What does web app maintenance cost in 2026?

What are you actually paying for?

A web app is never really finished. Even if you change nothing yourself, the world around it changes: packages get updates, browsers change, third-party services adjust their integrations and new security holes are discovered. Maintenance is everything it takes to keep your app safe and working in that world.

The costs fall roughly into two groups. The first is the bills from providers: hosting, the database, email, payments and any AI services. These usually come straight from the provider and grow with the use of your app. The second is the work of a developer. That is what this article is mostly about, because that is where prices differ the most.

Hosting and third-party services

The server, the database, the email service, the payment provider and any AI APIs. You pay for them per month or per use.

Security updates

Updating the packages your app runs on as soon as a known vulnerability is found in them.

Monitoring

Automatic checks that raise the alarm when your app is down or throwing errors, so someone knows before your customers call.

Backups

Copies of your data that you can actually restore when something goes wrong, from a wrong click to a hack.

Bug fixes

Finding out why something does not work, fixing it and checking that everything else still works.

Small changes

An extra field, different wording in an email, a new filter. Small jobs that do add up.

Being reachable

Someone you can email, message or call, who responds within an agreed time.

Why maintenance is not an afterthought

Many founders only budget for building the app. That is understandable, but most of the bill usually comes later. In his well-known book Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering, Robert Glass describes maintenance as typically consuming 40 to 80 percent of software costs, about 60 percent on average. According to him, roughly 60 percent of that maintenance goes to enhancements and about 17 percent to fixing errors.

That last part is good news: most maintenance money goes to making your app better, not to fighting fires. But it also means an app without a maintenance budget slowly falls behind, or quietly becomes unsafe.

Modern web apps rely on dozens to hundreds of open-source packages. If one of them has a hole, your app has that hole too. OWASP, the best-known organization in web security, ranks problems in that chain of packages and suppliers third in its 2025 Top 10. Keeping track and updating is not a luxury, it is basic hygiene.

What drives the price?

Two apps that look the same to a user can turn out very differently when it comes to maintenance. These are the four things that make the biggest difference.

The second and third points in particular are often underestimated. Every integration is a place where another party can change something without asking you. And code without tests and without a clear structure takes more time with every change, because you first have to find out what else breaks.

• The size: the number of screens, the number of user types and how much logic sits behind the buttons.
• The number of integrations: payments, email, signing in with Google or Microsoft, accounting software and other external APIs.
• How the app was built: with tests and a clear structure, or put together quickly, for example with an AI tool, without anyone really knowing the code.
• How critical the app is: an internal tool that can wait a day, or a platform customers rely on every hour.

A fixed monthly fee or by the hour?

Paying by the hour feels cheap: you only pay when something happens. The downside is that nobody is watching in between. Updates pile up until something breaks, and when it goes wrong you have to hope your developer has time. You often end up paying anyway, but for repairs instead of prevention.

A fixed monthly fee turns that around. Monitoring, updates and backups simply happen, even when you do not think about them, and the response times are agreed. You know in advance what you will spend, and you have someone who knows your app when something happens.

Paying by the hour can be fine for a small internal tool that is rarely used and holds no personal data. If your business runs on the app, or you store customer data in it, a fixed plan is almost always the wiser choice.

What belongs in a maintenance contract?

A maintenance contract does not need to be thick, but there are a few things you want in black and white. Vague promises such as “quick response” or “always available” are worth nothing when your app goes down on a Friday afternoon.

Pay particular attention to ownership. In the Netherlands, copyright in software stays with its maker unless it is transferred in a written deed. Paying for the work does not automatically make you the owner. So agree on what you get: ownership of the code or a licence to use it, and in either case access to the code itself.

• Response times per type of problem, for example an outage versus an ordinary bug, and on which days and hours they apply.
• What the monthly price includes and what costs extra, with the price of extra hours.
• The notice period and the minimum term.
• Who owns the code, or which licence you get.
• Whose name the accounts are in: hosting, domain, database and third-party services. Preferably yours.
• What happens when you stop: how the handover works and how you get your code and data.

Example: what maintenance at BugFyx costs

To make it concrete, these are my own prices, all excluding VAT. Every plan can be cancelled monthly with one month’s notice and includes monitoring, a daily check for known vulnerabilities (CVEs) in your app’s packages with the updates that go with them, backups and data protection, and email support with a reply within 1 working day.

When there is an outage, I respond within 2 hours on working days during working hours (09:00 to 17:00), and within 4 hours for a serious incident at the weekend. I pick up a bug the next working day. If you need more hours than your plan includes, a one-off hour costs €100. If you add extra hours every month, you pay €80 per hour, 20 percent less.

Not sure what state your app is in? Then you start with an App Check for €600: I check one app with up to 15 screens, one database and up to 3 integrations, and within 5 working days you get a plain-language report with the risks in red, orange and green, plus a 30-minute call. If you choose a maintenance plan within 30 days, I credit the full €600.

• Basic: €600 per month, with 5 support hours.
• Plus: €1,100 per month, with 10 support hours and WhatsApp, with a reply within 4 hours.
• Business: €2,050 per month, with 20 support hours, WhatsApp and phone, answered within 1 hour.

How to keep the costs down

The most expensive maintenance is maintenance that was put off for too long. A package that is a few versions behind is usually updated quickly. A package that is years behind can mean a rebuild. A few habits keep the bill predictable.

• First have someone establish what state your app is in, so you know where the real risks are.
• Fix the red risks first and schedule the rest.
• Keep up with updates in small steps instead of saving them up.
• Bundle small requests, so your developer can handle them in one go.
• Put every account in your company’s name and keep the login details somewhere safe.
• Write down what your app is supposed to do. It saves investigation time with every bug.