The Second Year: What Twenty Client Apps Cost to Keep Alive
Every article about this business, including ours, is about getting to the first sale. Here is the part that decides whether the business is still there in year three: what it costs to keep twenty client apps alive once they are all built and nobody is paying you to build anything. The short version is that the money is small and predictable, and the work is neither. Most people who get into…
Keeping twenty client apps alive once they are built and generating revenue is an often-overlooked aspect of the app development business. The costs involved are small and predictable, but the work required is anything but.
The main expenses include the Apple Developer Program, which costs $1,980 per year for twenty clients, plus the initial $99 for test builds. Other expenses consist of hosting, licensing, and GitHub, OneSignal, and Let's Encrypt, which are all free. Build minutes are the only bill that can surprise you, with Codemagic offering 500 free build minutes per month, resetting on the 1st of each month. Failure to comply with these deadlines can result in costly surprises.
The calendar that controls when updates are required is not something you control. Google updates every August, while Apple's requirements are more unpredictable, with submissions needing to be built against a recent SDK. A three-year lapse in updates can lead to a decline in installs, which clients may attribute to other factors.
Each client holds their own Apple membership, which is an auto-renewing annual subscription. Failure to update the card on file can result in an app becoming unavailable on sale, with no prior warning. Additionally, provisioning profiles and push certificates have expiration dates, requiring careful management to avoid disruptions to the app.
In total, there are twenty renewal dates to keep track of, along with reminders for failed renewals. The quiet apps that rarely require updates can also pose risks, as they may be impacted by the Android target API deadline and Apple's App Store Improvements process. Managing these obligations can be tedious, but they are crucial to the long-term success of the business.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
