Maintenance
Your systems keep running.
For when a partnership stops, or a one-off build is live. We keep everything hosted, secure and working, and fix anything we built that breaks. New work isn't part of it. Come back to a partnership any time, or leave and take it all with you. You own it.
- Price
- From £450 a month, rolling
- Timeframe
- One month's notice. No lock-in, no exit fee
- You get
- Hosting, security, updates, and fixes to what we built
- Best for
- Systems that need looking after, not new work
Most software relationships end at go-live. The agency hands over, and the system starts to age the day they leave: updates skipped, backups unchecked, and the first person to notice it's down is a customer. Maintenance is the opposite arrangement. We keep what's running healthy, and we fix what we built when it breaks.
What this usually looks like now.
If any of these land, you're in the right place.
Nobody in the building is responsible for keeping the system healthy.
It's hosted somewhere, and the person who set it up has left.
You'd find out it had been down overnight when a customer told you.
What's covered.
Hosting and security
In your own accounts, configured properly and watched, so if something breaks at an awkward hour we know before you do.
Backups and monitoring
Backed up and monitored, so a failure is our problem before it's yours.
Security and software updates
The updates nobody in your business wants to be responsible for, applied and checked.
Fixes to anything we built
If something we built breaks, we fix it. Up to half a day a month, on fair use.
Next-working-day response
That's a target, not a guarantee, and we'd rather say so.
A yearly check-in
Once a year we go through what's running with you and tell you if anything needs attention.
What isn't.
New work. A new feature, a new report, a change to how something works: that's partnership work, or quoted as a job. So is continuing analysis, keeping your procedures in step with the software, training your team, and keeping up with what's newly possible. Maintenance keeps things running. A partnership moves them forward.
How it's priced.
From £450 a month for one application. A larger set-up — several systems, or one that runs the whole business — is quoted higher, because there's more running. Hosting itself sits in your own accounts, so the fee is our time, not a markup.
Rolling, with one month's notice. There's no lock-in and no exit fee, because an arrangement that keeps you through a notice period rather than through being useful isn't worth having.
Not sure what's right for you?
Take the 5-minute assessment. 12 quick questions, and we'll tell you honestly whether you need a partnership, a one-off build, or nothing from us at all.
Sound like the right size of job? Half an hour, no charge, and you'll know.
Book a 30-minute callWhy this isn't a support contract.
- You can leave, and we'll help.
- Standard technology, documented, and procedures written in plain English that belong to you. If you ever take it elsewhere, whoever picks it up will recognise what they're looking at. We'd rather keep clients because they want us than because leaving is difficult.
- Twelve years is the actual evidence.
- Two of the systems we look after have been running for over a decade and have been revamped rather than replaced. That doesn't happen to software nobody is tending, and it's the only claim on this page that can't be made by an agency that started last year.
Towerfire and Mikerry Rail went live in 2014 and are still running: 12 years in production.
Where this can go next.
This assumes there's something to look after. If you haven't built anything with us yet, this is the thing that comes afterwards rather than the thing to start with, though we do take on systems somebody else built, once we've looked at what's there and told you honestly whether it's worth keeping.
The larger version of this is a system that runs the whole business. See what that involves
The questions this usually raises.
Want us on the team every month?
See the Tech PartnershipSound like what you need?
Half an hour, no charge. Tell us what the job is and we'll tell you what we'd do, what it'd cost, and whether it's worth doing at all.