Maintenance & SLA
An outage is cheaper to catch than to explain to customers
Every product outage costs the company money, team time or customer trust. We maintain digital products under an SLA, an agreement with a guaranteed response time: monitoring, backups and fixes.
Written by Radosław Kołacki Updated
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When is an SLA worth signing?
The product runs in production and matters to the business, and nobody on the team knows the system well enough to respond to an incident.
The Product Owner answers to the management board for downtime, so it is worth having the response time written into a contract before it is needed.
Who is maintenance and SLA for?
- The product runs in production and sales or customer service depend on its availability
- First and foremost, products designed and built by Squares
- The team has nobody to maintain the product and respond to incidents
- Stability and data security are critical, as in medtech and health products
How it works
How does SLA maintenance work step by step?
01
Handover
We take over access, documentation and the list of the product's dependencies. We get to know the environment before we become responsible for it.
02
Monitoring and backups
We monitor the product's availability and back up its data regularly.
03
Fixes and support
We fix bugs and respond to tickets within the response time set in the contract.
04
Report
Every month we send a report: what happened with the product, what we fixed and what is worth planning.
The product is monitored, the data is backed up, and we respond to incidents within the agreed time. The client's team does not have to look for someone who knows the system.
How much does maintenance and SLA cost?
from PLN 300 net/month
Maintenance is billed as a fixed monthly fee, from PLN 300 net. The price depends on the technologies the product runs on, the scope of care and the guaranteed response time.
We start with a call about the product and the technologies it runs on, with no long contract up front. The scope of care changes during the engagement, up or down. We answer the first message within a few hours.
Packages
A scope matched to the product
The levels differ in response time on working days: within 24h on Standard, 16h on Priority and 8h on Critical. Critical adds out-of-hours availability and a review of the report with the team. Monitoring, backups and a monthly report come with every level.
Standard
Response time (working days)
within 24h
- Monitoring and backups
- Monthly report
- Out-of-hours availability (not included in the package)
Priority
Response time (working days)
within 16h
- Monitoring and backups
- Monthly report
- Out-of-hours availability (not included in the package)
Critical
Response time (working days)
within 8h
- Monitoring and backups
- Monthly report + review with the team
- Out-of-hours availability
„We wholeheartedly recommend Squares. We have worked together for years and they are one of those partners you can rely on 100%. Among many different projects, they built our company website with an advanced integration with an external database. They do not stop at the code.”
Inprogress - sukces w zarządzaniu
Google review, translated from Polish · Full review
Work
How it works in practice
Air purifier ranking: a platform developed continuously since 2022
We designed and built the ranking platform and have been developing it continuously since 2022. Today it covers eight categories and several thousand products.
Case study
Daily Effect: maintaining the app after launch
We have been developing the mobile app since 2023 and are responsible for maintaining it after launch, and the component-based design system shortens the time needed to make changes.
Case study
NoHo Group: one maintenance effort instead of four
Four separate templates meant maintaining everything four times. On a shared design system a change reaches all the sites at once. This was a delivery project, not an SLA contract.
Case study
Why Squares
We know the systems we built from the inside, so diagnosing an incident takes us less time. We take over products built by other suppliers after a short audit.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How much does app maintenance cost?
App maintenance under Maintenance & SLA is billed as a fixed monthly fee, from PLN 300 net. The price depends on the technologies the product runs on, the scope of care and the guaranteed response time. We give a specific figure after a call about the product, and the scope of care changes during the engagement, up or down.
What is an SLA in app maintenance?
An SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a contract in which the supplier guarantees a response time to a request or an outage. In app maintenance it means the response time is written down before it is needed. Squares offers three levels: Standard within 24h, Priority within 16h and Critical within 8h, counted on working days.
What is the response time under the SLA?
The response time is within 24h at the Standard level, within 16h at Priority and within 8h at Critical, on working days. The Critical level adds out-of-hours availability and a review of the report with the team. The level is matched to how critical the product is for sales or customer service.
What does app maintenance under an SLA include?
Maintenance includes availability monitoring, regular data backups, bug fixes, answers to requests within the guaranteed response time and a monthly report. The report shows what happened with the product, what we fixed and what is worth planning. Monitoring, backups and the report are included at each of the three SLA levels.
When is it worth signing an SLA?
An SLA is worth signing when the product runs in production, sales or customer service depend on it, and nobody on the team knows the system well enough to respond to an outage. Every outage then costs money, team time or customer trust. In medtech and health products, data security comes on top.
Does maintenance only cover systems built by Squares?
No. Maintenance works best for systems we built, because we know them from the inside and diagnosing an outage takes less time. We take over products built by other suppliers after a short audit, in which we get to know the code, the environment and the dependencies. Only then do we take responsibility for the product.
How is Maintenance & SLA different from Development?
Development is a project with a scope, stages and acceptance, quoted up front or billed for time worked. Maintenance & SLA is a fixed monthly fee for monitoring, backups, fixes and a guaranteed response time. The first service builds and launches the product; the second keeps it running without outages after launch.
What is needed to take an app into maintenance?
Taking over an app requires access to the product and its environment, the documentation and a list of dependencies, meaning the external services and libraries the product relies on. We get to know the environment before we take responsibility for it. For a product built by another supplier, this stage takes the form of a short audit.
Does Squares sign NDAs and framework agreements?
Yes, both documents are ready. A light NDA can be signed before the first paid service, before access to the product is handed over. The framework agreement sets fixed terms, and further work is ordered separately. Maintenance needs no long contract up front, and its scope changes during the engagement.
Are there examples of products under ongoing care?
Yes. We designed and built the air purifier ranking platform and have been developing it continuously since 2022. We have been developing the Daily Effect mobile app since 2023 and are responsible for its maintenance after launch. In both cases the team has known the system since the first version, so diagnosing an outage takes less time.