Every project we deliver includes a warranty period, and most clients continue with an ongoing maintenance retainer afterward — because software that isn't maintained degrades quietly until it breaks loudly.
Software doesn't stay working just because it worked at launch. Dependencies get security patches that need applying. Third-party APIs change their contracts. Browsers and mobile OS versions update and occasionally break things that worked fine the week before. A business that treats "done" as truly done tends to find out otherwise at the worst possible time — during a traffic spike, a security incident, or a busy sales period.
Every project we deliver — regardless of size — includes a warranty period: 30 days for smaller MVP-tier projects, 90 days for full product builds, and 12 months for enterprise engagements. During the warranty, we fix bugs related to the original scope of work at no additional cost.
Once the warranty period ends, most clients move to one of two arrangements:
Many clients who start with a project-based MVP end up on a retainer for years, using it not just for fixes but as an ongoing development partnership — adding features, scaling infrastructure, and expanding into new markets as the business grows.
For mobile apps specifically, this also covers keeping pace with iOS and Android OS updates, which can silently break functionality until addressed — see our mobile app development page for more on this.
For retainer clients, critical issues (site down, payment processing broken, security incident) get priority response outside normal turnaround times. This is part of why most clients on a retainer describe it as a form of insurance as much as active development — the value shows up the day something breaks and it gets fixed within hours instead of whenever we can get to it.
If we built your application, moving to a maintenance retainer is a straightforward conversation at the end of your warranty period. If another team built your existing application and you're looking for ongoing support, we can do a technical audit first to understand what we're taking on before quoting a retainer rate.
If another team built your current application and you're looking for a new maintenance partner, we start with a technical audit — reviewing code quality, security posture, dependency health, and infrastructure setup — before quoting a retainer. This protects you from us underestimating the effort involved, and gives you an honest picture of what you're actually maintaining, which is sometimes valuable information on its own even if you don't proceed with us.
The warranty (30–90 days depending on project tier) covers fixing bugs related to the original scope at no extra cost. A retainer is an ongoing paid arrangement for anything after that — new issues, security updates, minor features, and priority response times.
Generally: the application is down, a core feature (checkout, login, primary workflow) is broken for users, or there's a security incident. Minor bugs and feature requests are handled on the normal retainer cadence rather than treated as emergencies.
Yes. Retainers are month-to-month, not locked into a long-term contract, and we're happy to do a knowledge-transfer handoff to an in-house team when that time comes.