Question 1

How much does it cost to maintain a .NET application?

Accepted Answer

Retainer support runs $1,900 per month for 10 hours, $3,600 for 20 hours and $7,000 for 40 hours. A stable application that mainly needs patching and occasional small changes typically fits the 10 or 20 hour tier. For comparison, a mid-level .NET developer in the Twin Cities costs roughly $175,000 a year fully loaded, or about $14,600 a month.

Question 2

Is it better to hire a .NET developer or use an outside firm for maintenance?

Accepted Answer

Hire when the application changes constantly, needs someone embedded with the business, or generates more than about forty hours of work a month on an ongoing basis. A retainer is better when the system is stable, work arrives in bursts, and the requirement is that someone competent already understands the system when something happens. Hiring also concentrates knowledge of the system in one person again.

Question 3

Do unused retainer hours roll over to the next month?

Accepted Answer

No. Unused hours expire at the end of each month. The monthly fee reserves capacity in that month. Work beyond the retainer is billed at the standard hourly rate and agreed in advance.

Question 4

Is there a minimum contract term for a support retainer?

Accepted Answer

No. Retainers are month to month with thirty days notice to change tiers or cancel. There is no term commitment.

Question 5

Can you support an application you did not build?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and that is the usual case. It starts with a fixed-fee assessment covering what is running in production, what the database contains, what the external dependencies are and how deployment works. The assessment comes first so the learning happens once at a fixed price, and it is delivered as a standalone document.

Question 6

Does the retainer cover a full migration or rewrite?

Accepted Answer

No. A migration, rewrite or large new build is a project with its own scope and price rather than something absorbed into a monthly retainer. Where one is warranted it is quoted separately, and the retainer continues alongside it.

	Mid-level .NET hire	20-hour retainer
Monthly cost	~$14,600 fully loaded ~$135k salary plus tax, benefits, equipment	$3,600
Up-front cost	Recruiting fee, typically 20 to 25% of salary	Fixed-fee assessment
Time to productive	6 to 9 months on an undocumented system	Immediately after the assessment
Availability	Every day	Business hours, within the hour block
If they leave	The search starts again	Documentation stays with you
Knowledge risk	One person holds the context again	Written record built as work is done

Ongoing support

What it costs

What it covers

Hire or retain

How it starts

Tell us what needs covering

Hours / month	Monthly	Fits
10	$1,900	Patching, updates, small changes and someone to call when something breaks.
20	$3,600	The above plus steady small feature and integration work. The most common tier.
40	$7,000	About a day a week. Maintenance plus a modernization track, or several systems.