Let me start by saying that I have read through a bunch of the other posts about pricing for MSPs and I should always start with my cost and work up from there. I’ve got that part down!
I’m a one man shop (for now) looking to bring on managed service offerings.
What I was looking for advice on is a an edge case that I’m starting with.
Background:
I have a new client (~20-30 employee manufacturing company) who first contacted me to help them deal with some ransomware, long story short we identified the point of egress and restored everything from backups, which they had, surprisingly. Per usual, with new clients, I sent them a follow up email with a list of recommendations and the first thing they asked about if I could provide a managed AV. I don’t currently have that available as a service, but I’ve been poking around and talking to different providers, and I am adding that (to be clear: not looking for suggestions for solution providers).
My question is this: Does it make sense if I provide the managed AV at a steep discount, from what would be considered typical MSP pricing, if I still charged hourly for any work?
These are made up numbers here, but lets say that I decide that I want to charge $80/mo for managed services per user or device (AV/Patch management/RMM), but if they wanted just AV and hourly charges for work done, I charge a flat rate to install the client, say $10ish/computer and then a couple bucks per month per machine for AV. Any time they need work done, I charge them hourly for it and maybe throw in a light discount for having AV through me.
Does that make sense? Or am I throwing a dart at the MSP target, but only landing in the reseller ring?
The reason I’m asking this is because said client does a lot of work themselves to provide their own computer support. I believe that after a few months, the owner will come to an understanding that, even though my rates seem high to him, there is a lot of value to be had by paying an experienced professional to do it for you. So, in other words, I think that they’d eventually want to move to a complete managed service offering.
What are your thoughts and/or experiences?
