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Monthly fee? Tough call. Is the fee supposed to cover x hours of work? From: Tigran K [mailto:tigr...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 1:16 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Managed service Thanks for the reply David. Two questions. Where is the archive? The company I'm working with wants to do a monthly fee type of a thing. For general support. Is this common? Do you know how much is reasonable for a monthly deal? We have a hourly rate set for projects. Thanks --T On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 6:39 AM, David Lum <david....@nwea.org<mailto:david....@nwea.org>> wrote: There are many threads on this if you search the archives, but I love this topic, so... Rate: It depends where you are. Portland, OR Metro IT consultants charge between $80-$125/hr. In fact I'm the only one I know below $100/hr, granted I don't know that many others, like three. Check the local competition and be aware of your differentiation from Geek squad, etc. will be the server side of things, so keep in mind they might consider that type of service and pricing as a barometer. Write up an SLA / expectations. Know what you're willing to take on and emphasize quality to your clients vs. number of clients - it's OK to say no to potential clients, as well as let this client know what you support and what you don't. If possible, set them up with Log Mein or equivalent (I have Log Mein on a system per client, then remote to their other systems from there) so you can do timely remote work. I also charge less for remote work vs. onsite ($55/hr. vs. $80/hr. onsite), and have it identified up front that emergency calls/work is additional rate. Agree on how often they can expect you onsite (once/mo. for patching maybe, and one other time/mo. perhaps). I also managed to work in a fixed monthly fee in agreement to respond to Help Desk tickets in-between my onsite days - previously I would only work on them the once day/week I was onsite, the fee is for me to work on them within 24hrs of being submitted. That fee offsets some work done that I wouldn't otherwise bill them for, like 5-10 min remote fixes that would take as much time to write up the invoice for as it does to perform the fix. Set expectations first, saves a lot of frustration later. From: Tigran K [mailto:tigr...@gmail.com<mailto:tigr...@gmail.com>] Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 11:35 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Managed service I'm starting an IT service side gig. The place has about 10 workstations and one server. The server is used for Exchange, AD, and fileshare. One of my tasks will be to migrate exchange to a provider. My tasks will be to provide general IT services. Help desk kind of stuff and server management. What's a going rate for this kind of service? Thanks ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin