An IT AMC (annual maintenance contract) is a yearly agreement under which an IT company maintains and supports a business's systems for a fixed fee: helpdesk, on-site visits, monitoring, patching, backup checks and vendor coordination, with response times written into an SLA. Listonics provides IT AMC services to offices of roughly 5 to 200 staff across Dubai.
Get your IT AMC quote
Tell us the size and shape of the office and you get a written quote: a fixed monthly fee, the response times by priority, and what is excluded, all in the document. Agreements at Listonics fall within AED 2,500 to AED 30,000 depending on requirement. Prefer to talk? Use WhatsApp and the message is already laid out.
- A fixed monthly fee, with licences and hardware on their own lines
- Response and on-site times by priority, written into the agreement
- Exclusions stated in the quote, so nothing arrives as a surprise invoice
Proof, not promises
Real reviews from Trustpilot and Google, word for word. Google rating 5.0 from 5 reviews, checked 2026-10-17.
Best team I’ve ever hired. All in one place.
As a construction company, we have a lot to manage, so finding one team that can handle our IT and digital requirements has been really helpful. Listonics has supported us with office networking, cybersecurity, website development and SEO. Their team knows what they’re doing and has been easy to work with. We no longer need to coordinate with different companies for every requirement, which saves us time and effort. Overall, it’s been a good experience, and we’re happy to have them supporting our business.
We needed a custom ERP and HR system…
We needed a custom ERP and HR system for our business, along with a new website, and Listonics helped us with all three. The team was approachable, listened to what we wanted and made the process easier than we expected. We could discuss changes directly with them, which made a big difference. It was also convenient having one team handle everything instead of dealing with multiple companies. Overall, we’re happy with how things turned out and glad we chose them.
Listonics projects run from AED 2,500 to AED 30,000 as a fixed scope; support is a fixed monthly fee with response times written into the agreement. The IT support cost guide and managed IT pricing guide set out how the numbers are built.
Response times written into every agreement
| Priority | Typical situation | Remote response | On-site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | Office-wide outage, network, internet or server down | 10 minutes | Within 4 hours |
| High | A team or key system unable to work | 10 minutes | Within 4 hours |
| Medium | One user or device affected, workaround exists | 4 hours | Within 4 hours |
| Low | Requests, changes and questions | Same business day | Scheduled visit |
What is an IT annual maintenance contract?
An IT AMC is a contract, usually for twelve months, under which one provider takes responsibility for keeping your office IT working. You pay a fixed fee, billed monthly or annually, and the provider maintains, monitors and supports the systems named in the contract to response targets set out in a service level agreement (SLA).
- Preventive maintenance: updates, patching, health checks and firmware on servers, network equipment and endpoints.
- Corrective support: a helpdesk plus on-site engineers when something breaks.
- Monitoring: 24/7 alerts on the network, servers, endpoints and backups.
- Security: managed endpoint protection, MFA administration and firewall reviews.
- Backup verification with periodic restore tests.
- Licence and warranty tracking, and coordination with your ISP and hardware vendors.
- A monthly report and a quarterly review of what to improve.
What is included and excluded in an IT AMC?
Most disagreements about an annual maintenance contract come from assumptions about scope rather than from poor support. The table shows what is usually included, what is usually excluded or charged separately, and the clause worth reading before you sign. Comparing scopes against the NIST Cybersecurity Framework exposes gaps that a feature list hides.
| Usually included | Usually excluded or extra | Check in the contract |
|---|---|---|
| Helpdesk support for covered users, remotely and by phone | Support for users or devices not listed in the contract | How users and devices are counted and how additions are billed |
| On-site engineer visits for covered faults | Visits for new work, office moves or out-of-hours requests | Whether visits are capped and the on-site target for each priority |
| Labour to diagnose and repair hardware faults | Replacement parts, unless a parts-inclusive tier is chosen | Whether parts are quoted at cost and ordered only with your approval |
| Patching, updates and firmware on covered equipment | Upgrades to new hardware or major new software versions | The patching schedule and who approves changes |
| 24/7 monitoring and alerting | Engineer work outside the agreed coverage hours | Coverage hours for responses, not only for monitoring |
| Backup checks and periodic restore tests | Backup storage, NAS hardware or cloud backup subscriptions | How often restores are tested and how results are reported |
| Administration of Microsoft 365 and security tools | The licences themselves, normally billed at cost | Whether a quote bundles licences into the fee |
| ISP and hardware vendor coordination | Projects such as office setups, relocations, network redesigns and migrations | How project work is quoted and approved |
| Documentation of your setup | Consumables and end-user training beyond onboarding | Who owns the documentation and admin accounts if you leave |
Why does preventive maintenance matter in an IT AMC?
Preventive maintenance is the part of an AMC that stops routine problems from turning into outages. Without it, an AMC is only a prepaid helpdesk.
In practice it is a schedule: operating system and application patches, firewall and switch firmware, checks on disk health and storage capacity, reviews of backup job results, and alerts when a device goes offline or a warranty or certificate is close to expiry. In Dubai offices it also means watching comms rooms and rack cupboards that run hot in summer, UPS batteries that age quietly, and du or e& internet lines that need someone to chase the provider when they drop.
Start from what would stop work if it broke: usually the internet, Microsoft 365, shared files, the accounting software and the laptops people log in on. A good AMC lists these, checks them on a schedule and agrees what happens when one fails.
Ask any AMC provider to show you their maintenance schedule and a sample monthly report. If they cannot show what they check and how often, the contract is reactive support under a different name.
What SLA and response times should an IT AMC include?
A serious AMC states targets by priority, covering both how quickly an issue is acknowledged and how quickly an engineer is on site. Check how business hours are defined, including the Saturday to Sunday weekend, and how missed targets are reported. Listonics reports any missed target in the monthly review with the cause and the fix. Our standard managed support agreement uses these targets:
- Critical, office-wide outage: acknowledged within 10 minutes and worked on immediately, with an engineer on site within 4 hours.
- High priority, a team or key system down: acknowledged within 10 minutes, with an engineer on site within 4 hours.
- Medium priority, a single-user issue: handled within 4 hours.
- Low priority, requests and changes: handled the same business day.
Per user or per device: which structure fits your office?
Per user suits offices where each person has one laptop and works mainly in cloud apps; per device suits offices with shared PCs, printers, servers and more network equipment. Listonics prices support as a fixed monthly fee per user or per device, whichever fits the office better. For how those models translate into a quote, see our IT AMC cost guide.
Per-user pricing is easy to budget: when you hire, the fee rises by one user and covers that person's devices and accounts. Per-device pricing is fairer where equipment outnumbers people, for example a reception PC, meeting-room screens, a server and a NAS. The other variables are the same in both models: whether servers or on-premise systems are included, coverage hours, included on-site visits and whether parts are covered.
Is an annual maintenance contract suitable for a small business?
Often, but not always. For an office of around ten or more people, with data it cannot lose or a real dependence on uptime, an AMC usually works out better value than paying per incident once lost working hours are counted.
A five-person office running entirely on cloud apps with a few laptops may only need a lighter remote-support plan, and a good provider will say so at the assessment. Signs that a small office has outgrown ad hoc help: IT problems keep landing on the office manager, nobody is sure who holds the admin passwords, backups have never been test-restored, or a new hire waits days for a working laptop. Our guide to IT support for small businesses in Dubai covers the lighter options.
A business with its own IT person often still needs an AMC: cover during leave, specialist help with networks or security and somewhere to escalate. Put in writing who does what, or each side assumes the other is doing it.
How do you switch IT AMC providers?
Switching is mainly a handover exercise: secure the admin accounts and documentation first, then give notice. Read the notice period and exit clause in your current contract before you start.
A clean move collects every administrator login (Microsoft 365, firewall, Wi-Fi controller, domain registrar, backup), the network diagram and asset register, licence and warranty records, and any open tickets. The new provider should audit and document the setup, fix urgent gaps, then take over managed support, replacing equipment only where genuinely needed. Our IT support provider handover guide has the full checklist.
How does an IT AMC compare with managed IT and pay-as-you-go support?
An AMC and managed IT overlap heavily, while pay-as-you-go (break-fix) support is the opposite model.
Traditionally, an AMC focused on maintaining and repairing equipment, while managed IT adds continuous monitoring, security management and planning. Many providers in Dubai now use the terms interchangeably, so compare scope lists rather than names. We set out the differences in IT AMC vs managed IT services.
Pay-as-you-go support is billed per incident or per hour. It costs little while nothing breaks and a lot, in downtime as much as invoices, when something does, and nobody is paid to prevent the next failure. An AMC reverses that incentive. For the trade-offs in detail, read managed IT vs break-fix support.
How Listonics delivers IT AMC services in Dubai
Listonics, an IT maintenance company in Dubai, starts with a free IT assessment: engineers review and document what you have, then quote a fixed monthly fee with every inclusion and exclusion listed. Support runs under our managed IT support service, with 24/7 monitoring, a remote helpdesk that covers the UAE and engineers on site across the UAE. Twelve-month terms are standard, and month-to-month managed support is available for offices that prefer to start small. You keep the network diagram, asset register, account list and port map. To compare options for your office, contact Listonics.
IT AMC Dubai: guides and resources
- IT AMC cost in DubaiIT AMC cost in Dubai explained: the cost drivers, per-user and per-device pricing, exclusions that cause surprise invoices and how to compare quotes.
- Managed IT services pricing in DubaiHow managed IT services are priced in Dubai: per user, per device, tiered and hybrid models, what moves the fee, exclusions and how to compare quotes.
- IT AMC vs Managed IT Services: What Dubai Offices Are Actually BuyingIn the UAE the labels overlap. Compare what an IT AMC or managed IT contract actually covers, not what it is called.
- Managed IT Support vs Break-Fix: How Dubai Offices Should DecideAn honest comparison of pay-per-visit IT and a monthly IT AMC, including when break-fix is all a small office needs.
Frequently asked questions
Twelve months is standard, billed monthly or annually. Listonics also offers month-to-month managed support for offices that would rather start small and extend once they have seen the service working. The scope and SLA targets are the same either way.
Yes. Users and devices can be added or removed and the fee adjusts on the next invoice. Larger changes, such as adding a server, are agreed as a written amendment so the scope and the fee stay clear to both sides.
Labour to diagnose and repair faults on covered equipment is always included. Replacement parts are included only on a parts-inclusive tier; otherwise they are quoted at cost and ordered only with your approval.
Missed targets are reported in the monthly review with the cause and the fix. With Listonics, persistent misses are grounds for you to end the agreement early, and that is written into the contract rather than left as a verbal promise.
Sometimes. If the office runs entirely on cloud apps with a few laptops, a lighter remote-support plan is usually enough, and we will say so at the assessment. An AMC makes more sense once there is shared equipment, on-site data or a real dependence on uptime.
Yes. We audit and document the existing environment first, fix urgent gaps, then move it onto managed support. Equipment is replaced only where genuinely needed, so taking over from another provider does not mean starting again from scratch.
Written by Srinivasan Ramachandran, Founder, Listonics · Last reviewed October 29, 2026