Shimira ITSoftware support & maintenance
Software doesn't stay built, it stays maintained.
Every piece of production software degrades from the day it launches: dependencies age into security advisories, OS and browser updates break assumptions, the database grows past its indexes, and the small bugs users tolerate quietly compound into the reasons they leave. The industry-standard budget for keeping software healthy is 15–25% of the original build cost, every year, and the companies that skip it don't save that money, they defer it at interest.
We maintain production software, the platforms we've built, and the ones other teams left behind.
What you get
What maintenance actually covers
Corrective: bugs and incidents
Triage, fix, deploy, with response times defined by your plan, not by whenever a freelancer answers.
Preventive: the invisible work
Dependency and framework updates, security patches, database maintenance, backup restore-testing, and SSL/domain/certificate hygiene. This is 80% of why maintained software stays cheap to run and unmaintained software becomes a rewrite.
Monitoring & uptime
Error tracking, performance metrics, and alerting, so we usually know about a problem before your users tell you. Set up as part of onboarding if it doesn't exist; see our cloud practice.
Adaptive: keeping up with the world
iOS/Android releases that break mobile apps, third-party API deprecations, browser changes, and compliance-driven updates.
Evolutionary: small improvements
The steady stream of tweaks, small features, and UX fixes that keep a product feeling alive, handled inside your retainer hours instead of a mini-project negotiation every time.
- Monitoring
- Node.js
- PostgreSQL
- AWS
- Security
- CI/CD
Proof
We've shipped this.
A live platform we keep running, chat, moderation, and 48 data models' worth of moving parts, maintained day to day.
Plans
Plans & pricing
| Plan | Best for | Includes | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | Stable products, low change rate | Monitoring, security patches, dependency updates, up to 8 hrs/month fixes, business-hours response | $1,500 – $2,500/month |
| Standard | Active products with regular needs | Everything in Essential + up to 20 hrs/month for fixes & improvements, priority response, monthly health report | $3,000 – $5,000/month |
| Growth | Products under continuous development | Everything in Standard + 40+ hrs/month, dedicated engineer familiarity, roadmap participation, fastest response | $6,000 – $10,000/month |
Unused hours roll over one month. Larger incidents or features beyond retainer hours are quoted separately at retainer-discounted rates, no surprise invoices.
As a sanity check against the 15–25% rule from our software development cost guide: a $100,000 platform should budget $15,000–$25,000/year, which is the Essential-to-Standard band. If a vendor quotes you dramatically less, look carefully at what "maintenance" excludes.
A low-friction start
We maintain software we didn't build
Taking over an unfamiliar codebase starts with a take-over audit (1–2 weeks, $2,000–$5,000): we map the architecture, document what exists, restore-test the backups, flag security issues, and give you an honest state-of-the-system report, including, occasionally, "this is fine, you need less help than you feared." Then maintenance begins with eyes open on both sides.
How you work with us
Three ways to engage.
Fixed price
MVPs from $7,500
Full products $18,000–$55,000+
You know what you need built. We scope it, quote one price, and deliver against it, no meter running.
- One agreed price, agreed before we start
- Milestone-based payments tied to what you can see
- Change requests priced openly, never assumed
Time & materials
from $28 / hour
Blended ~$32; senior specialists to ~$45
For work that changes as you learn. You pay for the hours spent, see exactly where they go, and can steer week to week.
- Billed on real, logged hours, reviewed with you
- Reprioritise or change direction any sprint
- Start small, scale the team as it proves out
Dedicated team
from $2,800 / month
Per developer, full-time, see the rate card
Developers who work only on your product, full-time, as an extension of your team, the offshore model most of our long-term clients settle into.
- The same people, month after month
- Your tools, your standups, your roadmap
- Roughly half the loaded cost of a local hire
Full rate card and what's included on the pricing page.
The case for a retainer
Why a retainer beats ad-hoc fixes.
Familiarity is speed
An engineer who knows your codebase fixes in an hour what a stranger bills a day to understand. Retainers keep that familiarity warm.
Prevention is cheaper than incidents
The unglamorous monthly patching is what prevents the 2 a.m. emergency, and emergencies bill at emergency economics everywhere.
Security isn't optional anymore
Unpatched dependencies are the leading cause of small-business breaches. "It still works" and "it's still safe" are different statements.
A number you can budget
Predictable monthly cost instead of unpredictable crisis invoices.
Questions
Before you get in touch.
Plans run $1,500–$10,000/month depending on product size and change rate. The industry benchmark is 15–25% of the original build cost per year, a useful check against any quote, including ours. Full cost context here.
Yes, roughly half our maintenance clients arrive this way. It starts with a take-over audit ($2,000–$5,000) so both sides know the true state of the system before committing.
Defined per plan, from business-hours response on Essential to priority handling on Growth. Genuine production-down incidents are triaged immediately on all plans.
Small improvements, yes, that's the evolutionary work retainers exist for. Larger features are scoped separately at retainer-discounted rates, and Growth-plan clients fold this into a shared roadmap.
It degrades on a predictable curve: security advisories accumulate, an OS or API update eventually breaks something visible, and the eventual catch-up cost exceeds the maintenance you skipped, often becoming a partial rewrite. Deferred maintenance is a loan with bad terms.
Plans adjust month to month with 30 days' notice. Documentation and access are always yours, so leaving is easy, retention through quality, not lock-in.
Not sure what you need yet? That's the usual starting point.
Tell us the problem in your own words. We'll scope it with you and put the plan in writing, free, and yours to keep either way.