Custom software needs caretaking, not just calls when it breaks.
Most agencies build software, hand it over, and walk away. Six months later, something breaks and nobody knows the codebase. We offer structured maintenance plans for custom software — proactive monitoring, regular updates, defined response times, and a team that actually knows your code.
What happens without proper maintenance.
Bug surfaces. Original team is gone.
Hours of reading unfamiliar code before anyone can act. Customer waiting.
Dependencies haven't been updated in 2 years.
Now there's a security advisory. Updating them risks breaking everything. Nobody wants to touch it.
Server crashed at 2am. Nobody knew until 9am.
No monitoring. Hours of downtime. Lost trust. Lost revenue.
Need a small feature added.
Get a $40k quote for what should be a $4k change. Nobody understands the code well enough to do it cheaply.
What's in a maintenance SLA.
- 01
Production monitoring
Uptime, error rates, performance — all watched. Alerts to us, not just to you.
- 02
Dependency upkeep
Libraries, frameworks, runtimes — kept current. Security advisories acted on within agreed windows.
- 03
Defined response times
P1 production-down: under 2 hours. P2 major function broken: under 8 hours. P3 minor: 2 business days.
- 04
Small enhancements bucket
Monthly hours included for small changes — the things that would otherwise pile up unmaintained.
- 05
Quarterly health review
Senior engineer walks the code, the metrics, the operations. Flags risks before they become incidents.
- 06
Documentation kept current
When code changes, docs change. No drift, no surprises at handover.
Three maintenance tiers.
Pick based on how critical the software is to your business.
| Light (reactive) | Standard | Mission-critical | |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 response time | Next business day | <4 hours | <2 hours, 24/7 |
| Monitoring | You watch | Standard alerting | Full observability + on-call |
| Dependency updates | Quarterly | Monthly | Continuous |
| Included enhancement hours | 0 | 4 hrs/mo | 16 hrs/mo |
| Quarterly review | No | Yes | Yes + senior architect |
| Cost band (per app/mo) | $500–1.5k | $2k–6k | $8k–20k |
Maintenance tooling.
What our maintenance delivers.
Real 24/7 coverage on mission-critical tier.
Average across maintained applications, 12-month rolling.
For dependencies with active advisories.
Every app under maintenance has current documentation and 2+ engineers familiar with it.
“Another agency built our customer portal and disappeared. A year later it broke and nobody could fix it. Senator took over maintenance. Stabilized in two weeks, documented the whole thing in a month, has run it cleanly for three years. Best software-vendor decision we ever made.”
Who needs this.
- Firms running custom software in production without active maintenance.
- Anyone whose previous agency or developer is no longer available.
- Firms whose custom apps are unmonitored or on outdated dependencies.
- Anyone planning to acquire a custom application asset from another firm.
Q01Can you maintain software you didn't build?
Can you maintain software you didn't build?
Yes — common for us. We onboard by stabilizing first, then learning. Most maintenance handovers complete in 30–60 days.
Q02Do you fix things you built for free?
Do you fix things you built for free?
Defects from the original build, yes — under warranty for the agreed period after launch. After warranty, on the maintenance plan.
Q03Can we move from full build to maintenance over time?
Can we move from full build to maintenance over time?
Yes — most clients do. Build, ship, transition into maintenance. Same team. No handoff cliff.
Q04What if our needs grow beyond maintenance into new features?
What if our needs grow beyond maintenance into new features?
We scale up to small project work. Many maintenance relationships include 6–12 'mini-builds' a year.
Free maintenance scoping call.
Tell us what you've got, who built it, what's been happening. We'll propose a maintenance tier and the first 60 days of stabilization work.