A sample sketch and quote · maintenance: A driving school: an app left by a freelancer who stopped answering, taken over and looked after

What we read in it

• Access first. Without the store accounts, the server and the code, nothing can be changed safely.
• A day without the app has a price: lessons that are lost and calls to the office. We count it below, because the choice of plan depends on it.
• The takeover is one-off work at a fixed price. Care is a monthly plan you can change or end.
• The goal can be checked: the time from a report to an answer, and the days a month the app did not work.

Client's school

11 instructors, about 600 students a year, Pomerania

Competitor A

a chain of driving schools with its own app in several towns

Competitor B

a school with sign-up through a form and payment on its website

Competitor C

a small school that signs students up by phone

What a student can do without a phone call

• Client's school: sign-up, slots and progress are in the app, which since the last phone system updates sometimes does not open.
• Competitor B, sign-up: a form; the office sets the first lesson by phone.
• Competitor B, reminder: a text the day before, with no way to move the lesson.

What follows

• The client's school confirmed the first lesson after 26 h: the app did not open on our phone, and the office called back the next day. At competitor A the slot was confirmed at once.
• Its Google rating is the lowest in the group: 4.3 (212 reviews). When the app works, the school gives students the same as A: sign-up, slots and progress.
• That is why we start with the takeover and the fixes. It brings back what was already built, without writing the app again.
• A and B have payment on the website and reminders. We do not add them during the takeover. After it, we quote them separately or in the plan's hours.

• The takeover takes 2 weeks, because recovering store accounts depends on Apple and Google.
• A day of both founders: €480 net, which is €30 for one person's hour.
• Amounts are net, plus 23% Polish VAT.
• Our amounts are converted from złoty at the NBP average rate of 28 October 2026 (table 210/A/NBP/2026, EUR 1 = PLN 4.409) and rounded up. Figures from publications and from the example firm's own market stay in their own currency.

Risks of the takeover

The bottom of the range assumes the code is in a repository and builds: then we save half a day.

The Care plan costs €240 a month, less than one day without the app in this example (€368).

A plan does not guarantee there will be no outages. It gives a response time, hours of work and monitoring that alerts us when the app stops responding.

• Watch

  For an app that rarely changes and whose downtime costs little.

  €120 / mo.

  hours of work a month

  4

  response time

  2 business days

  price of an hour

  €30

• Care

  Our pick

  For an app clients use every day.

  €240 / mo.

  hours of work a month

  8

  response time

  1 business day

  price of an hour

  €30

• Develop

  For an app that grows: something new every month.

  €480 / mo.

  hours of work a month

  16

  response time

  4 hours in business hours

  price of an hour

  €30

• An hour in every plan costs €30, the same as in a build: a day of both founders is €480 for 16 hours.
• You pay for the server, domain, store accounts and outside services to the providers on your own accounts, at cost.
• Amounts are net, plus 23% Polish VAT.
• Our amounts are converted from złoty at the NBP average rate of 28 October 2026 (table 210/A/NBP/2026, EUR 1 = PLN 4.409) and rounded up. Figures from publications and from the example firm's own market stay in their own currency.

In every plan

• Uptime monitoring and an alert on outage.
• Security updates of libraries and the server.
• A daily data backup and a test restore once a quarter.
• A new version in the stores when Apple or Google require it.
• Work from this list counts towards the plan's hours.

We give the price of an hour only for plans that state their hours. The cheapest plans have no hours or bill them separately.

For smaller builds the rule gives €30–41 a month, less than the smallest plan (Watch, €120). Watch costs more because it includes hours of work. If you use less than half the hours for three months, we propose a lower plan or billing by the hour.

Sources of the rule; both firms sell maintenance: Netguru · 1.06.2026, Kolonell · 22.10.2026