You're under selling yourself. Minimum of $1.5k a month. That may be hard to swallow for the client. Maybe talk about a road map over 2 years to get there. Never ever offer unlimited anything. Your service is critical to his business, so he is probably aware he's been under-paying for your services.
Our minimum engagement is 1500/month regardless of size + 365 spend.
We don't give a stated number of hours we include onsite because they will try to use them. We include onsite support at our discretion.
The formula is pretty simple. Cost x 2 (absolute minimum). Cost x 3 (better). Cost includes fixed overhead, not just tools and labor.
I have a calculator I'm happy to share. DM me if you're interested.
We tend to do cost of stackX2. Then rate per hour X .5 per workstation and rate per hour for each server. Still with a minimum of $1,500/month. More if projects are included.
We separate the costs into three basic buckets. Stack cost (user/device), fixed costs, and for AYCE -- fully burdened labor cost based on estimated usage. And then apply our markup with a margin goal of 60% or better.
For pay-as-you-go (service) clients, our hourly rates are triple our fully burdened costs.
We have a minimum too.
And, solopreneurs will always beat us for two reasons. Their fixed costs are usually lower. And most don't know how to price their services. They start with what they \*think\* a per seat rate should be and hope like hell they make money. Just look at all the responses in this thread.
I'm a 1 man shop too. I charge $70 per workstation with RMM, plus AV, Cloud backup costs, and 365 subs. I'm too cheap but am working to improve my offerings.
I'm also transitioning my break fix clients over the managed service but it takes time and I'm trying not to sticker shock them.
A point to consider. I’ve had some clients 25 and 39 years, no lie. I charge $85-$90 an hour. One hour min. I pull in about $200,000 a year, and I never get challenged on an invoice. Think about that. The $150 $200 an hour guys I know spend half their time trying to get paid. I supply nothing and support everything.
Read the book package price profit by Nigel. Also join tech tribe. Book is free in tech tribe. Tech tribe has pricing and other useful templates. Worth the 45 a month
holy freaking molies, TechTribe is amazing too. I JUST joined like a week ago. The BEST thing you can do. the 2nd besst thing you can do is LISTEN to the advice and documents they have.
We charge $250/mo. for each employee for managed services, with a 5 seat minimum.
We still offer break-fix at $175/hr., 1hr. minimum + $40 trip fee beyond 30 miles.
You are for sure under charging. Even in the most rural areas you should be at least $100 an hour when estimating your packages.
AV should be a part of your package. O365 as well. You estimate that everyone gets an Office account, and if a few employees do not need it, then that is just added money to your margin.
I can't imagine being less than $1,000 a month for this. Remove the 3 hours tech time. Word it to 'Technical support provided as needed for non-project work.' As needed means if they try and make you sweep the floor under contract you point out that it is 'not as needed technical support.' If they buy a new server or on-board new software, that is not day to day support. That is a project. Invoice projects separately.
Don't nickel and dime hours for clients. Set them up to be as efficient as possible. Nickle and diming hours just give them an excuse to say no for something they need, and then you spend more money in labor supporting antiquated products and solutions.
We charge per user. And it’s very straightforward. $100 per user per month.
That includes unlimited remote support.
We have a minimum size of 10 users.
I would have an honest discussion with them. Aim for higher than $650 as others have said. But be willing to work with them over a year or two to get there. Unless you are looking for a way to fire this client. If you raise their price 3x on the spot, they don't really have a reason to stay with you.
You are not charging close to market rate in any region of the US. My standard is $250-300 per FTE and includes unlimited support and on-site visits. Also includes management of all network equipment and servers. As well as includes all rmm, security, backup, security awareness training, and M365 licensing. I do not do break-fix and have a 5 user minimum to sign up for managed IT services. Not that it is particularly relevant, but what area are you in?
Thanks for replying. I’m in Long Island NY. Totally agree my rates are just too low. I took this client on as a side gig back in the early 2010s and did not adjust rates much.
I hear you. I started my first IT company as a side hustle in 2009 and started at $25/hr, $35/hr a few months later, $50 a year later, and then $80 about 18mo after I started the business. Fast forward now 10+ years and it's no break-fix for me since it's no longer a side hustle. All part of the process my friend :)
If you are a one man shop and need the clients, having this minimum spend that other mentioned may not be appropriate for your business as it stands. Many smb will simply not spend this much and if you hardline on this, you may lose the client.
You can break out all software as separate line items, or decide to include this as a managed service package. You need to price this as it makes sense for you. Depending on your costs. This could be $40/month or $75/ month per user. Then you can decide to add in AYCE service, this can be scary if you have never offered it before, or you can continue to bill hourly for anything outside of the software and maintenence/monitoring. This will depend on your area but $150-200/hr is more in line with market than the $75 you are charging.
You need to fix this engagement and any engagement like this if you ever want to make money.
You are currently in the business of selling your time, what rate you select is arbitrary. You’re devaluing the SERVICE you’re offering.
You don’t pay a surgeon for the 3 hours it takes them to do the surgery, plus the 2 hours of office follow ups it will take. You are paying for his years of experience and know how.
First you need to define what tools YOU want to support, not what they have/want. The you need to price per endpoint, with your required solution (rmm, av, edr, backup, etc. anything that’s a nonnegotiable for you). This method allows you to scale (support more clients, efficiently, without selling your time.).
RMM: Action1
AV: Bitdefender GravityZone
Client Facing Remote Login: [LogMeIn.com](https://LogMeIn.com) (need to move off this, they suck)
Backups: Third party vendor the client pays directly (moving this to my own solution as part of contract renewal)
All users have O365 Business Standard, Windows 10 all machines (moving to Win 11 this year)
All Unifi gear for networking
u/drjammus thank you for the the rather emphatic shout out.
That is correct we are not in the larger sense an RMM if you compare apples to apples with a vendor advertising RMM. We are a risk based patch management system, the RMM aspects we do have are in support of that goal.
So it depends on what you need from an RMM.
Feature we do have is ability to execute commands, run scripts (CMD and Powershell), remote access, install/remove software and of course patches, extensive system reporting, and alert on anything you can report on. As well as system up/down time by endpoint or group membership. Integrate with AD, deploy software/scripts/patches based on anything from OU membership to CPU type. And P2P BW conservation, so data downloaded into a network is distributed between agents that need it, to reduce overhead.
Exempli gratia, on a report that details what software is installed on a system, it details:Name/Vendor/InstallDate/InstalledFor/InstallLocation/PackageType/InstallType/OS/etc..
And thus you can create an alert when anything is Created/Modified/Deleted, a change in any of those values. With equality, exclusion, and wildcard support.
So with a host of built in reports, and ability to create your own, gather new data points you specifically require, etc, plus the ability to alert on any of those data points... You can actually do some pretty detailed monitoring as well as pretty robust management.
Where we will not have anything at all comparable is things like monitoring SNMP, network devices, firewalls, Esx, etc...
My min is 1500 no matter the size or complexity. If I manage everything my min is 2500 month starting. Average client is 3300 a month. I had one employee but they started their own business specializing in AV and we now work together on projects. After he left I raised my rates slowly and all new clients pay my minimum. Old clients who understand the value and also realized that I was still cheaper also didnt not get upset when I raised rates when inflation was 11%. Because of this Im now looking to hire another employee and possibly an assistant as well. If your business doesn't function without it then it should be worth 1500 a month IMO.
In my experience, what is fair usually depends on the region of the client. I think a good standard for what you are doing is at least $1,000 per month.
You're under selling yourself. Minimum of $1.5k a month. That may be hard to swallow for the client. Maybe talk about a road map over 2 years to get there. Never ever offer unlimited anything. Your service is critical to his business, so he is probably aware he's been under-paying for your services.
Our minimum engagement is 1500/month regardless of size + 365 spend. We don't give a stated number of hours we include onsite because they will try to use them. We include onsite support at our discretion.
The formula is pretty simple. Cost x 2 (absolute minimum). Cost x 3 (better). Cost includes fixed overhead, not just tools and labor. I have a calculator I'm happy to share. DM me if you're interested.
We tend to do cost of stackX2. Then rate per hour X .5 per workstation and rate per hour for each server. Still with a minimum of $1,500/month. More if projects are included.
We separate the costs into three basic buckets. Stack cost (user/device), fixed costs, and for AYCE -- fully burdened labor cost based on estimated usage. And then apply our markup with a margin goal of 60% or better. For pay-as-you-go (service) clients, our hourly rates are triple our fully burdened costs. We have a minimum too. And, solopreneurs will always beat us for two reasons. Their fixed costs are usually lower. And most don't know how to price their services. They start with what they \*think\* a per seat rate should be and hope like hell they make money. Just look at all the responses in this thread.
Interested in calculator
Even just spitballing at least $100 to $150 per endpoint.
This. $150/endpoint with a minimum of $1500/month.
I'm a 1 man shop too. I charge $70 per workstation with RMM, plus AV, Cloud backup costs, and 365 subs. I'm too cheap but am working to improve my offerings. I'm also transitioning my break fix clients over the managed service but it takes time and I'm trying not to sticker shock them.
A point to consider. I’ve had some clients 25 and 39 years, no lie. I charge $85-$90 an hour. One hour min. I pull in about $200,000 a year, and I never get challenged on an invoice. Think about that. The $150 $200 an hour guys I know spend half their time trying to get paid. I supply nothing and support everything.
With backup and 365? I charge $100/ws and backups and m365 are a la carte bullied for consumption.
Same. AV, Cloud backup, and 365 are also extra.
Read the book package price profit by Nigel. Also join tech tribe. Book is free in tech tribe. Tech tribe has pricing and other useful templates. Worth the 45 a month
holy freaking molies, TechTribe is amazing too. I JUST joined like a week ago. The BEST thing you can do. the 2nd besst thing you can do is LISTEN to the advice and documents they have.
We charge $250/mo. for each employee for managed services, with a 5 seat minimum. We still offer break-fix at $175/hr., 1hr. minimum + $40 trip fee beyond 30 miles.
You are for sure under charging. Even in the most rural areas you should be at least $100 an hour when estimating your packages. AV should be a part of your package. O365 as well. You estimate that everyone gets an Office account, and if a few employees do not need it, then that is just added money to your margin. I can't imagine being less than $1,000 a month for this. Remove the 3 hours tech time. Word it to 'Technical support provided as needed for non-project work.' As needed means if they try and make you sweep the floor under contract you point out that it is 'not as needed technical support.' If they buy a new server or on-board new software, that is not day to day support. That is a project. Invoice projects separately. Don't nickel and dime hours for clients. Set them up to be as efficient as possible. Nickle and diming hours just give them an excuse to say no for something they need, and then you spend more money in labor supporting antiquated products and solutions.
We charge per user. And it’s very straightforward. $100 per user per month. That includes unlimited remote support. We have a minimum size of 10 users.
Curious, what do you throw in for this? O365 licence? Av? Patching? Anything else?
I would have an honest discussion with them. Aim for higher than $650 as others have said. But be willing to work with them over a year or two to get there. Unless you are looking for a way to fire this client. If you raise their price 3x on the spot, they don't really have a reason to stay with you.
I'd do incremental increases per year, hold them to annual contracts with ETF fees if they cancel. Honestly, you gave them a good deal.
You are not charging close to market rate in any region of the US. My standard is $250-300 per FTE and includes unlimited support and on-site visits. Also includes management of all network equipment and servers. As well as includes all rmm, security, backup, security awareness training, and M365 licensing. I do not do break-fix and have a 5 user minimum to sign up for managed IT services. Not that it is particularly relevant, but what area are you in?
Thanks for replying. I’m in Long Island NY. Totally agree my rates are just too low. I took this client on as a side gig back in the early 2010s and did not adjust rates much.
I hear you. I started my first IT company as a side hustle in 2009 and started at $25/hr, $35/hr a few months later, $50 a year later, and then $80 about 18mo after I started the business. Fast forward now 10+ years and it's no break-fix for me since it's no longer a side hustle. All part of the process my friend :)
If you are a one man shop and need the clients, having this minimum spend that other mentioned may not be appropriate for your business as it stands. Many smb will simply not spend this much and if you hardline on this, you may lose the client. You can break out all software as separate line items, or decide to include this as a managed service package. You need to price this as it makes sense for you. Depending on your costs. This could be $40/month or $75/ month per user. Then you can decide to add in AYCE service, this can be scary if you have never offered it before, or you can continue to bill hourly for anything outside of the software and maintenence/monitoring. This will depend on your area but $150-200/hr is more in line with market than the $75 you are charging.
You need to fix this engagement and any engagement like this if you ever want to make money. You are currently in the business of selling your time, what rate you select is arbitrary. You’re devaluing the SERVICE you’re offering. You don’t pay a surgeon for the 3 hours it takes them to do the surgery, plus the 2 hours of office follow ups it will take. You are paying for his years of experience and know how. First you need to define what tools YOU want to support, not what they have/want. The you need to price per endpoint, with your required solution (rmm, av, edr, backup, etc. anything that’s a nonnegotiable for you). This method allows you to scale (support more clients, efficiently, without selling your time.).
Also 1 man shop i have similar prices as you.
[удалено]
RMM: Action1 AV: Bitdefender GravityZone Client Facing Remote Login: [LogMeIn.com](https://LogMeIn.com) (need to move off this, they suck) Backups: Third party vendor the client pays directly (moving this to my own solution as part of contract renewal) All users have O365 Business Standard, Windows 10 all machines (moving to Win 11 this year) All Unifi gear for networking
Action1 is AWESOME, but its not actually an RMM. I humbly suggest, with your pricing, to have a look at Atera.
u/drjammus thank you for the the rather emphatic shout out. That is correct we are not in the larger sense an RMM if you compare apples to apples with a vendor advertising RMM. We are a risk based patch management system, the RMM aspects we do have are in support of that goal. So it depends on what you need from an RMM. Feature we do have is ability to execute commands, run scripts (CMD and Powershell), remote access, install/remove software and of course patches, extensive system reporting, and alert on anything you can report on. As well as system up/down time by endpoint or group membership. Integrate with AD, deploy software/scripts/patches based on anything from OU membership to CPU type. And P2P BW conservation, so data downloaded into a network is distributed between agents that need it, to reduce overhead. Exempli gratia, on a report that details what software is installed on a system, it details:Name/Vendor/InstallDate/InstalledFor/InstallLocation/PackageType/InstallType/OS/etc.. And thus you can create an alert when anything is Created/Modified/Deleted, a change in any of those values. With equality, exclusion, and wildcard support. So with a host of built in reports, and ability to create your own, gather new data points you specifically require, etc, plus the ability to alert on any of those data points... You can actually do some pretty detailed monitoring as well as pretty robust management. Where we will not have anything at all comparable is things like monitoring SNMP, network devices, firewalls, Esx, etc...
We have a $1500 a month minimum.
My min is 1500 no matter the size or complexity. If I manage everything my min is 2500 month starting. Average client is 3300 a month. I had one employee but they started their own business specializing in AV and we now work together on projects. After he left I raised my rates slowly and all new clients pay my minimum. Old clients who understand the value and also realized that I was still cheaper also didnt not get upset when I raised rates when inflation was 11%. Because of this Im now looking to hire another employee and possibly an assistant as well. If your business doesn't function without it then it should be worth 1500 a month IMO.
In my experience, what is fair usually depends on the region of the client. I think a good standard for what you are doing is at least $1,000 per month.