Website AMC vs One-Time Maintenance: Which Do You Need?

Two different promises

An annual maintenance contract, usually shortened to AMC, is a standing agreement to keep a website patched, monitored and working for a fixed period, paid in advance. One-time maintenance is the opposite promise: the site is handed over finished, with no ongoing contract, and the business is free to fix, host and update it however it likes from day one. Neither is a better website. They are two different answers to the question of who is responsible for the site after launch.

MAJ Atlas builds both ways. The Basic build ships with no AMC at all, and on every build the domain, hosting and every login are handed over at launch, so nothing is held back. The ecommerce build is the one tier sold with an AMC, at AED 999 a year, because a store has more moving parts to keep working.

What a website AMC typically covers

Across the Dubai website-maintenance market, a standing plan typically bundles the same handful of jobs, whatever the agency calls it.

• Core, plugin and theme updates, so the site is not left running outdated, vulnerable software
• Security scanning and malware checks
• Scheduled backups, tested rather than just taken, so a restore actually works if something breaks
• Uptime monitoring
• A monthly report
• Small content updates, within an agreed scope

What good coverage costs, roughly

Market rates for this kind of plan in Dubai run from around AED 299 a month for a small site's basic coverage to well over AED 750 a month once uptime monitoring, faster response times and a bigger content-update allowance are added, and considerably more again for a busy or ecommerce site with a lot to watch. The number alone does not tell you what is covered, which is the same warning worth repeating from any pricing comparison: ask what is actually included in the monthly fee, not just what it costs.

What "no AMC" actually means

No AMC does not mean no support ever; it means no standing contract. A Basic site from MAJ Atlas is handed over with the domain, hosting account and every login in the client's own name, so the client, or any developer they choose later, can update it, host it wherever they like, and is never locked into paying us to keep their own site working. The trade-off is the one you would expect: nobody is watching that site for you unless you ask, and a plugin or platform update six months from now is the site owner's job, not ours.

How to choose

A five-page brochure site that nobody touches for a year rarely needs a standing contract. A store taking orders every day, with a catalogue, checkout and customer accounts, is a different risk: a broken plugin or an expired SSL certificate on that build is lost revenue, not just an inconvenience, which is why it is the one tier MAJ Atlas sells with an AMC attached rather than optional.