Offering Critique

[callthatgirl]

I had a program that was $250 per year, had unlimited virus removals, GFI and 30 min of windows support at one time. Sold it well. I think if you make a simple program, only sell one (3 is too many to manage in my opinion) and then have the nice monthly price...you will do well. You can discount for yearly sign up. Monthly invoicing sucks lol.

I read what others said too, all good advice!

 

[Mike McCall]

I had a program that was $250 per year, had unlimited virus removals, GFI and 30 min of windows support at one time. Sold it well. I think if you make a simple program, only sell one (3 is too many to manage in my opinion) and then have the nice monthly price...you will do well. You can discount for yearly sign up. Monthly invoicing sucks lol.

I read what others said too, all good advice!

I agree. I'm finding multiple pricing just too unwieldy. I really don't need the complication. The tools cost me the same no matter what, so it's really about the service level after that. $20 per device seems to be a reasonable and competitive price. Servers are a bit more elusive in their pricing. I think they could be priced the same, as some seem to. However, others seem to charge more because, well, servers. I think they also provide more administration than just maintenance. Some break out their network monitoring as well. Don't have a pricing reference for that either. A lot of this is a matter of finding a reference to use. Maintaining workstations & laptops isn't tough, more complicated servers and networks can be. For now, it's best that I stick with what I'm comfortable with and grow as I'm able.

 

[cypress]

Okay, so I toss in unlimited remote support, should I consider a setup fee per device? I'm thinking that if I do, it should be less than the monthly charge, so $15 per device?

If you are adding in Unlimited Remote Support then yeah I would do that.

 

[fencepost]

I'll toss in a note in favor of multiple tiers based on what I've seen discussed elsewhere (not for MSP/remote support) - you don't have the top tier because you want to sell it. You have the top tier because you want to sell more of the one below it, and the existence of that high-end tier will shift a lot of people to the middle one.

I'd also be very wary of unlimited remote support that I saw listed early-on. That could easily be a huge time sink, and having it is probably not going to sell your plans any better than having 1-2 hours/month of remote support would. You should probably also define what is remote support - is it only fixes? What about "I'm trying to do X in Word and can't figure it out. Can you show me how?"

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Okay, so I toss in unlimited remote support, should I consider a setup fee per device? I'm thinking that if I do, it should be less than the monthly charge, so $15 per device?

If you do unlimited remote support you should be much, much higher. Also the setup fee is typically the same as the monthly fee.

 

[Mike McCall]

If you do unlimited remote support you should be much, much higher. Also the setup fee is typically the same as the monthly fee.

Gotcha. How about limiting remote support to the issues I monitor or products I sell? I could state that limitation clearly in the agreement.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

My unlimited remote support plan (keep in mind business plan) is $169.95 per user, per month. My middle plan is $109.95 with 2 hours of remote support. Obviously set rates for your location, but you need to be very careful with "unlimited". You need to make very sure you are getting paid for it. Whether they realize it or not some customers will take advantage of this and you can end up, upside down quickly.

 

[Mike McCall]

Okay. I am speaking of business clients now. The offering is for what I stated above for $19.95mo. I intend to limit my unpaid remote support to the products and services offered in the plan. I do have the Technibble Business Kit and am using (with modifications) the documentation templates that come with that. I'm also using information contained in Palachuk's Managed Services in a Month. The unknown is what others nearby are charging. One guy several miles away, maybe 20-miles, charges $20 for each desktop/workstation (residential or business) and $50 per server. Unable to get pricing for anything closer. You, and most others on here, are much higher for business clients. That's why it's hard for me to get a read on where my pricing should be. I would rather get a few clients that are priced too low, but limited in the time-suck they cause, and have to adjust my prices up as I go, than start too high and scare potential clients off and have to reduce my prices after the damage is done. I need clients fairly quickly so I want to be attractive to them.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

I know what you mean. We have one client now that we signed up when we got started with MSP and we need to at least triple their bill to get them where they need to be. Going to be a tough conversation. We had no idea what to charge at the beginning and now have to deal with that situation. My base price with no support and monitoring only is $39.95 per device, rather than per user. We also include Office O365 Business Premium with the two higher packages.

 

[cypress]

I'll toss in a note in favor of multiple tiers based on what I've seen discussed elsewhere (not for MSP/remote support) - you don't have the top tier because you want to sell it. You have the top tier because you want to sell more of the one below it, and the existence of that high-end tier will shift a lot of people to the middle one.

I'd also be very wary of unlimited remote support that I saw listed early-on. That could easily be a huge time sink, and having it is probably not going to sell your plans any better than having 1-2 hours/month of remote support would. You should probably also define what is remote support - is it only fixes? What about "I'm trying to do X in Word and can't figure it out. Can you show me how?"

Exactly very well said. Bryce actually touches base on this with the Podcast in regards to Managed Services. My goal is to steer people to the most popular plan which is the middle plan. If they go for the higher plan than HOORAY! When it comes to Unlimited Support he is right and maybe I really didn't look at it, but you should cap it out. Maybe 15-30 mins included in the plan with everything else billed at a discounted rate? Setup charges make a lot of sense especially if they are new clients. I do a lot of break/fix still and I am slowly converting them to managed services.

I know the one thing I can sell it on is that, I will manage the Anti-virus and if it gets a Virus I will remove it Free of Charge in the included Plan. That works a lot when it comes to residential. The business clients a lot of them just do their work, log off and repeat. 90% of my work with them is actually patch management and monitoring. The other 10% is help installing a program needed for the business remotely. Usually takes 15 mins. Once you set it up properly the first time the rest is just monitoring to make sure everything goes right.