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 — $2.3K/mo$28K/yr
- Growth — $5.7K/mo$69K/yr
- Enterprise — $14.3K/mo$172K/yr
A typical configuration lands near $86,750/yr over 5–7 weeks.
Configure your healthcare app maintenance
Work through the steps below — scope, features, compliance — and you get an 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 — $2.3K/mo | $28K | Narrowest useful release — one workflow, one user type, launched fast. |
| Growth — $5.7K/mo | $69K | The common case: multiple roles, reporting, and the integrations most buyers expect. |
| Enterprise — $14.3K/mo | $172K | Multi-site or enterprise scope, deeper interoperability and heavier non-functional requirements. |
Baselines are before feature adders, compliance programmes, integrations and the platform and design multipliers. Every configuration this calculator can produce falls inside $23K–$247K/yr — the floor is the cheapest tier at the cheapest multipliers with nothing added, the ceiling is the top tier with every option selected at the dearest ones. Both ends are computed from the price table above, not written by hand. A typical mid-market configuration lands near $86,750/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.