Care Plan
The Care Plan: a maintenance retainer for SaaS and marketplace platforms
Software doesn't stop needing attention at launch. The Care Plan is a monthly retainer that keeps your platform monitored, patched and moving forward.
Monthly retainer
Who it's for
- Platforms I've built, from the day they launch.
- Funded products whose founders want an engineer accountable for production without hiring one full time.
- Existing SaaS or marketplace codebases, after a paid review confirms they're in a state I can support well.
Dependencies age. Payment providers and APIs change. Real users find the edge cases no test suite did. Without someone responsible for production, small problems wait quietly until they become outages, security issues or a migration nobody planned for.
With a Care Plan, that someone is me. I watch the platform, keep it current, fix what breaks, and spend a block of development hours each month on the improvements you prioritize. It costs far less than a full-time hire and comes with context a new hire wouldn't have.
Scope
What the Care Plan covers
- Monitoring
- Uptime, error and performance monitoring with alerts that reach me, so problems are usually found before your customers report them.
- Security and dependency updates
- Framework, runtime and package updates applied and tested on a regular schedule, with urgent security patches handled as they're published.
- Bug fixes
- Defects in the platform investigated and fixed, with the fix tested on staging before it reaches production.
- Included development hours
- A set number of hours each month for improvements, small features and technical debt, planned with you and spent on what matters most.
- Priority response
- Care Plan clients come before new work. When something is wrong in production, it gets my attention first.
Why a retainer instead of ad hoc fixes
Ad hoc fixes are priced per emergency, and an emergency is the worst time to learn a codebase. On a retainer, the person fixing production already knows how it's built, has been watching it, and has kept it current, so most problems are smaller and faster to resolve.
A retainer also keeps the platform moving. Without a regular cadence, upgrades get postponed until they become a project of their own. A few planned hours every month keep the framework, runtime and dependencies current, and leave room for the small improvements your users keep asking for.
Process
How it works
Review
For a platform I didn't build, a paid review of the code, infrastructure and risks comes first, so both of us know what I'm taking on.
Set up
Access, monitoring, alerting and a staging environment, plus a short list of the first things that need attention.
Run
Each month: updates applied, issues fixed, and development hours spent on the priorities you set.
Pricing
Billed monthly
The Care Plan is billed monthly. The price depends on the size of the platform and the development hours included, and it's agreed before the plan starts.
Not ready for a full build? Start with a Discovery Sprint: a fixed-fee engagement whose fee is credited toward the build.
Questions
Do you only support platforms you built?
No. Existing platforms start with a paid review, so both of us know what I'm taking on before the plan starts.
What counts as a bug fix, and what counts as new work?
A bug is something that worked as specified and stopped, or never did. Changes and new features come out of the included development hours, or are scoped separately when they're larger.
Is the Care Plan the same as hosting?
No. Your platform runs on accounts you own and pay for directly. The Care Plan is the engineering work that keeps it healthy.
What do you need from me?
Access to the code repository, the hosting and third-party accounts, and one person on your side who can make product decisions when something needs a call.
How does it relate to a build engagement?
Most platforms I build move onto a Care Plan at launch. It's also available on its own for products that are already live.
Start a conversation
Tell me what you're building. I reply personally within one business day.
Engagements from $50,000 · Two builds per year