and a watch on what the platforms are about to change. The team stays warm on the app, so the next change starts from knowledge rather than from scratch, and the work happens before it turns into an emergency, because that is the cheaper way to run it.

That is how App Care is priced: Silver at $2,990 a month, Gold at $5,090, for the apps you have already paid to build. You are not buying a person you have to keep busy or a number you cannot forecast. You are buying the app staying alive, on a line item you can plan around.

When hiring is the right call

To be fair to the other side: if your app is still growing, with a real roadmap of new features and a backlog that justifies it, you do not need a maintenance retainer, you need a team. That is a different job, and we will tell you so rather than sell you the wrong one. Donnish does that too, through team amplification. Managed services is for the app that is built and has to keep working, not the one still being built.

If you are not sure which side your app is on, that is the normal place to start, and it is exactly what the free check is for. Brisbane-based.

Sources

1. The cost comparison here is reasoning from how mobile app work is staffed and billed, not a quoted third-party statistic. Your own numbers will vary with the app, the team, and the market.
2. The App Care prices quoted (Silver $2,990, Gold $5,090 per month) are Donnish's own published rates. The companion piece, what it costs to keep an app alive, sets out the upkeep maths in more detail.