How AMCs are priced
Three models cover almost everything you will be quoted.
Per user, per month. The most common for office-based businesses. Simple to budget, and it scales with headcount, which is usually what drives support volume anyway.
Per device, per month. Better where people share machines or where one person has several. A warehouse with shared terminals is usually cheaper this way; a company where everyone carries a laptop and a phone is usually cheaper per user.
Fixed annual fee. A single figure for a defined scope. Predictable, but read what is excluded, because the exclusions are where this model earns its margin.
Many quotes mix these: a per-user figure for support plus fixed charges for servers and infrastructure.
What moves the number
- Headcount and servers. The obvious drivers, and the ones every quote accounts for.
- Hours of cover. Business hours only is substantially cheaper than 24/7. Be honest about what you actually need. Paying for overnight cover you never call is common.
- On site versus cloud. Physical infrastructure costs more to maintain. A largely cloud estate should quote lower.
- Response time commitments. A one-hour response for critical issues costs more than four hours because it changes how the provider staffs.
- The state of what you have. An estate that has been neglected for years costs more to take on, because the first six months are firefighting. Some providers quote a remediation project before the AMC begins. That is reasonable and should be priced separately.
- Compliance requirements. If your sector requires evidence, logging and audit support, that is real recurring work.
The questions that separate two quotes
When two providers quote different numbers, the difference is usually hiding in one of these. Ask all of them, in writing.
- What exactly is excluded, and what gets billed separately at what rate?
- Are response times contractual or aspirational, and what happens when they are missed?
- Is a named engineer assigned, or do we get whoever is free?
- Is monitoring included, or only reactive support when we call?
- Are backups included, and do you test restores or just confirm the job ran?
- Who owns the asset register and documentation, and do we get it if we leave?
- What is the notice period and what does exit involve in practice?
- Are third-party licences inside the fee or on top?
The last two matter more than people expect. A low monthly figure with a long notice period and no documentation handover is not cheap, it is just deferred.
The cheapest quote
Usually wins on one of three things: fewer hours of cover, reactive support with no monitoring, or an unstated assumption that your estate is in better shape than it is.
None of those makes it a bad quote. They make it a different quote. The failure is comparing two numbers as though they describe the same service, which is what happens when the scope questions above were never asked.
If you want an independent view, an IT audit before you go to market tells you what you actually have, which turns a vague tender into a specific one and usually produces better pricing from everyone.
Asked before,
answered straight
Should we get an AMC or hire someone internally?
Under roughly twenty-five people, an AMC almost always wins on cost and on coverage, because one internal person cannot cover holidays, illness or the breadth of skills required. Above a hundred, an internal team plus an AMC for infrastructure and out-of-hours is common. Between those, it depends on how specialised your systems are.
Can we start with a short contract?
Ask. Many providers will do three or six months before an annual commitment, and a provider confident in their service should have no objection. A firm insistence on twelve months before you have seen them work is worth noticing.
What is not usually included in an AMC?
Project work, hardware purchases, third-party licences, office moves and major migrations are typically outside the fee and quoted separately. That is normal. What matters is that the boundary is written down, so a disagreement about whether something is support or a project does not arrive mid-incident.
Want an independent read?
We audit estates for companies who are about to go to market for an AMC, including ones who then sign with somebody else. You get a document that makes every quote you receive comparable.