The honest AMC bands
The AMC (annual maintenance contract) is how Indian businesses buy website care, and its price range is wild: ₹2,000 token AMCs next to ₹5,00,000 enterprise contracts. The honest bands from the calculator's care assumptions:
| Site type | Yearly AMC band (INR) | Monthly equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Business brochure site | ₹13,500 – ₹45,000/year | ₹1,100 – ₹3,800 |
| Business site with CMS + forms | ₹47,500 – ₹1,70,000/year | ₹4,000 – ₹14,200 |
| Ecommerce / web application | ₹1,70,000 – ₹5,65,000+/year | ₹14,000 – ₹47,500+ |
Monthly-equivalent matters: many Indian vendors quote a fat yearly number because it sounds smaller than monthly. Judge every AMC on its monthly equivalent and its included hours.
What an AMC must include to be worth signing
- Scheduled updates (core, theme, plugins) tested before production.
- Off-site backups with a restore test at least once a year.
- Uptime monitoring with alerts a human actually receives.
- Security patching and malware scans.
- A defined number of content/editor hours per month or quarter, with extra hours pre-priced.
- A response-time commitment: what "urgent" means and when someone answers.
- A monthly or quarterly report you can read without technical help.
The AMC fine print that decides everything
- "Maintenance does not include content changes", then what are the content hours priced at? Get the rate in the contract.
- "Updates as and when required", undefined frequency means never.
- AMC excludes emergency work, ask what an emergency costs outside the contract, in writing.
- Auto-renewal with a 90-day notice clause. Diarize the exit window.
- Hosting "included" on the vendor's own server: read the hosting cost guide before accepting, accounts must be in your name regardless.
AMC vs on-demand: which is right for you
If the site generates leads or orders: AMC, without hesitation, priced as insurance against ₹25,000–₹1,50,000 emergencies. If the site is a static visiting card you rarely touch: an on-demand arrangement with the maintenance checklist is rational. The mistake is running a revenue site on DIY after the first busy quarter.
Negotiation notes for Indian AMC quotes
Ask for the monthly equivalent, the included hours, the emergency rate, and the exit clause in one message. Vendors who answer all four crisply tend to maintain sites the way they answer questions. Vendors who dodge one of the four told you something.