Corrective maintenance
Qualifying reported bugs, reproducing them, fixing them, running regression tests and releasing to production. Recurring causes are identified so the same problem is not fixed twice.
After go-live
Application Maintenance Services for Your Software in Production
Application maintenance services keep software in production reliable: fixing bugs, delivering enhancements, upgrading versions and dependencies, monitoring and securing the service. Etixio takes over your applications, including those built by another provider, under the technical oversight of our tech leads.
A free 30-minute video call, with no commitment, followed by a written summary with a ballpark estimate.
What we take on
Keeping your applications running.
An application in production does not stay stable on its own. Users find bugs, business needs change, frameworks and PHP versions reach end of support, vulnerabilities are published in dependencies and volumes grow. Without organized maintenance, every fix becomes a risky intervention and every enhancement costs more than the last.
Application maintenance organizes this work: a clear scope, a request workflow, shared priorities, tested releases and regular follow-up. You keep control of the roadmap; we take charge of delivery and service continuity.
Adaptive maintenance
New features, changes driven by regulatory or business developments, new integrations with your tools. Each enhancement is estimated, prioritized with you, then delivered in stages.
Preventive maintenance
Reducing technical debt, adding tests to fragile areas, optimizing performance and cleaning up code before difficulties turn into incidents.
Version upgrades
Updating frameworks, the PHP or language version, libraries and infrastructure components, planned before end of support rather than endured afterwards.
Security
Tracking vulnerabilities published in your dependencies, applying patches, reviewing access and secrets, checking the application’s exposure points.
Monitoring and operations
Logs, alerts, error and response-time tracking, verified backups, to detect a problem before your users do and diagnose it faster.
Signs to recognize
When should you outsource application maintenance?
Outsourcing application maintenance is rarely an abstract decision. It usually becomes necessary when an application that matters to the business no longer has a team clearly responsible for keeping it running.
The original provider is gone
The agency or freelancer who built the application has closed, is no longer available or no longer responds within timeframes that suit your business. Nobody really knows the code anymore.
Updates have been postponed
The application runs on a PHP or framework version that is no longer maintained. Every update seems risky, so it gets postponed, and the gap keeps widening.
Incidents keep recurring
The same bugs come back, releases cause regressions, and users report problems before you detect them.
Your in-house team is absorbed by operations
Your developers spend more time fixing and troubleshooting than moving the product forward. Part of keeping the application running can be handed to an outside team.
Enhancements cost more and more
Adding a simple feature takes weeks, because the code is hard to understand, poorly tested or tightly coupled. Technical debt has to be addressed alongside incoming requests.
Taking over an existing application
Taking over an existing application: the method.
Taking over an application built by another provider is one of the most common maintenance cases. It is also when the risk is highest if fixes start before the system is understood. So we proceed in stages, starting by making the application readable and its deployment reproducible.
When the state of the application is uncertain, the takeover starts with a technical audit of the code, architecture, dependencies, security and deployment, leading to a prioritized action plan.
Recovering access and source code
Code repositories, hosting, databases, domain names, third-party services, email-sending accounts, monitoring tools. We check that you hold every access and that nothing depends on a personal account of the former provider.
Current-state review
Reading the code, inventorying versions and dependencies, analyzing the database, deployment and incident history. You get a map of risks and priorities.
Restoring the delivery pipeline
A reproducible development environment, a staging environment, documented and, where possible, automated deployment. A fix must be deliverable without risky manual changes on the server.
Securing critical areas
Tests on the most important user journeys before any change, urgent security patches, verified backups. We protect what works before changing anything.
Taking over day-to-day operations
Once the foundation is stable, the normal maintenance cycle begins: handling requests, regular releases, tracking metrics and planning version upgrades.
What your team receives
- Map of the application, access and dependencies
- Prioritized takeover and maintenance plan
- Installation, deployment and operations documentation
Keeping the technical foundation up to date
PHP, framework and dependency upgrades.
Languages, frameworks and libraries follow a support schedule. Once a version is no longer maintained, it stops receiving security patches, and recent components gradually stop supporting it. The wider the gap, the longer and riskier the upgrade.
We treat version upgrades as a planned project: inventory, sequencing, regression tests, staging environment and a controlled production release. On PHP applications, we work on language versions and on the frameworks built on them, drawing on our Symfony development, custom PHP development and CodeIgniter application maintenance expertise.
Inventory and schedule
Current versions, end-of-support dates, abandoned or incompatible dependencies, and an upgrade schedule aligned with your busy periods.
Step-by-step upgrades
Moving from version to version when needed, fixing deprecated usage, replacing libraries that are no longer maintained.
A safety net of tests
Automated tests on essential user journeys before the migration, to check that the application behaves the same way after the upgrade.
Controlled production release
Acceptance testing on an environment equivalent to production, a rollback plan and closer monitoring in the days after the switch.
The maintenance framework
A service commitment defined with you.
Not every request is equally urgent. An outage that blocks your users is not handled like a screen improvement. The maintenance framework is therefore defined at the start, based on how critical the application is and on your constraints, then written into the contract.
An identified point of contact follows the maintenance with you and weighs priorities; our tech leads oversee technical choices and the review of releases. Tracking metrics are shared and reviewed regularly, so the maintenance effort stays visible and open to discussion.
- Requests classified by severity level, with a reporting workflow
- Response times and service hours defined according to how critical the application is
- Shared tracking tool: every request is logged, from qualification to production release
- Releases tested on a staging environment before production
- Regular review meeting: incidents handled, enhancements delivered, technical debt and risks
- Documentation kept up to date with each intervention
Infrastructure operations (environments, automated deployments, hosting and cloud costs) can be combined with application maintenance through our DevOps and cloud management service. Our code review and testing practices are detailed in our commitments.
Delivery in practice
Applications in production that we keep evolving.
A PHP / Symfony e-learning platform
For a professional training organization, we continuously develop and enrich the platform, from learner journeys to the application core, without weakening what already works.
A real estate data platform
We develop the web application and its analysis tools, with functional tests at every release, so the product can grow without losing reliability.
Offshore application maintenance
Offshore application maintenance, run from France.
Our French-speaking engineers work in Madagascar and Mauritius, 1 to 3 hours ahead of Paris. They work in your tools, your repositories and your rituals, and communicate in French or English, in writing and in meetings.
A close time zone matters especially in maintenance: an incident reported in the morning is qualified the same day, by the people who know your application. Continuity does not rest on one person: knowledge of the code is shared, documented and passed on within the team.
The choices that matter
Maintain, modernize or rebuild?
Not every old application should be rewritten. A full rebuild is long, expensive and reintroduces risks the existing application has already solved. In most cases, progressive application modernization (version upgrades, targeted refactoring, replacing one module at a time) gives better results.
The current-state review lets you decide part by part: what can be maintained as is, what must be restructured and what would benefit from being rebuilt. These choices are documented, with their consequences in effort, risk and operations, so you can decide with full knowledge.
How we work together
Getting started with maintaining your application.
Walk us through the application, its role in your business, the technologies used, its hosting and the difficulties you face. We will then specify the access needed for the current-state review.
Dedicated team
On time and materials, a dedicated team takes charge of the application when it evolves continuously.
Reinforcement of your team
On time and materials, one of our engineers supports your in-house team on day-to-day operations.
Maintenance contract
At a fixed price, an agreed volume of interventions, with the service commitment defined at the start.
Takeover or modernization
A takeover and upgrade as a fixed-price project on a short, defined scope; a modernization spanning several months as a time and materials project.
Frequently asked questions
Your questions.
What are application maintenance services?
Application maintenance (known in France as TMA, third-party application maintenance) means entrusting an external provider with maintaining one or more applications in production. It covers bug fixes, functional enhancements, preventive maintenance, version upgrades, security and monitoring, within a service framework defined in the contract. At Etixio, it takes the form of time and materials or fixed-price maintenance, depending on the contract.
What is the difference between corrective and adaptive maintenance?
Corrective maintenance deals with bugs, that is, gaps between how the application should behave and how it actually behaves. Adaptive maintenance adds or changes features to meet a new business, regulatory or technical need. Preventive maintenance acts before incidents, by reducing technical debt and keeping components up to date.
Can you take over an application built by another provider?
Yes. We start by recovering all access and source code, then review the code, dependencies, database and deployment. Before any change, we secure critical user journeys with tests and make deployment reproducible. Day-to-day maintenance then starts on a controlled foundation.
What if we no longer have access to the source code or servers?
The first step is to identify who holds each access (hosting provider, domain registrar, code repository, third-party services) and have it transferred to your name. We help you draw up this inventory and organize the recovery. When the source code cannot be recovered, the review covers what is deployed and helps assess the options.
Why upgrade PHP and frameworks?
An unsupported version no longer receives security patches and gradually becomes incompatible with recent libraries and some hosting platforms. The longer the upgrade is postponed, the bigger the gap to close. A planned, tested, step-by-step upgrade is far less risky than a migration forced in an emergency.
How is the service commitment defined?
At the start, with you, based on how critical the application is. We define request severity levels, response times, service hours, the reporting workflow and the metrics tracked. These are written into the contract and reviewed at follow-up meetings.
Your application deserves organized maintenance.
Walk us through the application, its technical context and the difficulties you face. We will tell you how to take it over and maintain it over time.