Site Maintenance costs & retainers

creospace · Mar 3, 2006

All these co web designers on here I wondered do you charge maintenance fees on a monthly basis or a retainer for regular clients to pay?

How do you treat clients who regularly use your services for whatever reason, I don't mean lots of sites but upkeep etc, little titivations here and there etc?

And what constitutes a small change if you offer 'free small changes'?

Do you have a minimum charge?

Also with hosting do you take blame if a host is poorly performing or say it's down to the client to speak to the host with regard to their hosting account?

Gary

BlackBerryUK · Mar 3, 2006

we tend to charge by the hour when it comes to maintenance stuff...

creacom · Mar 3, 2006

To be honest it all depends on the client and the amount of chages and updates they preview ( if possible ) to do.

When we send out a quote initially we include a few annual updates.

There we have just finished a site for a printer who will need to update his special offers every month but he prefers to pay for this on a monthly basis.

We dont charge for the smaller jobs like adding links and that sort of thing. Then again sometimes as a freebie i throw in some updates and this is appreciated by the client.

With regards to the host, again it can be played in two ways. If you help the client choose and include the price for this in the initial invoice then of course there is a level of responsibility to take. But its really important to get on writing at some point that this is a 3rd party who is doing this and there is a risk. And thats another reason to not take the cheapest hosting possible and go with someone that is reliable.

Jacqui

creospace · Mar 3, 2006

Does anyone charge a monthly fee in exchange for gauranteed service levels?

Gary

creospace · Mar 3, 2006

This is odd, this forum is crawling with fellow designers and no one really can add anything to this thread?

Gary :shock:

Jayne · Mar 3, 2006

creospace said:
This is odd, this forum is crawling with fellow designers and no one really can add anything to this thread?

Gary :shock:

They don't want you to pinch there secrets :lol:

Why not do a poll or survey on it?

Jayne

creacom · Mar 3, 2006

creospace said:
Does anyone charge a monthly fee in exchange for gauranteed service levels?

Gary

A monthly fee for that the website works correctly or for updates ?

Jacqui

creospace · Mar 4, 2006

gauranteed service levels?

Well if you are busy an existing client might have to wait say a couple of weeks to get there changes done.

creospace · Mar 4, 2006

They don't want you to pinch there secrets Laughing

Why not do a poll or survey on it?

Jayne

Yeha funny isn't it , nobody likes talking about money

I'm interested as i'm not sure i'm charging enough, and wanted a feel for the market rate for changes and charges or service standards etc.

Gary

DuaneJackson · Mar 4, 2006

Most of the stuff we do involves an admin panel for updates.

We charge an additional 20% if they don't host with us (although this is sold as a 20% discount if they do(. I much prefer to work on my own server when intelligent 404s, etc are needed.

We accept no liabilty for performance issues if hosted elsehwere - totally up to the client to deal with the host.

We fix any problems that arise within 3 months of the completion date. Anything else is supposedly charged for, but if it's minor then we usually do it free.

HTH!

Search

Search

Site Maintenance costs & retainers

creospace

BlackBerryUK

creacom

creospace

creospace

Jayne

creacom

creospace

creospace

DuaneJackson

Similar threads

Latest Articles