On our website in the past we have talked about what are managed IT services and briefly discusses how much you should be paying for them. Today we will go into more detail on how much managed IT services cost, how the fees are typically structured and what you can expect if you hire a managed service provider to look after your IT Infrastructure.
Costs of managed IT Services explained.
Just like buying a car, there are going to be many variables that affect the cost of managed IT services. The location to where you are outsourcing your services will play a role in the cost of the services, for example, Indian or Philipeano managed IT services will more than likely be cheaper than outsourcing to Canada.
The level of service that you require and the number of stations or users will also come into the equation.
Per-user pricing
Some tech support companies will provide their services on a cost per user pricing model. The more users your company employs the more you will be billed for per month. This is a very adaptive pricing model as your tech support will grow as your business and profits do.
The downside of pricing per user is that not every user will need tech support every month. Therefore your budget is being used up in case anything goes wrong rather than if something goes wrong.
Per-device pricing
Another common way of pricing tech support is by the number of devices your company use. A device could be a laptop, desktop, mobile phone, tablet, server or anything else that needs monitoring and maintaining.
Per–device pricing can be a good option if you are on a budget. You can put the tech support on the most business-critical devices while leaving the not so important devices if there isn’t enough budget to cover them all.
Pricing by hour
Some tech support companies will price per hour and will generally sell you a block of hours per month for support. This is a useful way of pricing if you want to keep your bill predictable every month.
Traditional pricing models
Traditionally IT support was charged in a break/fix model whereas the name suggests something would break and someone would then have to come out to the business and fix the problem.
However, this was causing businesses to have critical parts of their system down for hours at a time and depending on the size of a business this could cost them thousands of dollars. The problem with the break-fix model is that the business and IT support companies goals don’t align. The business for example wants a well-oiled machine to run efficiently while the IT support company wants it to break so they have more work.
Managed services on the other hand align with the business and its goals because they will also want an efficient network as they get paid to keep the system running efficiently. When hiring a managed service provider you will sign an SLA or service level agreement so certain conditions have to be met such as how long a problem will take to fix or how long it will take an engineer to look at the problem.
As you can see in the managed services model it is in everyone’s best interest to keep everything running as smooth as possible.
Clear pricing for managed IT services
Whichever pricing model you decide on you should make sure that there are no hidden fees and you should also make sure what is actually covered under the option that you go for. When signing up for IT support be sure to view your service level agreement before committing to a tech support company otherwise you may not get what you thought you were going to.
Your service level agreement will map out exactly what you are paying for, what the tech support company agrees too and how they should manage your support. You must understand the details in your service level agreement so you get exactly what you pay for.
Are IT Services worth the price?
If you are going from having no IT support to paying a few thousand dollars a month, managed IT services prices can come at a shock to some business owners. After all, it is a lot of money, but with that said the cost of downtime could be so much worse.
Let’s just look at one area of computing which is cyber security. If you have an unsecured network and your systems are breached and you become locked out of your systems by hackers you could end up being ransomed for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Add to the fact that most businesses who suffer a cyber attack go out of business within 6 months then you can soon see the value in managed IT services.
You don’t even have to look at it from a disaster point of view either. We all work with computers daily and we know how temperamental they can be. If your computer system is stopping you from doing your job then the time it takes for one employee to be disrupted could be costing you more than the price it would take to hire a managed service provider.
How much would managed IT services cost your business?
Now you know some of the variables that are used to come up with the pricing when it comes to managed services you can work out the best solution for your business. If you would like a no-obligation quote for your business please get in touch and we can help.
Firewall Technical have helped many businesses in the Ottawa area with their managed services and our IT experts can talk you through the best solutions for your business.