In India, website AMC (annual maintenance contract) charges for a small business site usually fall between ₹15,000 and ₹60,000 a year (KT Solutions, Redpulse). An online store usually pays ₹55,000 to ₹1,20,000 a year or more, and 18% GST goes on top. For that money you should get software updates, backups, security checks, fixes when something breaks, a fixed number of small changes and a promised reply time. Hosting, the domain name and new pages are almost always billed separately.
I'm Mohit Goyal, a freelance web developer in Gurugram, and I look after client websites on this kind of contract.
What is a website AMC?
A website AMC is a yearly agreement where a developer or an agency looks after your live website for a fixed fee: updates, backups, security checks and fixes. It works like the AMC on your office AC: someone services it on a schedule and comes when it stops working.
A website needs servicing because it's software. Many business sites in India run on WordPress with plugins, small add-on programs for forms, payments and SEO, and many plugin updates close security holes. In 2024 alone, 7,966 new security holes were found in the WordPress ecosystem, and 96% of them were in plugins.
An AMC is not your hosting renewal. Many owners pay a yearly "renewal" to their agency and assume it covers maintenance. Often it only covers hosting and the domain, and nobody has touched the site in a year. Read your last invoice.
What are website AMC charges in India in 2026?
Published pricing guides put the website annual maintenance cost in India between ₹15,000 a year for a small brochure site and ₹3,00,000 or more for a web app. A CMS is the admin screen where you edit pages yourself, such as WordPress.
| Type of website | Typical AMC per year |
|---|---|
| Small brochure site, 5 to 10 pages | ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 or ₹18,000 to ₹30,000 |
| Business site with a CMS, blog and enquiry forms | ₹24,000 to ₹60,000 or ₹30,000 to ₹55,000 |
| Online store | ₹55,000 to ₹1,20,000 or ₹84,000 to ₹1,80,000 and up |
| Web app or customer portal | ₹1,20,000 to ₹3,00,000 and up |
Some agencies quote far more, such as ₹20,000 to ₹60,000 a month for e-commerce or ₹60,000 to ₹3,00,000 a year for an e-commerce AMC. Quotes vary because the work varies: one includes two text changes a month, another eight developer hours and a four-hour reply time.
Many agencies instead charge 10 to 20 percent of what the website cost to build, every year. By that rule, a ₹1,00,000 site would have an AMC of ₹10,000 to ₹20,000 a year.
The full yearly bill. Add hosting, the domain and GST. With typical figures of ₹800 to ₹1,500 a year for the domain and ₹3,000 to ₹12,000 a year for hosting, and 18% GST on the AMC, my own sum of the yearly total comes to roughly ₹21,500 to ₹43,000 for a small brochure site and ₹68,700 to ₹1,55,100 for an online store. That is an example built from the KT Solutions AMC ranges in the table, not a published figure, and it leaves out GST on hosting and payment gateway fees.
GST. Website maintenance is billed under SAC code 998313 at 18% GST. If you're GST registered, ask for a tax invoice so you can claim input tax credit. A provider only has to register once their turnover crosses ₹20 lakh a year in most states, so a small freelancer may bill without GST, and there's no credit to claim.
TDS. If your business deducts TDS on vendor payments, ask your CA whether TDS applies to AMC charges before the first payment.
What decides your website AMC cost?
Website AMC cost in India depends on six things: the platform the site is built on, how many tools are plugged in, how many changes you send, how fast you need a reply, whether the site earns money every day, and the state the site is in today.
The platform matters most. WordPress needs care every month because of plugin updates, and one Indian guide puts yearly maintenance at ₹25,000 to ₹60,000 for WordPress against ₹15,000 to ₹30,000 for Next.js. I go deeper in WordPress maintenance cost in India. Reply time is the other big lever: the SLA (service level agreement) is the reply and fix time, written down, and faster costs more.
The other four you can judge yourself.
- Tools plugged in. A payment gateway, a CRM, WhatsApp chat, a shipping or billing tool. Each connection is one more thing that can stop working after an update, so someone has to test it. A site with one enquiry form and nothing else is cheap to look after.
- Changes you send. One Indian guide says a standard AMC includes 2 to 5 hours of developer support a month. If you send a new banner every week and price changes every few days, you need a bigger plan, and buying it up front costs less than paying for extras every month.
- Whether the site earns money every day. On a store, every update should be followed by a test order, because a checkout that fails without anyone noticing loses sales by the hour. That testing takes real time, which is why a store AMC costs more than a brochure-site AMC.
- The state of the site today. A site that hasn't been updated for a year or two can't be taken on at the normal rate on day one. The backlog has to be cleared first, as a one-time job. One Indian agency says rebuilding a neglected site commonly costs 3 to 5 times the maintenance that would have prevented it.
What do website AMC services include?
A proper website AMC includes software updates, off-server backups, security checks, uptime monitoring, bug fixes, a fixed number of small changes and a monthly report. The full technical checklist is in WordPress maintenance cost in India and what a WordPress maintenance retainer covers, and the security checks are in my WordPress security checklist. In an AMC quote, check three lines closely.
- Small content changes. A fixed number of requests or hours a month, not "support included". One agency's published plans run from 2 change requests a month on the lowest plan to 12 requests plus two new pages on the top plan.
- Renewal tracking. Reminders for the domain, hosting, SSL (the https padlock) and paid plugin licences.
- A monthly report. What was updated, backed up, fixed and changed. Without it, you can't tell a developer who did the work from one who did nothing.
What is not covered in a website annual maintenance contract?
A website AMC usually does not cover new pages or features, redesigns, content writing, SEO campaigns, repairs to damage someone else caused, or third-party bills such as hosting, the domain and plugin licences. Most AMC arguments start here, so get this list in writing.
Swapping the Diwali banner is a small change. A new "Franchise" page with an enquiry form is new work.
Also ask whether a hack clean-up is covered. Don't assume it is. One agency says a clean-up and rebuild typically runs ₹20,000 to ₹50,000. See what a hacked WordPress site costs to clean up.
What reply time should a website AMC promise?
A website AMC should promise a reply within one to two working days for a small brochure site and within a few hours for an online store, and the promise should be in writing. One published Indian benchmark gives these reply times by type of site.
| Type of website | Reply time in published AMC plans |
|---|---|
| Small brochure site | 24 to 48 business hours |
| Business site, 12 to 25 pages | 12 to 24 business hours |
| Online store | 4 to 8 hours |
| Web app or customer portal | 2 to 4 hours |
Reply time and fix time are two different promises. One agency's AMC guide splits them by how serious the problem is: for a site that is down or a payment that is broken, a reply in 2 to 4 hours and a fix within 24 hours. For a broken form, a reply within 8 hours and a fix within 48. For content changes, a reply within 24 hours and the change done in 3 to 7 days. The same guide points out that a "four-hour response" means someone has acknowledged your message. It doesn't mean the site is working again. Ask for both numbers.
Ask which hours count, too. If "business hours" means Monday to Saturday, a store that breaks on Saturday night waits until Monday morning. If your sales peak at weekends or during a festival sale, pay for cover in those hours, or at least agree a phone number for emergencies.
Should you pay yearly, monthly or per fix?
Pay yearly for a steady site with few changes, monthly for a store or a site that changes every week, and per fix for a simple site that rarely changes.
| Way to pay | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Annual AMC | Steady sites with few changes | Paying a year upfront to an untested provider |
| Monthly retainer | Stores and sites that change weekly | The notice period |
| Pay per fix | Simple sites that rarely change | Nobody watches updates or backups between calls |
Paying for the year up front is usually 10 to 15 percent cheaper than monthly billing. But you only learn how good a provider is when something breaks. My advice: start monthly or quarterly, see how the first real problem is handled, then go annual and take the discount.
Is paying per fix cheaper than a website AMC?
Paying per fix is cheaper only if your site rarely changes and rarely breaks. Once you send a couple of hours of changes a month, the hourly bill catches up with a website AMC, and nobody is doing the updates and backups in between.
For one-off website fixes in India, the KT Solutions pricing table gives an hourly rate of ₹800 to ₹2,500. The summary on the same page says ₹800 to ₹2,000 an hour for freelancers, so the page isn't consistent with itself. I use the table range of ₹800 to ₹2,500 everywhere in this section. The same guide warns that tracing a broken plugin at short notice often takes 5 to 8 billable hours, or ₹8,000 to ₹15,000 for a single incident.
A worked example (my assumptions and my sums, not a quote or a published price). Take a 15-page WordPress business site with a blog and enquiry forms. Assume the owner sends 2 hours of small changes a month, and one plugin breaks once in the year. The small-changes figure is my multiplication: 24 hours at ₹800 to ₹2,500 an hour. The breakdown figure is the guide's single-incident range. The total is those two added up.
| Cost line | Pay per fix (my sum) | Annual AMC |
|---|---|---|
| Small changes, 24 hours a year | ₹19,200 to ₹60,000 | Included, up to the agreed limit |
| One plugin breakdown | ₹8,000 to ₹15,000 | Included |
| Updates, backups and monitoring | Not done | Included |
| Example total for the year | ₹27,200 to ₹75,000 | ₹30,000 to ₹55,000 |
The two totals overlap, and the pay-per-fix column buys no updates, no backups and nobody watching the site. Now halve the changes to one hour a month and remove the breakdown. By the same sum (12 hours at ₹800 to ₹2,500), pay per fix drops to ₹9,600 to ₹30,000 a year, which is at or below the bottom of the AMC range in the table. So count the changes you actually sent in the last six months before you decide.
Do you really need a website AMC?
You need a website AMC if your site runs on WordPress with several plugins, takes payments or orders, or brings in daily enquiries. You probably don't if it sits on a hosted platform like Wix or Shopify, or is a few static pages that rarely change. For those, pay per fix.
The risky case is a site where nobody would notice a broken contact form. One agency describes a form that broke silently and ran that way for weeks.
A store has more parts that can break than a contact form. On the IPL Biologicals store, a WooCommerce site I built in 2023 and now look after on a monthly retainer, I restored order emails after the company moved from Gmail to Outlook, and I fixed the order reporting in WooCommerce Analytics. Neither job was a redesign or a new page. They are the kind of fix a site that takes orders needs someone on call for.
Who should handle your website AMC: a freelancer, an agency, your own staff or you?
For most small business sites in India, a freelancer or a small agency working to a written scope is the sensible choice. A full-time developer only makes sense when the website needs work every day, and doing it yourself works only if someone really gives it the hours.
| Option | What it costs | Good for | Weak spot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelance developer | Often less than an agency. One agency says a freelancer may charge ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 a month for work an agency prices at ₹15,000 to ₹20,000 | Small and mid-size sites, where you talk to the person doing the work | One person. Ask who covers illness and holidays |
| Agency | More, for the same scope | Stores and sites that need cover across long hours | Ask who will actually work on your site |
| In-house developer | A salary. Flexiple puts the median salary for all web developers in India, at every level, at ₹4.6 lakh a year. That is a figure for the whole job, not for a maintenance role | A business whose site changes every day | Too much cost for a site that needs a few hours a month |
| Doing it yourself | ₹0 to ₹1,500 a month in tools, plus 4 to 10 hours of your time a month if done properly | A simple site with an owner who is comfortable in the admin screen | The month you're busy is the month the updates get skipped |
I'm a freelancer, so weigh my view with that in mind. The freelancer's weak spot is real: one person can fall ill or go on holiday. A good freelancer answers that in the scope: who holds a second set of logins, where the backups sit, and what happens to an urgent request while they're away. The agency's weak spot is the reverse. Someone always picks up the phone, but the person who knows your site may change.
Doing it yourself is fine for the easy parts: text changes, blog posts, swapping a banner. The risky parts are updating plugins on a live store without a test copy, and restoring a backup when an update goes wrong. If you've never restored a backup, you don't yet know that you have one.
One thing I wouldn't count as a website AMC is your hosting company's "managed" plan. A managed plan may run updates and backups for you, so check what yours does. But a hosting company won't normally change your banner, test your enquiry form or repair a layout that an update broke. My advice: treat it as less work inside an AMC, not as a replacement for the person.
How do you check your AMC provider is doing the work?
You can check an AMC provider in about ten minutes, without being technical, using these seven checks. I'd do them every quarter.
- Pending updates. In WordPress, open Dashboard, then Updates. A long list means nobody has been in.
- Last backup. Ask for the date and where it's stored.
- Address bar. "Not secure" means the SSL certificate has lapsed.
- Your own form. Send yourself an enquiry or place a test order.
- Speed. Run PageSpeed Insights, then paste the report into my free Page Speed Fix Planner.
- Security basics. My free Security Headers Checker grades any public page from A+ to F.
- Last month's report. If there isn't one, you have your answer.
What are the red flags in a website AMC quote?
The main red flags in a website AMC quote are unlimited changes at a very low price, hosting and AMC bundled into one sum, no backup plan, no monthly report, held-back logins, untested updates on a live store and no exit terms. Each is a question to ask in writing.
The agreement itself can be a one-page scope by email, as long as it states:
- The work, how often, and where backups are kept.
- Changes included, as requests or hours a month, and the rate for new work.
- Reply and fix times, for "site is down" and for small requests.
- Who owns what. The domain, hosting, files and logins should be in your name. If they aren't, read how to take back your WordPress site.
- Renewal price and exit: the notice period, and the files, database, backups and passwords you get on leaving.
Keep the domain in your own name
If the domain and hosting sit in your agency's account, they control your website. Move both to an account you own before you sign any AMC.
Related guide: Website renewal charges in India: domain, hosting and upkeep
What should you ask before you sign a website AMC?
Ask these eight questions before you sign a website AMC, and get the answers by email. A provider who does the work can answer all eight in a few lines.
- Where are the backups kept, and when did you last restore one? A good answer is daily backups stored away from the hosting server, with at least 30 days of history and a test restore every quarter.
- How soon do security updates go in? One Indian guide sets the bar at within 48 hours of release, with a check for new updates every week.
- Do you test updates on a copy of the site first? This matters most for a store. A test copy (developers call it staging) means a bad update breaks the copy, not your checkout.
- How do you know when my site is down? The answer should be an automatic check every 1 to 5 minutes, not "you'll tell us".
- What counts as one change? "Change the phone number on every page" could be one request or ten. Agree it now.
- Do unused hours carry over to next month? Some plans carry them over and some don't. Either is fair, but know which one you have before a quiet month.
- Who does the work, and who covers when they're away? Ask for a name.
- What will the renewal cost next year? Get the renewal price, or the most it can rise by, into the agreement. Otherwise a low first-year price tells you nothing about year two.
How do you switch AMC provider or start one on an old site?
To switch AMC provider or start one on a neglected site, follow these five steps in order. Changing provider mid-year is normal.
- 1
Collect every login
Domain, hosting, WordPress admin, email and Search Console. Then change the passwords.
- 2
Take a full backup
Save the files and database somewhere off the server.
- 3
Get a health check
A written note of pending updates, abandoned plugins and anything broken.
- 4
Clear the backlog once
A one-time job on a test copy of the site, normally quoted separately.
- 5
Agree the scope in writing
Changes per month, reply times, new work and exit terms.
If the old developer won't hand over logins, here's how to take back your WordPress site. If the switch includes new hosting, plan it so the site stays up and your email keeps working.
How can I help with your website AMC?
I run monthly maintenance retainers for WordPress and WooCommerce websites, which is the same thing as an AMC paid monthly.
A real example. I built the IPL Biologicals online store and company site in 2023, and since 2025 I've looked after it on a monthly retainer: new pages such as the Grow Organic sub-brand, catalogue and price updates, and store operations support.
What I work on. WordPress sites on Bricks, Elementor and Oxygen, WooCommerce stores, and Next.js sites. I also move WordPress sites between hosts with no downtime and no lost email, fix Core Web Vitals and technical SEO, and wrote HTTP Security Header, a free WordPress plugin with 1,000+ active installs.
The limits. I'm one senior developer with a small trusted team, not a 24-hour call centre.
I'm not putting a price here, because a fair AMC depends on the site. I look at it first, then send a written scope and a quote.
What should you do next?
Do the ten-minute check on your own site today. Then send me your website address, what has broken in the last six months and your current AMC quote or invoice through the contact page. I'll tell you what your site needs, what it doesn't, and what a sensible scope looks like.
