Monthly Billing - Preventative IT Support

[Tigris]

Hi guys,


currently looking at expanding my IT support services and offering a maintenance plan for my clients.

Thinking remotely access devices once a month (Maybe once a quarter is enough?) to perform Microsoft updates, manufacturer updates, check for junk, make sure things are optimized etc and charge a set amount each month?

I know B2B IT support is a different price plan compared to domestic. Sometimes as much as £150 per month per PC but I know that includes so many hours of support if required.

Will have to send out an email to all my clients to advertise this service then setup the direct debit and get things rolling.

Not too sure on what to charge per month especially with the majority of my clients being domestic?

 

[IanSuth]

Before you do it think this through and do the sums

If a home user loses use of their PC, ho hum a bit of a pain

If a business user loses use they can't make money or worse it might cost them loads.

If you are going to take responsibility for updates etc and they get a virus/ransomware attack or even just a failed HDD not properley backed up - they will come looking at you. The grumpy SME MD with little IT skills will be looking for someone to blame and someone to rant at/bill.

Make sure your contract is watertight as to what you will do and what you are responsible for plus the limit of your liability - ensure you have any professional indemnity insurance you need and read it's small print. I know for example if you are going to have remote access you need to leave certain ports open that otherwise you might have shut off - if one of those ends up being the method of attack....

 

[Tigris]

Before you do it think this through and do the sums

If a home user loses use of their PC, ho hum a bit of a pain

If a business user loses use they can't make money or worse it might cost them loads.

If you are going to take responsibility for updates etc and they get a virus/ransomware attack or even just a failed HDD not properley backed up - they will come looking at you. The grumpy SME MD with little IT skills will be looking for someone to blame and someone to rant at/bill.

Make sure your contract is watertight as to what you will do and what you are responsible for plus the limit of your liability - ensure you have any professional indemnity insurance you need and read it's small print. I know for example if you are going to have remote access you need to leave certain ports open that otherwise you might have shut off - if one of those ends up being the method of attack....

Fair points. Just had a few issues lately with clients and it was lack of updates.

Problem I have currently is I am working on my own so if I went away for a week I don't think I could get away from the phone with clients paying monthly for support.

The idea was it's a maintenance plan to do the general things such as updates, firmware updates, malware checks etc and to put in the agreement anything else such as "My Outlook stopped working" is a different issue. I can see clients paying £10 a month for me to do the general checks then saying "while you are on my printer doesn't work". Then that's billable at the remote support rate.

 

[Ozzy]

I agree with the words of caution from @IanSuth ; in a past life I run a small ISP and then ended up taking over support for my customers and before I knew it I was on the phone 24/7 taking through getting Exchange working, etc. I'd never go back there, them were dark days!

Businesses will pay a lot more than domestic, to be honest I'd recommend leaving the domestic market as soon as you can. They just don't pay a fair rate for your time, you mentioned £10 a month - unless it is something automated I wouldn't go near that because as soon as you've powered up your PC you're running at below minimum wage (or a loss). Anyway, business will also have higher expectations as Ian mentioned, but are also 'generally' much more professional to deal with too and work much more reasonable hours.

Look at patch management automation tools, for example we use Jamf to manage all our Mac's in the business (we are a Mac business, don't have any Windows systems). All AV is pushed out and updated remotely, insist on those tools which means you can automate a lot of things. Same with backups, and then have monitors to alert you when something doesn't run as expected or behave as expected.
Then you can go on a week's holiday without worrying

Paying hundreds a month for a maintenance arrangement is not unusual. Not sure what we pay, about £1,300 or something like that for 20 hour blocks off the top of my head but that may be a few hundred out.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

I think your lower price approach for regular checks (more than £10! £25+) and then additional for anything else is a great idea, as long as your additional prices are clear and reasonable (get out the string).

Many micro/mini SMEs understand the need for support but don't like the idea of high prices to pay for nothing (based on not having an issue).

As mentioned - water tight contract is required.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

You seem to have a masochistic streak when it comes to providing IT support for B2C. Let's be honest, most consumers couldn't care less about maintenance, let alone preventive maintenance. And doing it remotely? It's even worse. All of that should be automated, but the catch is that quality automated software doesn't come cheap. Expect to shell out around £20 per seat per month for a decent solution that covers remote access, patching, updates, and decent security software. Plus, backups can be prohibitively expensive, whether done locally or in the cloud.

Frankly, it feels like you're late to the party by a few decades. Modern operating systems already come equipped with built-in security features and automatic patching. Even Windows has automatic updates enabled by default, with forced updates if Microsoft detects a security risk. Features like Storage Sense help to automatically declutter, and with more people using tablets and mobile phones, PCs are becoming less relevant. Add to that the abundance of free, high-quality tutorials on YouTube and the tendency for people to rely on friends rather than professionals, and you've got a challenging landscape.

But perhaps the biggest threat looming on the horizon is the rise of AI-powered solutions that will seamlessly integrate into operating systems, taking care of tasks that were once your bread and butter. And the scary part? They could become the norm in less than five years, leaving you scrambling to find your place in the new tech ecosystem.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Would something like Tactical RMM help the remote management?

 

[Russ Michaels]

Domestic clients generally don't have the money to pay monthly plans, so it has to be cheap, here is what I do for a few of my small business/sole trader clients for a small monthly fee.
I use Action1 to perform automated patching and updates and do vulnerability scans, check disk space etc,
Reports go directly to the client.
I provide Bitdefender gravityzone for security.

this is passive income as it's all automated.
Action1 is free for 100 devices, Bitdefender is £1 per month/per device from the likes of pax8, there are also other options for the same sort of price.
If you want a better RMM with more features, pulseway is also a cheap option.

I monitor the systems and let clients know if there is any issues which need addressing, which is charged per hour if I do it, or they can just do it themselves.

 

[Tigris]

Domestic clients generally don't have the money to pay monthly plans, so it has to be cheap, here is what I do for a few of my small business/sole trader clients for a small monthly fee.
I use Action1 to perform automated patching and updates and do vulnerability scans, check disk space etc,
Reports go directly to the client.
I provide Bitdefender gravityzone for security.

this is passive income as it's all automated.
Action1 is free for 100 devices, Bitdefender is £1 per month/per device from the likes of pax8, there are also other options for the same sort of price.
If you want a better RMM with more features, pulseway is also a cheap option.

I monitor the systems and let clients know if there is any issues which need addressing, which is charged per hour if I do it, or they can just do it themselves.

Hi Russ,

Many thanks for that.

Do you mind if I send over a private message?

 

[Michael Barnes]

I see nothing wrong with what you're proposing but I do think you may struggle to get much traction with it if your main target is consumers. Consumers are more likely to just wait until it goes wrong and pay £50-£60 to get it fixed, rather than paying £120 per year which doesn't even cover repairs.
However, SMB customers may be more wiling to sign up to have their systems monitored and maintained for a relatively small sum. Just make sure that the customer is fully aware that this is NOT a support contract and that support and repairs are an ad-hoc service with no guaranteed response or resolution time.

Modern operating systems such as Windows 10/11 rarely have issues installing updates unless there's some other underlying issue so you need to find a USP, something which the customer will want and see benefit from.

If you're a one man operation, be careful offering anything which customers may need support on such as backups, antivirus etc. Customers will expect to be able to reach you at least during normal office hours, so you'll need to have someone to cover you for holidays etc, unless you can find a supplier which will allow customers to go direct for product support.