Mhelpdesk kicked me off my cheap pricing plan.
- Thread starter papuchazo
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Mike McCall
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4ycr
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repairshopr has a free plan for low tickets or you have pc repair tracker if you want to self-host
seedubya
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https://wt.rs
Has a great free plan and busy development schedule. Also has a Discord and Reddit sub for support etc.
However, I use it for the very few domestic customers that I still retain. Probably only put a dozen tickets a month through WTRS.I use Pulseway PSA for the B2B stuff.
Has a great free plan and busy development schedule. Also has a Discord and Reddit sub for support etc.
However, I use it for the very few domestic customers that I still retain. Probably only put a dozen tickets a month through WTRS.I use Pulseway PSA for the B2B stuff.
papuchazo
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I will check these 2 out. So much stuff I didn't know about, great suggestions!
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Hey guys. Just wanted to respond to the comments about BusyBench in this thread since they are a little older. Our free plan no longer has limits on how many clients you import. The same goes for invoices, estimates, tickets and inventory items. No limit and free forever.
We try our absolute best to be transparent with our clients so I will relay what to expect pricing wise. We pulled our Professional plan and limited our total plans to 3. $60 being our "you get freaking everything plan"
We do plan on bringing back our $99/m plan in the future once its so feature heavy $99 is a no brainier. We want our users to see the $99/m plan and see it justified for the feature set.
Once upon a time I couldn't afford lunch when I opened my first shop. We get it.. even $4 a month is allot starting out. This is why we target so many newcomers to just use the free account and grow with us. If you have any questions about what we are doing or just wanna give us some feedback we are very active in our discord too
We try our absolute best to be transparent with our clients so I will relay what to expect pricing wise. We pulled our Professional plan and limited our total plans to 3. $60 being our "you get freaking everything plan"
We do plan on bringing back our $99/m plan in the future once its so feature heavy $99 is a no brainier. We want our users to see the $99/m plan and see it justified for the feature set.
Once upon a time I couldn't afford lunch when I opened my first shop. We get it.. even $4 a month is allot starting out. This is why we target so many newcomers to just use the free account and grow with us. If you have any questions about what we are doing or just wanna give us some feedback we are very active in our discord too
Your PCMD
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Oh yes, I do...If you have any questions about what we are doing or just wanna give us some feedback we are very active in our discord too
Wonder if you can explain the reasoning behind the pricing. I get it that it costs time and money to create a script such as BB. But its not ever been justified why it costs as much as it does on a monthly basis. I have no clue as to how many clients you have, or how many employees you have. As someone who has coded many scripts over the years, from simple email contact forms to a forum and now a ticketing system (I've been coding since PHP 3 and SQL 4) I know it takes time. However, how did you come up with the prices and why do you think the cost is justified.
Also, I see that BB takes the same approach as others out there in the plans. Say you have 20 items you offer total. For a free plan, you get 5. For mid tier (say $25/mo) you get 10 and the high tier (say $60/mo) you get all 20. But, not everyone needs all 20 or even 10 in some cases. Perhaps you need only 1 item in the mid tier and that 1 item is certainly not going to be worth $25/mo.
Instead, what I would like to see is a niche where only 2 plans are offered. A obviously free plan to draw people in and a P&C plan. You can go through a single menu and check what you need and want with each item being say $2 each. At the end, it adds it all up and thats the price you pay for what you want and actually need.
fencepost
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Ew. No. Every plan a custom plan, and you-the-vendor lose money on any customer who contacts support in a given month (perhaps to be told that they need to add an additional $2 module)? Nononononono (insert cat meme here). Might as well go back to building custom servers and PCs for clients by sourcing motherboards, RAM, RAID controllers, cases, etc. and supporting all those custom builds for 5+ years. (edit: because not everyone needs a server-grade case, or dual power supplies, or ECC RAM, or RAID, or hot-swap bays, or x or y or z)
The software running the SaaS is obviously a big part of what you're paying for, but you're also paying for what it costs to keep that service running - servers/hosting, backup, and most expensively someone to work on the development and (likely) completely separate folks to work on support. There's also the competitive marketplace to factor in - RepairShopr, mHelpDesk, maybe Connectwise, etc.
Software is cheap - you can buy PC Repair Tracker for 8 months of BusyBench's 2-user plan and run it on your own webserver, etc. (Need support? There's an email form on the website, and hey, you have the source code and raw database access, dig in!). Keeping the lights on and services running and supported costs money.
The software running the SaaS is obviously a big part of what you're paying for, but you're also paying for what it costs to keep that service running - servers/hosting, backup, and most expensively someone to work on the development and (likely) completely separate folks to work on support. There's also the competitive marketplace to factor in - RepairShopr, mHelpDesk, maybe Connectwise, etc.
Software is cheap - you can buy PC Repair Tracker for 8 months of BusyBench's 2-user plan and run it on your own webserver, etc. (Need support? There's an email form on the website, and hey, you have the source code and raw database access, dig in!). Keeping the lights on and services running and supported costs money.
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@Your PCMD
Any software worth its salt can't survive on $2 here and $10 there. When you offer a-la-carte software people get super angry when they call support and are charged or have to be told they need to pay an extra $4 each time they want something.
@fencepost hit it right on the head. It's a service after-all, you are paying for two dozen factors not just the software.
Also, at the end of the day we offer a free tier that supplies you everything you need to get paid, not us. If you want more and your customers demand it, don’t you think all of that is worth less than a single repair a month to you? Wrap your head around that for a second. A customer walks in and pays you for a tune-up or a hard drive replacement. Just one and it covers your software overhead.
Any software worth its salt can't survive on $2 here and $10 there. When you offer a-la-carte software people get super angry when they call support and are charged or have to be told they need to pay an extra $4 each time they want something.
@fencepost hit it right on the head. It's a service after-all, you are paying for two dozen factors not just the software.
Also, at the end of the day we offer a free tier that supplies you everything you need to get paid, not us. If you want more and your customers demand it, don’t you think all of that is worth less than a single repair a month to you? Wrap your head around that for a second. A customer walks in and pays you for a tune-up or a hard drive replacement. Just one and it covers your software overhead.
Your PCMD
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To use your analogy. Lets say you have 1000 clients that pay the $25/mo and 500 that pay the $60/mo. That's $55,000 a month. Your overhead is probably not that much. The script can run on an inexpensive VPS. Employees are probably a handful. Like I said, I get it. Plans are plans. But I was wondering how your POS works as there is no information on it on your website. Is it fully in-house? Or does it just integrate to say PayPal, Stripe, Quickbooks Payments, etc.?
BTW,
Unified Digital Systems LLC
Categorized under Computer Software Development and Applications. Our records show it was established in 2016 and incorporated in OR. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of 33,851 and employs a staff of approximately 3.
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@Your PCMD
Unified Digital Systems is our parent company however I am not sure where those numbers are coming from. We did switch business classifications in 2016 but the revenue numbers are pretty off. Our MSP shop manager makes more than that just by himself. Additionally our team is quite a bit bigger than 3 now a days. Our MSP employs 5 full time, a couple part time and handful of sub contractors alone. I wonder if that was just for the shop at that time maybe? I think it's best practice to not base assumptions on sites like manta which isn't really a good source of information to begin with.
https://www.manta.com/c/mhb658j/unified-digital-systems-llc
Additionally it's not really a matter of spinning up a VPS and letting it run. There are a ton of factors you aren't considering, such as load balancing, fail over, muli-az and CDN expenses.
I don't think a platform such as BusyBench running on an inexpensive VPS would make for decent up-times or happy customers. If BusyBench goes down for any amount of time we would lose the few paying customers he have.
BTW, not that this needs to be known. but... 2.6% of our customers are paying (calculated a few minutes ago). Could you imagine if we made 55k a month.. I would get one of those big mugs that says "boss" on it.
As to your POS question tho, I am sure you are aware a "Point of Sale" is not the same as "Payment Processing" we facilitate the ability to sell products though BusyBench while the payments are processed through third parties such as Authorize.net and CardConnect. This is how most SAAS platforms work as I don't think anyone wants to become a financial institution before accepting payments. I can imagine the paperwork would take a while lol
I'm not sure which direction this conversation is heading as our sole purpose here was to take a more friendly transparent approach not sharing financial information and justifying the costs of development. I feel like this kinda talk is better directed at brands like Apple and Gucci not a small team making an IT software trying to keep the lights on.
Unified Digital Systems is our parent company however I am not sure where those numbers are coming from. We did switch business classifications in 2016 but the revenue numbers are pretty off. Our MSP shop manager makes more than that just by himself. Additionally our team is quite a bit bigger than 3 now a days. Our MSP employs 5 full time, a couple part time and handful of sub contractors alone. I wonder if that was just for the shop at that time maybe? I think it's best practice to not base assumptions on sites like manta which isn't really a good source of information to begin with.
https://www.manta.com/c/mhb658j/unified-digital-systems-llc
Additionally it's not really a matter of spinning up a VPS and letting it run. There are a ton of factors you aren't considering, such as load balancing, fail over, muli-az and CDN expenses.
I don't think a platform such as BusyBench running on an inexpensive VPS would make for decent up-times or happy customers. If BusyBench goes down for any amount of time we would lose the few paying customers he have.
BTW, not that this needs to be known. but... 2.6% of our customers are paying (calculated a few minutes ago). Could you imagine if we made 55k a month.. I would get one of those big mugs that says "boss" on it.
As to your POS question tho, I am sure you are aware a "Point of Sale" is not the same as "Payment Processing" we facilitate the ability to sell products though BusyBench while the payments are processed through third parties such as Authorize.net and CardConnect. This is how most SAAS platforms work as I don't think anyone wants to become a financial institution before accepting payments. I can imagine the paperwork would take a while lol
I'm not sure which direction this conversation is heading as our sole purpose here was to take a more friendly transparent approach not sharing financial information and justifying the costs of development. I feel like this kinda talk is better directed at brands like Apple and Gucci not a small team making an IT software trying to keep the lights on.
Porthos
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Busybench is not MSP software, BusyBench is a software/portal for computer repair and IT based service businesses. Invoicing, Customer/asset managment, inventory management more in the paid versions like POS for retail shops with a cash register need.
You can attach ptctures/documents to the asset area as well. I am currently attaching the system info output from UVK and a couple of gsmartoutputs when a client needs a drive but won't upgrade. Attach pictures of damage. the skys the limit it seems.
I find the interface easy and "pretty much" straight foward. Had a "hiccup" setting email up but even my little brain figured it out.
I do not know HTML so I can not create custom invoices so I use their default. I have had 100% uptime so far. The Android app works on my phone.
There are lots of customizable parts I have made use of.
You can attach ptctures/documents to the asset area as well. I am currently attaching the system info output from UVK and a couple of gsmartoutputs when a client needs a drive but won't upgrade. Attach pictures of damage. the skys the limit it seems.
I find the interface easy and "pretty much" straight foward. Had a "hiccup" setting email up but even my little brain figured it out.
I do not know HTML so I can not create custom invoices so I use their default. I have had 100% uptime so far. The Android app works on my phone.
There are lots of customizable parts I have made use of.
fencepost
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TL;DR: If it's providing value at a reasonable cost, don't be that guy who asks "Well, if I buy the drive myself can you install it cheaper?"
TL:
This reminds me of when I was doing software development for printing systems. The system I was working on was targeted at healthcare (hospitals and large networks) and basically received data via either print job capture and data extraction or via HL7. We took that, applied some rules to determine where it was supposed to go, extracted the relevant fields and stuffed it through a moderately expensive commercial package (Jetform Central probably $8-12k, would now be open source and some SVG forms). I think installations ran $50-80k, but there wasn't anything there that any competent IT department with time couldn't develop for less.
What changed my thinking on it was the realization that they didn't have the time or resources to develop it in-house. Sure it was nothing really special, but even at the pricing we sold at it was providing in some cases astonishing value. I'm pretty sure we fudged the numbers for the ROI in fact, because (at least to my mind) it's a lot more palatable to go to a hospital network and say "This will cost you $50k and will pay for itself in less than a year" than to go to them and say "This will cost you $50k and will pay for itself in 6 months because yes we're going to be saving you almost $10k/month that your team doesn't have time to deal with."
Take a look at what @YeOldeStonecat has said about backups - unless they're charging at least $25/month for it, it's not worth it for them to sell. If Busybench provides the capabilities you need at a reasonable price and with reasonable polish and reliability, the cost shouldn't be that much of an issue. BusyBench isn't really a PSA - I'm positive that there's a ton of stuff in something like Connectwise or MSP Manager that's simply not there in BusyBench (notably integration with RMMs), but I suspect it also doesn't come with a lot of the huge setup overhead that I keep hearing about with those systems. They're likely competing more with things like the lower-end FreshService plans (which start at $19/user/month paid annually).
I'm overly frugal sometimes (just ask my wife) because I'm broke AF at the moment, but on business software where the highest pricing is currently at $60/month total that seems silly. I want to be paying my vendors enough that they stay in business and keep being my vendors until I decide to move to something else, I don't want them to go away because they just couldn't make enough to buy frozen vegetables to add to the ramen.
Edit: not actually a BusyBench customer except that I signed up for an account earlier this afternoon, and may not be a paying customer for some time as I'm probably going to be doing my own billing through my grandfathered $15/mo Freshbooks account at least at first.
Edit2: Sorry if this is long-winded or cranky, I'm clearly tired and avoiding doing things that I need to get done.
TL:
This reminds me of when I was doing software development for printing systems. The system I was working on was targeted at healthcare (hospitals and large networks) and basically received data via either print job capture and data extraction or via HL7. We took that, applied some rules to determine where it was supposed to go, extracted the relevant fields and stuffed it through a moderately expensive commercial package (Jetform Central probably $8-12k, would now be open source and some SVG forms). I think installations ran $50-80k, but there wasn't anything there that any competent IT department with time couldn't develop for less.
What changed my thinking on it was the realization that they didn't have the time or resources to develop it in-house. Sure it was nothing really special, but even at the pricing we sold at it was providing in some cases astonishing value. I'm pretty sure we fudged the numbers for the ROI in fact, because (at least to my mind) it's a lot more palatable to go to a hospital network and say "This will cost you $50k and will pay for itself in less than a year" than to go to them and say "This will cost you $50k and will pay for itself in 6 months because yes we're going to be saving you almost $10k/month that your team doesn't have time to deal with."
Take a look at what @YeOldeStonecat has said about backups - unless they're charging at least $25/month for it, it's not worth it for them to sell. If Busybench provides the capabilities you need at a reasonable price and with reasonable polish and reliability, the cost shouldn't be that much of an issue. BusyBench isn't really a PSA - I'm positive that there's a ton of stuff in something like Connectwise or MSP Manager that's simply not there in BusyBench (notably integration with RMMs), but I suspect it also doesn't come with a lot of the huge setup overhead that I keep hearing about with those systems. They're likely competing more with things like the lower-end FreshService plans (which start at $19/user/month paid annually).
I'm overly frugal sometimes (just ask my wife) because I'm broke AF at the moment, but on business software where the highest pricing is currently at $60/month total that seems silly. I want to be paying my vendors enough that they stay in business and keep being my vendors until I decide to move to something else, I don't want them to go away because they just couldn't make enough to buy frozen vegetables to add to the ramen.
Edit: not actually a BusyBench customer except that I signed up for an account earlier this afternoon, and may not be a paying customer for some time as I'm probably going to be doing my own billing through my grandfathered $15/mo Freshbooks account at least at first.
Edit2: Sorry if this is long-winded or cranky, I'm clearly tired and avoiding doing things that I need to get done.
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