Average Maint Fee for IT Support of 6pc's

gary_bre

Hi All
As the title says im looking to see what would be the average yearly maintainence fee for a small business of 5pcs and 1 server would be. No printer or other hardware to be maintained.

Im just doing some research on what would be the norm in this kind of envoirnment.

If more info is required I can provide but in relation to what would be required it would be a basic health checking/ updating anti virus /OS Updates etc and making being point of contact for and IT issues related to the6 pcs. No 3rd party software to be maintained.

To point out this isnt post looking for IT Support but rather a search to see what would be a reasonable yearly price for support.

Cheers

rolion

What kind of response time are you looking at !?

Also,replying back is by phone,email or call-out !?

Most of this kind of work that you require is done remotely and pro-active...do you accept this kind of 'no physical site visit' presence !?

Regards...

gary_bre

well thats it , it would be primarily by phone, email and remotely, but onsite visits would be required if a issue couldnt be resolved by either of the above. I would imagine that sites visits would be very rare in this envoirnment.

jpl888

gary_bre wrote: »

Hi All
As the title says im looking to see what would be the average yearly maintainence fee for a small business of 5pcs and 1 server would be. No printer or other hardware to be maintained.

Im just doing some research on what would be the norm in this kind of envoirnment.

If more info is required I can provide but in relation to what would be required it would be a basic health checking/ updating anti virus /OS Updates etc and making being point of contact for and IT issues related to the6 pcs. No 3rd party software to be maintained.

To point out this isnt post looking for IT Support but rather a search to see what would be a reasonable yearly price for support.

Cheers

I can't tell you what the average is but I can tell you what I charged my closest fit last year - a shade under €4105

That was for 6 users and 2 servers in 2 locations, a couple of special apps and included everything (including new installs and VAT).

rolion

myself : 300 x 12m ex - these times and all subject to T&Cs.

longshotvalue

My company would change about 14-1500 for this kind of support, including monitoring, phone email support and on site calls..

rolion

aidankkk wrote: »

My company would change about 14-1500 for this kind of support, including monitoring, phone email support and on site calls..

I consider your company very profitable and with a good technical support / sales department staff.The price is a very good for the OP as well.

BUT,tbh,if your company offers:

-4 - 8 hours onsite support call

-standard support at business time or 9-to-9 ,5 days

-SBS Servers support and Exchange calls

-Cisco networking issues

-pro-active monitoring software per server,with dynamic auto fixing issues

-included in price desktop & server OS reinstalling due to hardware, software, malware infections with data backup of local desktop (irrelevant of user data stored locally) and restore ALL user previous profile settings

-remote desktop support using specialised software with 1 hour response time

-liaise with third party suppliers (hardware) for fixing customer problems...in order to fix end user issue.

-yealy maintenance and systems review,full software and hardware inventory,project management for advise of upgrades

If your company offers all these,i kindly request to give me your contact details and/or your company ,make it public or in PM, and i shall out-source to you most of my technical calls,you do it at a cost of e125 per month,invoice me and i'll pay you e125 in 60 days,without chassing me for payments...

Because that is what, i pressume, the PO wants from us !
Let me know your thoughts...

Regards...

bhickey

It's only 6 PC's and 1 server for pity sake. No printers, no network, nothing else.

Assuming that the PC's and server have been setup in the desired manner then there should be very little ongoing maintenance/support required. There will however be no shortage of IT companies willing to try and charge moronic fixed monthly fees justified by scare stories about all the things that might possibly go wrong. A small monthly fee can form part of a typical basic IT maintenance contract but I try to avoid any fixed fees where possible.

The price charged to maintain any site should decrease as the quality of the support increases. So once a site like this is under control I wouldn't expect many support calls to be honest.

longshotvalue

rolion wrote: »

I consider your company very profitable and with a good technical support / sales department staff.The price is a very good for the OP as well.

BUT,tbh,if your company offers:

-4 - 8 hours onsite support call

-standard support at business time or 9-to-9 ,5 days

-SBS Servers support and Exchange calls

-Cisco networking issues

-pro-active monitoring software per server,with dynamic auto fixing issues

-included in price desktop & server OS reinstalling due to hardware, software, malware infections with data backup of local desktop (irrelevant of user data stored locally) and restore ALL user previous profile settings

-remote desktop support using specialised software with 1 hour response time

-liaise with third party suppliers (hardware) for fixing customer problems...in order to fix end user issue.

-yealy maintenance and systems review,full software and hardware inventory,project management for advise of upgrades

If your company offers all these,i kindly request to give me your contact details and/or your company ,make it public or in PM, and i shall out-source to you most of my technical calls,you do it at a cost of e125 per month,invoice me and i'll pay you e125 in 60 days,without chassing me for payments...

Because that is what, i pressume, the PO wants from us !
Let me know your thoughts...

Regards...

We would offer all of the above, but it would be a yearly charge, not monthly.. And our engineers would have at least 7-15 years experiance. Where im based there would be a few companies in this price range. If i could get 300 a month for maintaining a 6 user network, i would take it, but it seems a lot.. 50 euro a month for each pc or 600 a year :-O..

rolion

aidankkk wrote: »

We would offer all of the above, but it would be a yearly charge, not monthly.. And our engineers would have at least 7-15 years experiance. Where im based there would be a few companies in this price range. If i could get 300 a month for maintaining a 6 user network, i would take it, but it seems a lot.. 50 euro a month for each pc or 600 a year :-O..

Thanks for answering back...

So, 50 euro a month for each pc makes ... 300e per month for a 6user + server !?
Please correct me if i'm wrong ! !

longshotvalue

rolion wrote: »

Thanks for answering back...

So, 50 euro a month for each pc makes ... 300e per month for a 6user + server !?
Please correct me if i'm wrong ! !

not sure what your saying, we wouldnt be 300 a month.. nearer the figure i quoted earlier, and the best we'd do would be to invoice quarterly..

rolion

Sorry for confusion... just to quote you: 50e per pc per month...

I've serviced my gas boiler and for less than an hour they charge me near to 100e !! And the chap didn't have any of the my IT certs and experience and money invested in training ! Maybe is time to change the job...

Anyway,so rather than having a monthly/quarterly/annually IT fee why not go for the call-out charge,per hour,per incident ?

Let's say a PC OS failure (hardware,software or malware) is a 4 hours fix.Let's say 100e first hour and 50e there after makes it at 250e.Right ? But for 400e you get a new PC !! Is it worth it for the customer ? Some cowboys out there does it for less than 50e !?? How is that possible ? Dunno...i can't spend 4 hours for 50e...

A server failure...that takes at least 1 day,possible 2 days ! I don't want to talk about response time ...and that from the customer perspective is not a fcuking server,is about paying 1500e per year for IT maintenance,is because his staff/users are not having access to email,data,web ,printing - at that point in time,is not about hardware or software as 'bhickey' posted earlier on- is about his business and the customer expect you 'kind of yesterday',no matter what money and quality of service derrives from those charges...for a 4 hour repsonse time,you need a stand-by engineer paid with crappy moneys... So,can you charge 125e per month,for a full time senior engineer ,to spend two days in customer site to fix the server !?? Engineer's expenses (petrol,car,van,parking,phone,insurance,wages) can be covered by 125e per two days !?? Hardly...i know is a gamble these maintenance contracts,possible to get the customer locked with only your company dealing with on IT related line,but ...profit ?? Where is my profit ??

As a Senior IT Engineer,over more than 12 years,i focused on my knowledge/skills to serve my best the customer WHILE making sure that the company i worked for ,is making profit in order to pay my wages...Correct ?? yes...

As a future self-employed IT Consultant...where are the boundary ? Profit ? Customer satisfaction ? IT Training and knowledge ?? Challenges and night less sleep,white nights !?? I think is my profit first and then after all of these...with the customer satisfaction second ! A customer will never be happy,even if he pays 125pm or 300pm...because he assumes IT is only money consuming ,breaking when he needs it at most and never does what is supposed to do...Some customers didn't bother for IT charges until something goes really wrong and then it might be too late (try restoring a lost AD database with tens of users and computers in domain).In IT is never a 'set it and forget it' type of scenarious...can be user errors,hardware malfunctioning,software that goes hay-wire after a Windows update,a Sage upgrading patch,an antivirus update stucked,an email message corrupting the whole queue,ISP broadband line going down and you get to meet all ISP's tech support department over a day long...so i'm asking:where are my profit ???

Please correct me if i'm wrong...
Regards !

bhickey

rolion wrote: »

... just to quote you: 50e per pc per month ...... Some cowboys out there does it for less than 50e !??

So €600 per PC per year from the reputable IT provider!

Let's look at a couple of scenarios :

1. Cowboy support. Machine breaks - cowboy fixes it for €50. Machine doesn't break - no charge.

2. Reputable IT provider. Machine breaks - reputable IT provider fixes for free as part of €600 annual maintenance charge. Machine doesn't break - reputable IT provider still charges €600 anyway 'cause he needs to make a profit.

I gotta ask, which one here is the cowboy?

longshotvalue

rolion wrote: »

Sorry for confusion... just to quote you: 50e per pc per month...

Sorry i was saying that was more or less what you quoted @ 300/month for 6pcs.



All i can say is that, ive been in the business for 10 years directly, and the amount of onsite callouts a 1 server 6 pc, setup would generate would be very small. The vast majority would be remote dialins, and in reality there will only be a major server issue at most every 3-4 years, & if backups are working and monitored a replacement server can be on site and working very quickly..

Im not the only supplier at this price point, the majority in my area would be similiar in price (but with not as good support )

jpl888

I have to say Rolion I agree with a lot of what you're saying.

As a self-employed IT guy I operate the whole pay per incident hourly rate thing without contract although it is a flat €70 per hour and I charge €70 per month to keep server up to date and monitor backup, network, etc. Remote work is accounted for in 5 min chunks rounded to the nearest hour at invoice time with any remainder carried to the next invoice.

However if I'm fixing a PC I will take it off site to avoid the "charging more than a new PC scenario" at least that way I can be working on other stuff for other customers while doing it and let's face it a lot of the time it's a case of waiting for the PC to do something anyway, so then I only charge for time I'm actually at the PC to be fixed. It also has to be taken into account that a new PC will need to be setup which could also take an hour or two if email and apps, etc. are to be migrated.

I agree that the whole point of contracts is for the provider to cover their costs and make a profit and likewise with an hourly per incident rate. Both will result in the customer paying more under certain circumstances. If a customer has someone who is technically minded a per incident rate will be very cheap because you might only hear from them every few months. If there is no onsite expertise then a contract may be a better option, but then I'm assuming providers will take that into account when pricing the contract unless they want to risk losing money.

On the one hand PAYG is simple because you get charged one rate for all time spent but on the other hand the customer doesn't know what costs are going to be.

It's swings and roundabouts. I think my customers like being able to talk to the guy with the knowledge straight away. I also think they like the quick response whatever the problem and getting 90% of things fixed without an onsite visit.

justsomebloke

OP if someone was looking for €3600 a year for your set up I would probably laugh.

There are a lot of good companies offering ITC support so ring around and get quotes that will tailor make a support contract in line with your needs.

A good support company should be trying to minimize the time they spend with you as the more time they spend with you the more money it is costing them.

Standard Toaster

Some of the figures being posted here are insane

CptSternn

A new Dell or HP desktop system is around €300-€400 with monitor.

If you pay €50 a month for maintenance, it would be cheaper to just buy a new PC every six months and replace it.

Or you could wait until there is an issue, then replace it instead of having anyone fix it.

Not that I would suggest this, but at those prices listed that is a scenario one could consider.

itmonkey

We sell support in blocks of 10 hours that you can use whenever you want. We suggest that at least one hour a month is used on preventative support where we will scan PC's and update patches etc.

The best thing about the support contract is that you only pay for what you use (no maintenance fees etc)

www.itmonkey.ie

professore

CptSternn wrote: »

A new Dell or HP desktop system is around €300-€400 with monitor.

If you pay €50 a month for maintenance, it would be cheaper to just buy a new PC every six months and replace it.

Or you could wait until there is an issue, then replace it instead of having anyone fix it.

Not that I would suggest this, but at those prices listed that is a scenario one could consider.

I can't believe the naievety of some of the posters on here.

I pay a few hundred quid house insurance every year. I haven't claimed on it in the last few years. What a ripoff !!!! Then my house starts subsiding. Total cost to fix : € 40 K, insurance paid most of it. Without insurance it would have bankrupted me. The same could be true of a big IT failure. An IT support contract is really insurance.

BTW I'm in IT but not in the support side. I don't touch support contracts with my customers as it is a gamble. You could win but you also could lose bigtime. I find an hourly rate and upfront assessment of the likely costs when something breaks works better - even though it may cost the customer more at least they feel they are not being cheated as the work is obviously needed.

Consider this : Your company has software X set up and installed on a desktop. It takes 1 day to set up the software. Company depends on this software for every call a customer makes. A well known PDF reader releases an update which means due to some conflict said software can no longer view PDF's on this desktop, a critical feature for the use of the software. How will a new PC help ???? Who is going to set up the new PC ? Are they going to come from some magical fairyland and do it for free? What are the staff going to do while these new PCs are being set up ? Give them the day off paid, you have no other choice.

Also BTW I have no opinion on what price to charge, except that you should be sure you can make some money from it, sorry OP.

gary_bre

hi all

thank you all for your input on my query it has been very helpful to me.

gary

NullZer0

aidankkk wrote: »

We would offer all of the above, but it would be a yearly charge, not monthly.. And our engineers would have at least 7-15 years experiance.

I'm sure you engineers are very good but a key thing to consider here.
If the engineers were really "something else" the rates would be much, much higher. Experiance Experience is nothing ... I could say that I gained 3 years experience with computers while working in the cinema going to college.

What kind of experience?
What level of knowledge?

rolion

From recent experience,most companies are pulling off any maintenance contracts and they all go to charge per hour/per call.These contracts made sense when they are worth some moneys,now is no value tbh for both sides...

To summarise an answer to all of my 3600 viewers...is not what you pay is what you get ! If customer preffers to pay 1200 and then play games with their staff on local profile,please be so...as if you have 10 PCs or 10 Servers,if something goes down ,they want it kind of yesterday ! And as long they are paying through the nose for other maintenance services ,related to building or cars or others,why not pay me for my expertise ! ? ? ?

Re charges,it depends a lot of the requirements of the client and risks associated.

i can summarise what my client gets for these money but i'm on a public board so i don't want advertising...but there are people that are willing to pay these money.

regards.

longshotvalue

i can summarise what my client gets for these money but i'm on a public board so i don't want advertising...but there are people that are willing to pay these money.



But more than probably the bigger fees are paid simply because the client doesnt know its available for less, with the same quality or better..

longshotvalue

iRock wrote: »

I'm sure you engineers are very good but a key thing to consider here.
If the engineers were really "something else" the rates would be much, much higher. Experiance Experience is nothing ... I could say that I gained 3 years experience with computers while working in the cinema going to college.

What kind of experience?
What level of knowledge?

Ive worked in the IT Maintenance Sector for 12 years, and am a partner in a new firm for the last 2.. All of us would have extensive Windows IT Maintenance Experiance, along with various qualifications, like mcse VCP ccna etc..

ToxicPaddy

I can see the point to both sides of the argument here..

What it boils down to is how much a company will lose if its systems go down. That's what it should be measured by.

I've dealt with some small companies, 5 users on site, working away, if something goes down, the give me a call and I pop over to sort what the problem is, no contract, no 24x7 cover, all very simple.

We agreed on a set fee per hour and if the job was going to run into a few days work (upgrades etc) then it was a set fee. All very straight forward.

When they started to grow I recommended that they look for a bigger player in the market who could provide them with a better level of cover as I simply wasnt equipped to provide that at the time. I even helped them shop around and agree on someone.

Now they have access to someone on a phone at all times and can have an engineer onsite in less than 4 hours if required. Weekly checks are run as part of the contract and its all very well run. Sure it costs more but its worth it as they could lose a hell of a lot of business and money if their systems were down for a day or two.

Not every operator who charges €50 per hour is an operator, most are small single man operations who have less over heads and can offer the service cheaper but at the same time wouldnt have the resources to provide if the job was over a certain size or might not have the skillset if is was a specialist area, whereas a big company would have a pool of engineers with varying skillsets to call on when needed..

In the end it depends on the OP's requirements and budget

Tox

rolion

aidankkk wrote: »

i can summarise what my client gets for these money but i'm on a public board so i don't want advertising...but there are people that are willing to pay these money.



But more than probably the bigger fees are paid simply because the client doesnt know its available for less, with the same quality or better..

I kind of regretting of posting in here...and i'm wasting my time too arguing on not valid suppositions and not known facts !

Is like comparing Nissan Micra's with Mercs or BMW...is like walking in to a BMW showroom and rather than asking,when i'll have the car ready to drive,i have a business meeting or a chickie to impress ... you start asking how much is taking per gallon/per mile ! ! Wrong question, wrong market, wrong person...wrong car !

My regards and good luck in hunting the Micra's !! I'll stick with my stuff,at least i know what i'm doing,sorry,driving !

justsomebloke

rolion wrote: »

And as long they are paying through the nose for other maintenance services ,related to building or cars or others,why not pay me for my expertise ! ? ? ?

cause most of the time they won't need your level of expertise.


A more balanced support company will be able to allocate different levels of techs depending on the scenario and thus help reduce costs. If a computer needs to be reformatted all you need is a low level tech who will be paid less so doesn't cost as much. You don't need someone with 15 years experience who is charging you the same to tell you where the bcc field is in an email as he does when doing a disaster recovery of a dirty shutown on your exchange server.

So the right company will take this all into account realise that the majority of your problems won't need someone with lots of experience but will still be able to offer you that level of expertise if and when needed

BostonB

CptSternn wrote: »

A new Dell or HP desktop system is around €300-€400 with monitor.

If you pay €50 a month for maintenance, it would be cheaper to just buy a new PC every six months and replace it.

Or you could wait until there is an issue, then replace it instead of having anyone fix it.

Not that I would suggest this, but at those prices listed that is a scenario one could consider.

If someone buys a new machine, they may still need help from some to recover files, configure network, hardware, clean up a machine from Viruses.

So the cost is purely about cost of labour to fix something. I expect a lot of people who fix PC and computers at low cost are not covering their costs or making a profit. Simply because a lot of them start up and disappear very fast. Equally theres a market for high end support and another for low end. They are not directly comparably.

The other part you are paying for is response time. If a server goes down, and the business stops, then if you have no service agreement, you might end up waiting to get it fixed. But if you don't need that, kinda response, you don't need to pay it either.

Basically theres all kinds of support and often they are not directly comparable.

longshotvalue

rolion wrote: »

My regards and good luck in hunting the Micra's !! I'll stick with my stuff,at least i know what i'm doing,sorry,driving !

i dont only hunt micras, as you put it..

IT Maintenance is a relativaly low cost business, but far to many of the Companies have overheads that are way to big and not related to the core business.. Basically its a simple business, that relies on Customer interaction moreso than Technical Ability, which is easy to come by..