How much does software maintenance cost?
CodeFirst's monthly support plans for bespoke business software start from £450 for Essential, £950 for Standard and £1,900 for Priority. The fee for a particular system depends on its size and condition, how quickly you need a response and how much change work is included.
- Essential support plan
- From £450 a month
- Standard support plan
- From £950 a month
- Priority support plan
- From £1,900 a month
Our published prices, excluding VAT.
What the monthly fee pays for
A maintenance fee covers the work that keeps a system in service: finding and fixing faults, applying security updates, keeping the database and frameworks on supported versions, and checking that backups can be restored. It also pays for something less visible, which is a team that already knows the code when a problem arrives.
Our plans differ mainly in how quickly we respond when something goes wrong and in how much change work is included each month. The software maintenance page sets out what each plan contains.
What moves the fee
Size of the system. A single application with one database takes less looking after than a group of applications that pass data between them. More code and more connections mean more that can fail and more to keep up to date.
Condition. A system on supported versions, with a release process that works, is cheap to look after. One that has had no updates for years needs catching up first. That catching-up work is better priced as a one-off piece of work, so that the monthly fee reflects the steady state and not the backlog.
Response time. Cover with a next-day response costs less than cover with a response within hours, because the second needs people held ready. Pay for the response the business needs. A system used by a few people in one office can usually wait until morning. One that takes customer orders may not.
Change work. Some arrangements cover upkeep only, with every change quoted individually. Others include an agreed amount of change work each month. The second costs more and suits a system the business is still developing.
The rule of thumb and its limits
A commonly quoted rule of thumb puts yearly maintenance at 15 to 20 percent of what a system cost to build. It is a budgeting guide used across the industry and is not how we price. It also breaks down for older systems. Many businesses no longer know what their system cost to build, and a system built cheaply many years ago can cost more to keep going than the percentage suggests.
A better basis is the system as it stands today. That is why we quote after an assessment: once both sides know what state the code, hosting and backups are in, the monthly fee can be fixed against a written scope.
How to compare quotes
Monthly fees from different suppliers are only comparable if the scope is. Check what each quote includes: the hours of cover, the response times, whether updates to the underlying platform are in or out, and what is charged as extra. A low fee that excludes security updates buys a help desk, and the upkeep will still have to be paid for somewhere.
If you are not sure the system is worth maintaining at all, our ten-question check gives a first view and a code audit gives a detailed one.
Related questions
Why do you need an assessment before quoting?
Until someone has looked, nobody knows whether the system can be built from its source code, released in a controlled way or restored from a backup. Those answers decide how much work the system will need each month, so a quote given without them is a guess.
Are changes and new features included in the monthly fee?
That depends on the plan. Some arrangements cover upkeep and fixes only, and others include an agreed amount of change work each month. Larger pieces of work, such as a version upgrade or a new module, are scoped and priced separately so that you can see the cost before agreeing to it.
Does it cost more to maintain software that another company built?
Not as a rule. The cost follows the condition of the system more than who wrote it. A system that arrives without documentation or a working release process needs more effort at the start, and the assessment shows how much.
Is hosting included in a maintenance fee?
Usually not. Hosting is a charge from the cloud provider or data centre and is normally billed separately from support. Ask each supplier to show the two as separate lines so that quotes can be compared.
Want the answer for your system?
Tell us what the software does and what you are trying to decide. We will reply with a straight answer and what we would need to know to be more precise.