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Hello fellow spiceheads.

My business has been offering remoteIT services now for about 2 years. I currently have 5 contracts running for some very small businesses in my area but I’d like to expand - the issue is that I don’t think I’m charging enough money for my services.

At present I’m offering a per-device contract at $35/month (25 for home users).

I’m using a corporate license of Teamviewer and their ITBrain monitoring service to keep up with the goings on with each machine (antivirus status, SMART status, etc) as well as general maintenance. I also provide up to 4 hours of “call time” for each device per month (no one has ever reached that yet - few have come close)

While the corporate license has proven to be profitable at my current investment - I’d wonder if there are other services I should add that would up the value to the customer (and future customers) and therefore increase the amount I should charge, and whether or not you feel that the charges incurred are reasonable.

I’m the only one in the area offering a similar service (my local competition tried but failed to implement something that AVG produces). However, I am in a small town in rural Georgia - so prices here are pretty low when compared to other areas. (I charge 65/hr for on site work and as far as I know I’m the highest priced person in the area).

Your ideas and tips would be appreciated.

EDIT:

Possibly important info - I’m trying to enlarge my client base because I’ve moved from being a part time business owner to now being full time after leaving a government sector contracting job. So, now this is my sole source of income and I’d like to see this become a larger chunk of the income for my business as it is more steady than general hardware repair.

@TeamViewer

8 Spice ups
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That sounds excessive, I’d do that per site, no per computer.

I’d say $50 per computer at least for businesses and $35 for home.

Then , I’d push real hard to mainly get business. I would not go smaller than at least 10 computers per customer.

It’s tough. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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Does that $35/month include monitoring and 4 hrs of support? That’s very low.

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I agree with both Neally and AceOfSpades. I understand you are rural but computers are only becoming more necessary for business. Maybe offer a backup solution for an additional charge? Manage routers and APs? Sell AV to them?

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Yes - but the support is rarely, if ever, used for 95% of the customers especially after the first month when their systems are up and running the way they should be (generally this is something I sell to new customers who didn’t have previous IT support or who were underserved and who had systems that were having issues, like viruses - etc)It’s more like a peace of mind offering than a need that anyone seems to have at this point.

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We charge in 15min segments for RA, but a bit more than that. Basically a client can call or email for free up to a reasonable limit, and the timer starts when a remote desktop session starts. They can buy a block of hours, but many just pay for time used.

Just come off a call (since my last Spiceworks post) for a strange situation where no images or css were loading on webpages. Turns out it’s the ISP.

Nowadays, RA makes up more than 50% of support charges. One of the issues is that it has to be done mainly on trust, I can’t prove that the time logged was actually spent, as one can if a site visit is signed for. That said, it’s a lot cheaper for the client and it often means a fault resolution in a few minutes instead of a few hours.

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That is low even for the Akron area. MSP’s here are rocking around $65 per device on the low end with discounts for larger customers or multiple devices once you hit a certain level. Don’t support home users at all if you can get away with it. Focus the time spent on those in marketing to other businesses and leave the home support to people smart and tech savvy nephews.

1 Spice up