Your Software Doesn't Stop Needing Engineering After Launch. Neither Should Your Team.
Dependencies go out of date. Security vulnerabilities get discovered. Traffic grows and performance degrades. Bugs surface in edge cases nobody tested. We handle all of it — as a long-term engineering partner, not a helpdesk that closes tickets.
The Real Problem
What Happens to Software After the Agency That Built It Disappears
Most software projects end the same way. The agency delivers the product, hands over the credentials, and moves on to the next client. You're left with a codebase you didn't write, running on infrastructure you didn't configure, with no documentation about why things were built the way they were.
For a while, it's fine. Then something breaks. A third-party dependency releases an update that changes its API and your integration silently fails. A security researcher publishes a vulnerability in a library you're using and you don't find out for three weeks. Traffic grows faster than expected and your server starts timing out at 9am on Monday mornings.
None of these are catastrophic in isolation. But without an engineering team watching the product, they stack up. The cost of fixing accumulated neglect is significantly higher than the cost of preventing it.
We take over the product, learn it properly, and keep it running well.
Not as a retainer that pays for access to a Jira board — as an extension of your team that actually knows your codebase.
What We Cover
Software Maintenance & Support Services
Everything your product needs after launch — from critical bug fixes and security patches through to feature development and infrastructure management.
Bug Fixes & Issue Resolution
Bugs found in production get fixed with proper diagnosis — addressing the root cause, not the symptom — plus a regression test so the same issue doesn't surface again. Critical issues within 4 hours. High priority within 24 hours. Standard within 72 hours.
Security Patching & Vulnerability Management
We monitor for CVE disclosures relevant to your stack, assess the actual risk to your specific product, and apply patches within 24 hours for critical vulnerabilities. Quarterly security audits catch issues that don't make headlines.
Performance Monitoring & Optimisation
We monitor response times, error rates, database query performance, memory usage, and Core Web Vitals. When something degrades, we catch it before your users do — and fix the underlying causes rather than just scaling up the server.
Dependency & Framework Updates
Running outdated dependencies is one of the most common and most ignored security risks in software. We manage updates systematically — testing in staging, reviewing breaking changes, updating documentation — so your stack stays current without surprises.
Infrastructure & Cloud Management
Server costs creeping up. Deployments that occasionally fail. Backups that have never been tested. SSL certificates that expire. We manage the infrastructure your product runs on — keeping it properly configured, cost-optimised, and resilient.
Feature Development & Enhancements
A fixed number of hours per month for feature work — small improvements, UX refinements, new integrations, and functionality changes. Predictable development capacity without spinning up a new project every time you want to add something.
Code Refactoring & Technical Debt Reduction
We identify the highest-impact areas of technical debt and refactor them incrementally — reducing complexity without rewriting the whole product and without disrupting what's already working.
Codebase Takeover & Onboarding
We take over maintenance of software we didn't build. It starts with a structured two-to-three week audit — reading the codebase, running the tests, documenting what's there, and identifying risks. Then we take responsibility for it.
Why OrchiX
What “Long-Term Partnership” Actually Means
Every agency says they want a long-term relationship. Most mean they'd like you to keep paying for new projects. Long-term partnership in maintenance means something specific to us.
We Learn Your Product Properly First
The first thing we do with any new maintenance client is a full codebase audit. Not a quick scan — a thorough read of the architecture, data models, deployment setup, and the parts clearly built in a hurry. By the time we're responsible, we understand it.
You Get Engineers, Not a Support Queue
Our maintenance clients work with a named team — two or three engineers who know the codebase and the context. Not a rotating cast of people reading tickets with no background. When something goes wrong, the person responding already knows your product.
We Fix Things Properly, Not Quickly
A quick fix that doesn't address the root cause saves time this week and creates a worse problem next month. We take the time to understand why something broke before we change it. Everything we fix is documented and tested.
We Tell You What Your Product Needs
If your product is accumulating technical debt that's going to cause serious problems in 12 months, we'll tell you — with a specific explanation of what it is and what it would take to address it. You make the call with the full picture.
Our Process
How We Take Over a Product
Codebase Audit (Weeks 1–2)
We read the code, run the tests, map the architecture, review the infrastructure setup, and document everything we find. You get a written audit report covering what's in good shape, what needs attention, and the priority order for addressing it.
Monitoring & Alerting Setup (Week 2)
Error tracking, uptime monitoring, performance dashboards, and alerting configured before we take formal responsibility. We need to see what's happening before we're accountable for what happens.
Handover & Knowledge Transfer (Weeks 2–3)
We sit with whoever knows the product best — the original developers if possible — and fill in the gaps the codebase doesn't explain. Business logic, customer-specific setups, known quirks, upcoming changes.
Active Maintenance Begins
From this point, we're responsible. Issues get logged, triaged, and fixed within agreed response times. Monthly reports go out at the end of each billing period. Quarterly security audits run automatically.
How It Works
How Maintenance Retainers Work
Every retainer is sized based on what your product actually needs — not a package that sounds good on a pricing page. Retainers start at $1,500/month.
Monitoring & Alerts
24/7 uptime monitoring, error tracking, and performance alerts. You get notified when something goes wrong; we get notified first and start working on it.
Guaranteed Response Times
Critical issues within 4 hours. High-priority bugs within 24 hours. Standard requests within 72 hours. Actual response times we hold ourselves to — not SLA language buried in a contract.
Monthly Engineering Hours
A fixed allocation of engineering time each month for bug fixes, small features, dependency updates, and refactoring. Hours roll over for up to 60 days if unused.
Monthly Report
A plain-language summary of what we did, what we found, what we fixed, and anything you should know about your product's health. Readable in 10 minutes.
FAQ
Questions About Software Maintenance & Support
No. Roughly half our maintenance clients come to us with products built by other agencies or in-house teams. The codebase audit at the start of the engagement is specifically designed for this — we learn the product before we're responsible for it.
We'll tell you upfront what we find in the audit. If there's significant technical debt or structural problems, we'll give you a clear picture of what it means practically — how it affects maintainability, what risks it creates, and what it would cost to address over time. You decide what to prioritise. We don't refuse to maintain products because they're messy — messy is normal.
Within 4 hours for confirmed critical issues — system down, data loss risk, security breach. We have on-call coverage for maintenance clients. Response times for lower-priority issues are 24 hours (high) and 72 hours (standard).
Bug fixes, small feature additions, dependency updates, refactoring, documentation, code reviews, and deployment work. Anything that requires significant scoping and design work — a new feature that would take more than 10 hours — we'll flag as a separate project rather than drawing from the retainer without discussion.
Yes. Retainer size is reviewed every three months. If your product's needs change — you're launching a new market, you've reduced scope, you're preparing for an acquisition — we adjust accordingly.
Yes. Application code, third-party integrations, cloud infrastructure, and deployment pipelines. If you're already using a managed hosting provider or have a separate DevOps team handling infrastructure, we can scope the retainer to application-only.