Charging for email account creation

[freedomit]

We are in the process of increasing our prices for hosted exchange (via MessageStream/Giacom) in line with the price increase passed down from Microsoft. I'm also thinking about at the same time introducing a small charge for new account creation, something like £15-20ex, to cover the admin and testing. At the moment for hosted exchange we go with the rule "if the customer doesn't have access to do something we shouldn't charge for it", so account creations, deletions, password resets, forwarders are all free of charge. But as Microsoft have increased there prices it creates a nice opportunity to slide an account creation fee into the new pricing, as well as extra revenue it will also give another incentive for customers to go onto contract support as i would then include it for free.

Do others charge for creating email accounts on there hosted exchange service and do you ever get customers complain about the charge?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Your time is involved, right?
Unless you believe in "volunteering" all of your time...the way I look at it, we're a clients outsourced IT. It's either hire us part time, or hire a full time IT staff in-house...which can be quite expensive.

I would do the change for free, if I felt that a product which I chose, and promoted...ended up not working well for my clients, I would take ownership of my bad choice and move clients to the new/better replacement service on my dime. Because I'm fixing something I initially promoted...so I feel ownership in my choice.

But for a price hike...that's common, not your fault, it's something that happens normally.
You could also look at this as an opportunity to look into Microsofts CSP program, get onboard with that, move your clients to that, and enjoy much higher monthly margins. Instead of having a middle man in between taking most of the profits.

 

[freedomit]

Thanks for you reply...

Your time is involved, right?
Unless you believe in "volunteering" all of your time...the way I look at it, we're a clients outsourced IT. It's either hire us part time, or hire a full time IT staff in-house...which can be quite expensive.

Yes correct, it takes 5-10 minutes to create the account, send a test email, login to OWA and check it was received and then forward the credentials. We have always done this for free as the customer doesn't have the ability to create the account themselves and we obliviously make a couple of pound a month on the account anyway. Ive come round to the fact we probably should be charging for this im just wondering how the customers will react and if others do the same?

I would do the change for free, if I felt that a product which I chose, and promoted...ended up not working well for my clients, I would take ownership of my bad choice and move clients to the new/better replacement service on my dime. Because I'm fixing something I initially promoted...so I feel ownership in my choice.

Not sure what you mean by this? Possibly got our wires crossed, we are not moving our clients to another service.

But for a price hike...that's common, not your fault, it's something that happens normally.You could also look at this as an opportunity to look into Microsofts CSP program, get onboard with that, move your clients to that, and enjoy much higher monthly margins. Instead of having a middle man in between taking most of the profits.

I think most of our customers are understanding about the price hike, the increase in Office365 and on-premise was on most UK news sites and we pre warned them in December about it. I think most just see it as another consequence of leaving the EU.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Our customers don't react badly when they see an invoice for time spent setting up accounts.
We're their computer support...someone has to spend the time setting them up. Just because they purchased the accounts through us doesn't mean the accounts are free. Just like if they purchase a computer from us..transferring data from the old computer, setting up the new computer, importing the data, setting up peripherals like printers, that's something they expect to be charged for.

I know ISPs and some large web hosts will "setup" their basic POP/IMAP accounts for free..that's part of the deal with them.
But for an IT consultant/computer support person....no...it should, IMO, be something you charge for.

I didn't cross wires...I know what you meant, I was just giving an example that probably the only exception I'd make for charging to setup/change e-mail accounts was if I made a mistake of selecting some host to resell/whitelabel, and it didnt' work out, and I had to change to get a better service. I would do that for free.

And just encouraging you to look at the CSP program...means quite a bit more recurring money for you.

 

[nlinecomputers]

My MSP contracts are all basically remote free if it is maintenance. Adding or removing an email is a change. It is not maintenance. So it is billed at my New Project rates. If you are doing something you need to be billing for the time.

 

[4ycr]

I charge for this, I have it in my T&C's for initial creation and if I need to change anything. You could also look at adding a monthly management fee to cover all of these.

 

[TurricanII]

If you screw up during the creation you are liable to fix the problem. It's a liability - get paid for taking it!

 

[callthatgirl]

My clients pay for the time, so if they are prepay and it's 15 min, it's $32 or so. If I have to remote in and set it up, it's usually 30 min, $64. If they are on prepay if not it's $149.

 

[TenYardFight]

We definately charge any time we are asked to do work, but I can't imagine setting my clients email up somewhere they don't have their own management portal.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[ShiaSurprise]

I charge for the time, easily. It takes me about 10 minutes/acct., and I bill my rate for it. Like a few said, people are happy to (and even expect) to pay for acct. creation, support, etc.; at least as happy as they can be to receive a bill.

 

[allstarit]

same here if it takes time to do a task its billed. If they are a MSP cleint its included in their fees but if they are a break/fix client its charged.

 

[nlinecomputers]

We definately charge any time we are asked to do work, but I can't imagine setting my clients email up somewhere they don't have their own management portal.

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Oh I control it. They don't pay me for providing email they don't GET email. Really makes slow payers cough it up.

 

[frase]

If it takes only 10 mins I charge hourly rates - but I always ask is there anything else I can do whilst I am there.

 

[allanite]

How about adding a little extra to the price so that you do not need to charge extra and the client will appreciate your service?

 

[freedomit]

How about adding a little extra to the price so that you do not need to charge extra and the client will appreciate your service?

The problem is that our hosted exchange service is already more expensive than Office365 so increasing the price further would make it even more noncompetitive. I guess to be honest its the same for O365 aswell anyway, the margins are so small that for companies with high staff turnover most of your profit would be gone with time spent creating accounts. The Office365 space is really competitive with everyone publishing prices publicly so if charged more to include account creation i think people would query the price.

I decided to add a £15.00ex charge for all new emails accounts provisioned, this covers creating the account, sending a test email and sending login details. This is for non-contract customers only as we include user admin in our contract prices, hopefully it will push some people over to contract.

 

[PodnutzPro]

for our hosted exchange clients, we don't charge for server-side operations (creating accounts, reset passwords, etc). The price we charge for the mailboxes per month cover the occasional password reset or account creation. If they need any assistance with configuring Outlook, phones, etc, we charge for that.