Office IT support is quoted in four different units, which is why two quotes for the same twenty-person office can look nothing alike. This page converts them onto one page so the comparison is possible.
The table, by unit
| What is covered | Cost | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Managed helpdesk, essential | Rs 900 - Rs 1,600 | per user, per month |
| Printer and peripheral cover | Rs 1,500 - Rs 5,000 | per unit, per month |
| Laptop or desktop, software only | Rs 2,500 - Rs 4,500 | per device, per month |
| Laptop or desktop, hardware included | Rs 4,000 - Rs 7,500 | per device, per month |
| Network, firewall and wifi | Rs 8,000 - Rs 30,000 | per site, per month |
| Server cover | Rs 12,000 - Rs 40,000 | per server, per month |
A twenty-person office with twenty laptops, one server, a printer and a firewall lands somewhere between forty and ninety thousand rupees a month, depending on whether hardware is included and who holds the spare parts.
The three models, and who each one suits
AMC is a fixed fee per device for keeping things running, usually with a visit allowance. It suits an office with standard equipment and a predictable shape.
Managed IT is a per-user service that includes monitoring, patching, helpdesk and often security. It suits businesses where the laptop is the work and downtime has a cost per hour.
Ad hoc is pay-per-visit. It suits an office with two machines and no server, and it becomes expensive the moment there is a domain controller.
The trap is buying ad hoc for a managed environment, then discovering that every incident is a separate quote and none of them includes the diagnosis.
Why per-device and per-user are not interchangeable
Per-device pricing assumes each person has one machine. A design team with a laptop, a desktop and a shared plotter breaks that assumption, and so does a sales team that shares two machines between five people.
Per-user pricing assumes each person generates support demand. That holds for knowledge work and fails for a warehouse floor where twenty people share four terminals.
Count both before comparing. The cheaper number is the one that matches your actual shape.
What a support contract usually excludes
Spare parts above an agreed value. Licences, including antivirus and Microsoft subscriptions. Data recovery. Cabling and new installations. And anything that requires a vendor visit for warranty work.
Ask for the exclusion list before the price. A contract that looks twenty percent cheaper is often a contract with three more exclusions.
What actually drives the monthly figure
Three variables, in order of impact.
Whether hardware is included. Parts are the single largest swing between two quotes for the same office.
The number of servers and network devices. A firewall that nobody patches is a liability, and patching it is skilled work.
The response time. Same-day cover for a machine that has failed is a different product from a four-hour response on a business-critical server.
What an SLA should say in numbers
An agreement that promises a quick response is not an agreement. It needs four numbers written down: the response time for a critical incident, the response time for a routine request, the hours in which either applies, and the point at which an unresolved critical incident escalates to someone senior.
The escalation clause is the one businesses forget, and it is the one that matters on the day a server stays down past the fourth hour.
Ask also how the clock is measured. From the ticket being raised, or from someone reading it? The gap between those two moments is where most of a bad support experience lives.
How to compare two proposals properly
Normalise both to a monthly figure, then check four lines: device count, server count, network coverage and response time.
Then check who owns the ticketing history. If you leave, does the record of what was fixed come with you? A support provider that keeps the history is a provider that is hard to replace.
Finally, ask what happens in the first month. A proper onboarding includes a device inventory, a licence audit and a backup test. A contract that starts with a phone number will spend month one discovering all three.
FAQ
Is AMC cheaper than managed IT? Per device, usually. Per outcome, not always, because AMC rarely includes monitoring or patching.
Do we need server cover if the server is in the cloud? You need cloud administration instead, which is a different scope and usually a smaller monthly figure.
Can we mix models? Yes, and it is common: managed helpdesk for staff plus AMC for printers and network hardware.
What is a fair response time? Four business hours for standard issues and same-day for a critical system. Anything faster costs materially more.
Are spare parts included? Only if the contract says so. Ask for a value cap and a list of covered parts.
IT support in Noida
We run office support from Noida with the device inventory done before the first invoice, so month one is not a discovery exercise. Call 7840002466 or send the device count through the contact page.
For software support rather than office IT, the maintenance cost comparison is the closer page.
