Services · Maintenance and support
Software maintenance and support services for products that are already live
Launch is the start of the work. We keep web, mobile and AI products patched, monitored and improving on a monthly retainer, including products another team built.
Short answer
Software maintenance and support covers platform and framework updates, security patches, monitoring, bug fixes, infrastructure care and small improvements after launch. Innovation Insight provides it as a monthly retainer of $1.5k to $8k per month, sized to the product, with response times agreed in the contract. Takeovers of software built elsewhere begin with a one- to two-week audit. When feature work outgrows the retainer, a dedicated engineer from $4,000 a month is usually better value.
Reviewed by Zohaib Khalid, CEO & Co-founder · Updated
Why live software needs maintenance
Software does not wear out, but everything around it moves. Apple and Google raise their SDK requirements every year and stop accepting updates built against old ones. Frameworks publish security fixes monthly. Payment, email and AI providers retire API versions. Certificates expire, databases fill and usage grows. A product that is left alone still works for a while, then fails at the worst moment: a store rejects an urgent fix, or a known vulnerability stays in production because the upgrade it needs is three versions away.
What the retainer covers
| Area | What we do | Cadence |
|---|---|---|
| Platform updates | iOS and Android SDK targets, framework and runtime upgrades for React Native, Flutter, Next.js, Node and Python | Quarterly, or when a store deadline requires it |
| Security | Dependency patches, secret rotation, certificate renewal, fixes for newly disclosed vulnerabilities | Monthly, and immediately for critical issues |
| Monitoring | Error tracking, uptime checks, performance and crash reports reviewed by an engineer | Continuous, with a monthly review |
| Bug fixes | Triage, reproduction and fixes for what users and monitors find | Every sprint |
| Infrastructure | Backups and restore tests, database upgrades, scaling, cloud cost review | Quarterly |
| Third-party changes | Provider API deprecations for payments, messaging, maps and AI models | As announced |
| Small improvements | Copy changes, minor features and the fixes users ask for most | Within the monthly allowance |
| Reporting | What was done, what is at risk and what we recommend next | Monthly |
Support levels
| Level | Suits | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Care retainer | Stable products with modest change | Monitoring, patches, platform updates and an allowance of fixes | Lower end of $1.5k to $8k per month |
| Care plus improvements | Products with a steady list of small changes | Everything above plus regular feature work each month | Upper end of $1.5k to $8k per month |
| Dedicated engineer | Products with an active roadmap | A full-time engineer who also owns maintenance | From $4,000 a month for a senior engineer |
| Dedicated squad | Products growing quickly | A starter squad of three: senior lead, mid-level developer and part-time QA | $11,000 to $15,000 a month |
We size the retainer after looking at the product: its platforms, integrations, compliance needs and how often it changes. Response times for critical and routine issues are written into the agreement.
Taking over software another team built
- Access and ownership: repositories, cloud accounts, store accounts and third-party services are confirmed to be in your name.
- Audit (one to two weeks): security, backups, dependencies, tests, infrastructure and deployment, ending in a ranked risk list.
- Stabilise: fix the critical findings, add monitoring and backups if they are missing, and document how to deploy.
- Routine: move to a monthly cycle of updates, fixes and improvements.
Our code audit checklist describes the audit step in detail and is the same process we follow on every takeover.
Products we support
- Seek My Service: a two-sided service marketplace we built and have continued to develop since December 2023.
- LogFish: React Native apps, a Next.js web platform and NestJS microservices under ongoing development and maintenance.
- Zeuss: a telehealth platform on Azure, launched in five months and supported since.
- CareFlair: an NDIS support-worker marketplace in Australia, supported since its release.
- Edge OCR: an AI document processing SaaS in continuous development since 2024.
Signs you need more than a retainer
- Small fixes take days because every change breaks something else.
- The framework is several major versions behind and upgrades keep slipping.
- Hosting costs grow faster than users.
- No one fully understands a core part of the system.
In those cases a short refactoring plan, or a dedicated team for a few months, costs less than patching indefinitely. We will say so when we see it.
Sources and further reading
Next step
Tell us what you're building and get a written estimate.
A senior engineer replies within one business day. NDA on request.
Products we've shipped, and what happened next.
Case studies written from the technical documentation of each project: the stack, the scale and the outcome.
Questions we get asked a lot.
What does software maintenance include?
Platform and framework updates, security patches, monitoring, bug fixes, infrastructure care, third-party API changes and small improvements, with a monthly report.
How much does software maintenance cost?
Our retainers run $1.5k to $8k per month, depending on the product's size, platforms and how much improvement work is included. As a planning figure, yearly maintenance is often 15 to 20 percent of the build cost.
Can you maintain software you did not build?
Yes. We start with a one- to two-week audit of code, infrastructure and accounts, fix the riskiest issues, then move to a regular retainer.
Do you offer response-time commitments?
Yes. Response times for critical and routine issues are agreed with you and written into the retainer.
What happens when we need bigger features?
Small features fit in the retainer. For a sustained roadmap we add a dedicated engineer or team, which costs less per hour than stretching a retainer.
Can we pause or cancel?
Retainers run month to month. The notice period is set in the agreement, so you are not locked into a long term.