Maintenance is the easiest line to cut and the most expensive one to skip. The confusion is that four different services use the same word: website care, application support, IT AMC and managed helpdesk. They are priced by different units and they buy different things.
The table, by unit
| What it covers | Cost | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Managed IT helpdesk | Rs 900 - Rs 1,600 | per user, per month |
| Website essential care | Rs 2,000 - Rs 5,000 | per month |
| IT AMC, per device | Rs 2,500 - Rs 4,500 | per device, per month |
| Website standard care | Rs 5,000 - Rs 12,000 | per month |
| Website growth care | Rs 12,000 - Rs 25,000 | per month |
| Website priority care | Rs 25,000 - Rs 50,000 | per month |
| Mobile app upkeep | Rs 40,000 - Rs 1,20,000 | per year |
| Software monitor and patch | Rs 60,000 - Rs 1,80,000 | per year |
| Software standard support | Rs 1,50,000 - Rs 4,00,000 | per year |
| Software priority support | Rs 3,50,000 - Rs 8,00,000 | per year |
| Software, business-critical | Rs 7,00,000 - Rs 12,00,000 | per year |
Reading across the units matters more than reading down the prices. A ten-person office on managed helpdesk pays less per year than a single business-critical application, and needs a different contract.
What a maintenance retainer should include
Four things, and they should be named in writing.
Patching and updates. Framework and dependency updates, including the ones that break something and need a fix the same week.
Monitoring and response. Someone watching errors, uptime and backup completion, with an agreed response time.
Small changes. A bucket of hours each month for the requests that are too small to project-manage, because otherwise they queue forever.
Restore testing. A backup that has never been restored is a hope. Once a quarter, restore it and prove the date.
What it should not include
New features. A retainer that absorbs new screens is a retainer that either costs too much or delivers too little.
Also outside: major version upgrades of the platform, redesigns, and third-party licence renewals. These are projects, and pretending otherwise is how retainers quietly become loss-making and then stop being honoured.
How to size the retainer
Count three things: how many systems are exposed to the internet, how many people depend on them daily, and how bad a day of downtime is.
One brochure site with no transactions needs little. A store taking orders needs monitoring, backup verification and someone reachable in business hours. An internal system that runs dispatch needs cover beyond business hours, and that is what pushes a contract into the upper bands.
The mistake is buying the cheapest band for the most critical system, then discovering the response time in the first incident.
The real cost of skipping it
Not the repair bill. The lost week.
An unpatched framework, an expired certificate or a full disk takes an afternoon to prevent and three days to recover, and the recovery always happens at the worst moment. Businesses rarely regret paying for maintenance; they regret the year they did not.
What the first month should look like
A contract that starts with an invoice and stops is a contract that will be tested by an outage.
The first month should produce four things. An inventory of what is running, where it is hosted and who holds the credentials. A restore test, so the backup is proven before it is needed. A short list of known risks with a recommendation for each. And an agreed channel for requests, with a response time attached.
If none of that arrives, the retainer is insurance with no inspection, and the first incident will be the inspection.
FAQ
Is a maintenance retainer the same as an AMC? In spirit, yes. AMC usually refers to hardware and office IT; a software retainer covers an application. Many businesses need both.
Can we pause the retainer for a few months? You can, and the first month back is usually spent fixing what drifted.
Does the fee cover emergency work? Priority and business-critical bands include an incident response commitment. Lower bands cover business hours only.
Is hosting included? No. Hosting is billed separately, either to us or directly to the provider.
How is the annual figure billed? Monthly is normal. Annual prepayment is sometimes discounted, but only where the discount is stated up front.
Maintenance pricing in Noida
We run support contracts from Noida with response times written into the agreement rather than promised on a call. Call 7840002466 or list the systems through the contact page.
To see what the build itself should have cost, the software cost comparison covers every category.
