Healthcare app maintenance cost calculator
Keeping a HIPAA-regulated app healthy costs $96,000–$150,000 per year at the essential level — monitoring, patching, and someone who answers the phone. Growth programmes with quarterly feature sprints and an annual audit run $240,000–$400,000 per year, and enterprise support reaches $720,000 per year.
- 6 separately priced features
- Compliance costed as line items
- Itemised, not a single guess
- ±15–20% confidence range
At a glance
Baselines before features, compliance and multipliers.
- Essential — $8K/mo$96K/yr
- Growth — $20K/mo$240K/yr
- Enterprise — $50K/mo$600K/yr
A typical configuration lands near $308,000/yr over 22–32 weeks.
Configure your healthcare app maintenance
Work through the steps below — scope, features, compliance — and you get an itemised estimate with a range, a midpoint and a delivery window.
What each scope tier includes
Every calculator starts from one of three baselines. This is what separates them.
| Scope | Baseline per year | Typical shape |
|---|---|---|
| Essential — $8K/mo | $96K | Narrowest useful release — one workflow, one user type, launched fast. |
| Growth — $20K/mo | $240K | The common case: multiple roles, reporting, and the integrations most buyers expect. |
| Enterprise — $50K/mo | $600K | Multi-site or enterprise scope, deeper interoperability and heavier non-functional requirements. |
Baselines are before feature adders, compliance programmes, integrations and the platform, design and team-location multipliers. The headline range for this calculator is $96K–$720K/yr. See how the numbers are built.
Frequently asked questions
How much does healthcare app maintenance cost per year?
Essential support runs $96,000 per year ($8,000 per month) covering monitoring, patching and bug fixes. Growth support with quarterly feature sprints and an annual compliance audit runs $240,000 per year ($20,000 per month). Enterprise support with 24/7 on-call and a dedicated pod runs $600,000 per year ($50,000 per month).
What percentage of build cost should maintenance be?
Budget 18–22% of the original build cost annually for a HIPAA-regulated product. A $200,000 telemedicine platform costs roughly $36,000–$44,000 per year at a minimum, which is why the $8,000 per month Essential package is the realistic floor once compliance monitoring and on-call are included.
What is not included in a maintenance retainer?
Third-party licensing, cloud infrastructure ($800–$5,000 per month typically), video and SMS usage, drug database subscriptions ($15,000–$60,000 per year), and major re-platforming. Net-new modules are quoted separately — Taction sprints start at $45,000 for a 4-week Discovery.
Related calculators
Need a number you can put in a board deck?
A fixed-scope quote comes out of a 4-week Discovery sprint, which starts at $45,000 and ends with an architecture, a backlog and a firm price.