Hidden Costs Of Software Development. Revealed

You get time and cost estimates when you get software development services, right? But those estimates are only till the development is underway. What about the costs of software development that you need to bear after the software is deployed?

Those hidden costs, if not anticipated at the right time, can disturb your financial planning. To help you better budget for the hidden software development costs after deployment, I am revealing the costs right here.

5 Post-Deployment Costs Of Software Development

1. Hosting

Your software solution needs to be hosted to be available to its users, right? And that’s one of the key, ongoing costs that you need to anticipate.

Further, if you are using email servers or push notification services, budget the monthly/annual cost of that as well.

2. Staff Maintenance

The team (in-house or outsourced), which did the software development cannot be let go once your solution goes live. What if some bugs come up? What if some updates are required? Also, your software won’t run autonomously without any tech support. So you should budget for the cost of maintaining your software development staff.

3. Training 

As discussed in the previous point, the right team of tech talent is important to keep your software up and running. But do you expect the same team to continue with you forever? No, right? People will leave your organization. New people will join in. And to make sure that the outgoing employees provider complete knowledge transfer to incoming employees, you need to invest in training.

4. Software Maintenance

Once your software is deployed and being used by the end-users, that’s when a lot of bugs and issues come to light. The cost of fixing these issues needs to be budgeted for. Also, the cost of routine software maintenance and upkeep needs consideration.

5. Scaling

Your software is live and functional now. But if you continue to keep the solution as it is, your competitors will come up with a similar solution with better features and take away your audience. To avoid that, you need to keep adding new features or scaling your software. The periodic cost of scaling is another important aspect you should consider.

Now that you know the various hidden costs of software development, you are better equipped to plan your software development budget.

The next step that you need to take now is to find a dedicated software development company, which will offer not just software design and development support, but also on-going technical consultation and maintenance services.

Also, don’t forget to find a software development company that is open and upfront about the various current and future costs of software development.