Strategy
What a Real Website AMC Includes in 2026 (Jaipur Pricing + Red Flags)
Quick answer
A real website AMC in Jaipur covers monthly plugin and security updates, daily or weekly backups, uptime monitoring, SSL renewal, 1-3 hours of content edits a month, and broken link fixes — for ₹8,000 to ₹18,000/year on WordPress, or ₹15,000 to ₹35,000/year on Shopify or custom builds. If your AMC quote is under ₹6,000/year, you're not getting real maintenance — you're getting a relationship without substance.
Most Jaipur businesses pay for a website build, then ghost on maintenance. Eighteen months later their WordPress site gets hacked, their SSL expires, their contact form silently stopped working, or a plugin auto-update broke the homepage on a Sunday. The cost of that one bad week is usually higher than three years of an honest Annual Maintenance Contract.
AMC is unsexy. Nobody markets it. Almost no agency's homepage leads with it. But for any business that depends on its website to look professional, AMC is the unglamorous infrastructure that keeps everything working.
What an honest AMC actually covers
A real annual maintenance contract should include all of the following at the listed price — anything sold à la carte on top is a sign of an upsell trap.
- Updates: WordPress core, theme, and all plugins kept patched monthly. Shopify themes updated when new versions release.
- Security patches: CVE-disclosed vulnerabilities patched within 48 hours.
- Backups: daily or weekly, stored off-server, with a quarterly restore test.
- Uptime monitoring: 5-minute pings from at least two regions, with email or WhatsApp alerts on downtime.
- Renewals: domain, SSL, and hosting renewed before expiry — no last-minute panic.
- Content edits: 1-3 hours a month included — phone numbers, banners, team photos, blog updates.
- Broken link audits: quarterly scan and fix.
- Monthly report:what was done, what was found, what's coming up next month.
What it should cost in Jaipur — 2026 ranges
| Site type | Pages | Yearly AMC range |
|---|---|---|
| Static HTML business site | 5-10 | ₹6,000 – ₹10,000 |
| WordPress business site | 5-15 | ₹8,000 – ₹18,000 |
| WordPress with WooCommerce | 15-50 | ₹15,000 – ₹30,000 |
| Shopify store | any | ₹12,000 – ₹25,000 |
| Custom Next.js site | any | ₹18,000 – ₹40,000 |
These ranges exclude paid hosting and platform fees — Shopify monthly subscription, Cloudways hosting, etc — which are pass-through charges, not part of the maintenance fee.
8 red flags in AMC contracts
- No specific scope."We'll maintain your site" is not a contract. If the agency can't list what's included on one page, they don't have a process.
- No backup policy mentioned. How often, where stored, how long retained? Vague answers here mean no backups in practice.
- No guaranteed response time. If the site goes down on Friday, are they responding in 2 hours or 2 weeks? Get it in writing.
- No baseline content edits included. Every change is billed hourly = death by a thousand invoices. Insist on 1-3 hours/month minimum included.
- No GST invoice. Any agency asking for cash without a GST bill in 2026 is either tax-evading or not a real business. Both are red flags.
- Suspiciously low price. Under ₹5,000/year for a real business site means zero security patching and zero monitoring. They're hoping nothing breaks.
- No access handover.If they won't share hosting login, domain registrar access, and codebase with you, they're holding your business hostage.
- Auto-renewal without notice. AMC should auto-renew but you should get a renewal notice at least 30 days before so you can review and renegotiate if needed.
How ERIONT handles AMC
We've done AMC for two decades and the model hasn't changed much because it doesn't need to:
- One fixed annual fee, billed via GST invoice, no surprises.
- Monthly maintenance cycle (updates → testing → deployment → monitoring) handled in the first two weeks of the month.
- Content edits handled within 2 business days, urgent fixes within 24 hours.
- One contact (us) for domain, hosting, email, SSL, site, and any issue in between.
- Annual handover doc: every credential, every licence, every backup — you own everything.
Want a quote for your site? Email care@eriont.com with your domain and we'll send a one-page AMC proposal back within one business day.
Frequently asked
What does a typical website AMC cost in Jaipur in 2026?
For a standard 5-15 page business website on WordPress: ₹8,000 to ₹18,000 per year (₹700-1,500/month). Custom Next.js or Shopify sites: ₹15,000 to ₹35,000/year. Anything below ₹6,000/year is either unrealistic or the agency is cutting corners — usually no security patches and no real support.
Is a website AMC really necessary or is it just an upsell?
It's necessary if you don't have an in-house developer or aren't comfortable doing WordPress updates yourself. Skipping AMC saves ₹10,000/year but you'll likely lose 1-2 days of revenue when (not if) the site breaks during a plugin auto-update, or get hacked because security patches lag by 6 months. The math rarely works out in favour of skipping.
What should an honest AMC contract actually include?
Plugin and core updates monthly, security patches within 48 hours of CVE disclosure, daily or weekly backups, uptime monitoring with alerts, SSL renewal, content edits (typically 1-3 hours per month included), broken link fixes, and a guaranteed response time for issues (24-48 business hours is standard). Anything that costs extra should be listed transparently.
What are red flags to watch for in a Jaipur agency's AMC?
Vague scope ('we'll maintain your site'), no backup schedule mentioned, no guaranteed response time, no list of what counts as a 'minor' vs 'major' change, hourly billing for changes without a baseline included, payment demanded in cash without GST invoice, or pricing that looks suspiciously low (under ₹5,000/year for a serious business site). Walk away from any of these.
Can I switch website maintenance agencies mid-year?
Yes — your website doesn't belong to your agency. Ask for the codebase, database backups, hosting login, domain registrar access, and any plugin licence keys. If they refuse or stall, that's a separate problem you should escalate. ERIONT hands over full access at the start of every relationship; we don't lock anyone in.
What happens during the typical month of an AMC?
Week 1: backup verified, plugin updates applied to staging, tested, deployed. Week 2: client requests handled (content edits, image swaps, small fixes). Week 3: security scan, uptime review, any urgent CVE patches. Week 4: monthly report to client — what we did, what's coming up, what we noticed (e.g. 'your contact form is getting 12 spam submissions a day, want me to add reCAPTCHA?').
Do you handle email + domain + hosting under AMC too?
Yes — at ERIONT we treat the whole digital operation as one. AMC includes renewals for domain, SSL, hosting, and business email (if we set it up). One bill, one contact. If something breaks at 9pm, you call one number, not three.
How is AMC different from website redesign?
AMC keeps the existing site alive — updates, patches, content edits, security. Redesign is rebuilding the site from scratch. Most agencies will push redesigns every 2-3 years to generate revenue; we typically tell clients their site is fine and recommend a redesign only when (a) the underlying tech is genuinely outdated, (b) the business has materially changed, or (c) the brand is being repositioned. Many of our clients are on the same site for 5-8 years with active AMC.
Want this for your business?
ERIONT is a digital agency in Jaipur. We build the websites, run the social, and ship the software — for one fixed monthly retainer or project quote.