Casey from Austria asks about the maintenance dance

At the mad bitter, how do you structure ongoing maintenance for your client projects? Software is rarely finished and even if it is feature complete and the bugs are squashed, often there will be an ongoing cost for hosting, backups, etc.

I've been a self-employed software engineer for over a decade. I've been relatively lucky that my clients usually have some sort of sysadmin or ops team that could handle these ongoing costs.

Recently I've found my clients base shifting slightly (as it is when you rely for better or worse off of referrals) to clients who don't have the capacity for hosting.

So I am in the situation where I need to have a solid story for how I take care of the client after the main engagemen wraps up.

Do you sell retainer contracts? Are those based on hours or something else? Or do you sell fixed hosting plans? What do they include?

Any horror stories to share? Or tips to pass along?


Cheers from Austria!