For small-to-medium sized businesses, the budget is mostly a concern. And for that reason many business owners/managers try to tackle their IT themselves, as much as they can. It’s normal, we all do that when our business is growing or not making enough profit, we try to save expense wherever we can. Below, we have tried to answer how Managed IT services pricing!
Need to say but still, Information Technology has become such an integral part of every business that it’s wise to make best use of it. Using Managed IT Services is a step forward to optimize your use of IT.
Let us get to the actual point now. Do you have any of the following questions in addition to the Managed IT services pricing worries?
We are not trying to dodge your question.
Actually, it’s not so straightforward to give you Managed IT service pricing. There are many things that determine the actual cost. And you have many options you can choose from. We aim to help you make the right decision that you won’t regret.
If you are here reading this, chances are that you are facing or have faced some IT problems. You need solution that would work for your budget and your needs. Sure, that’s the aim for both of us. We want you to pay only as much as you need.
How much you really should be paying for IT services?
What’s minimum you need and how can you get just enough services for an affordable cost?
You don’t like to expose your budget worries and still need a company who cares without explicitly saying it?
Read on.
If you don’t know IT more than using your home PC, you should understand that you need help for your IT. Why? Let us explain bit in detail. We will try to keep it non-technical as much as we can do.
Top Managed IT services pricing models:
- Monitoring Only: Includes network monitoring and alerting services.
- Per–user: You pay fixed monthly fee per user.
- Per–device: You pay fixed monthly fee per device.
- Tiered: Offers different tiers of bundled service packages.
- All you can eat: Fixed monthly fee for all remote and on-site support.
- A La Carte: Based on discrete services that focus on your specific IT needs.
As your business grows, IT is mostly oversight until something breaks, or you have a breach or a malware problem. Then, you have to decide who is going to manage your network, applications, devices, train staff, and protect you from outside threats.
How do you go about finding the person, or the business that has the right technical expertise for your business? You begin by asking other friends or partners who they use and what their costs are. But inevitably, you will find the costs are all over the place. Why?
Well, it’s because providers of Managed IT Services have to be flexible enough with their services and pricing to meet the needs of variety of small businesses with smaller budgets and then also be able to meet the needs of medium-sized businesses with either a different or larger range of needs.
What are IT Services for Business needs?
Few next steps needed to know before you can understand managed IT services pricing as below. This explains what normally goes in the Managed IT Services pricing package.
List of some of the most used IT services for business needs:
Desktop Support
Different businesses use different applications for their needs. Most businesses use MicrosoftⓇ OfficeⓇ or other standard business applications. When you or your employee needs help, it is best to have same IT Company server you to keep productivity high. You can choose to receive services to match your business hours, extended hours, or even 24/7.
This service is used all businesses and many use just standard Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo etc. rather than your own branded email e.g. name@yourdomain.com. It works for businesses with no branding need and no plan to grow big enough to have any importance of their brand. But we strongly recommend you use your own branded email. With your domain, it may appear to be something simple too, but actually there’s a lot of administration (adding and removing users), configuration (company signatures), and training (applications or devices).
Anti-Virus/Anti-malware
Viruses and malware have become an important aspect of business IT. There are many ways these harmful piece of codes enter business IT systems and can cause small to huge damage to the business, impacting almost every facet of a business; Finance, Brand Reputation, Productivity, Client Relations etc. Unfortunately, most businesses underestimate the threat until they become the victim of it or they come to know about an incident within close circle of businesses. And many businesses aren’t that lucky to learn lesson from others experiences. Once hit by the threat, many times it’s extremely costly to get back up and going.
Network Maintenance
Every business needs to connect to the internet. And also need to connect devices to each other, so that basic services like printing, file sharing etc. can be shared and effectively utilized. Nowadays, many business applications also require access to the internet and need reliable connection to other devices on the network too. It’s important to keep business operations optimized and to maintain productivity, application and networks are affected by many factors, like speed, performance, flexibility etc. and so, it needs periodic maintenance and optimization.
Website Maintenance
Most businesses need to have their website. So that, their business can be visible to the world and the prospective client can get to your business easily. It’s highly recommended to keep your business website best looking and well maintained.
Technology Purchases
Over time your business is going to need to purchase software, hardware, and services in technology to help your staff be more productive and help your business be more competitive. It will be important for someone in your organization to be on top of these decisions by vetting partners appropriately and making smart purchases to meet short term and long term business objectives.
Data Storage and Backups
Almost every business now needs to store their data on their IT systems. Different businesses have different requirement for Data storage and backup. If your business has valuable data on your IT systems, it’s important to have Data storage strategy. In case of an unfortunate event of data loss, you need to have Data backed up and be able to restore it easily and rapidly. Without proper Data policy, there are many possibilities of Data being lost or stolen.
Compliance
Many businesses fall under the category regulated by government agencies for their compliance to the required standards. Client data protection has become a big issue due to ongoing Cyber threats and many data breach incidents. Government agencies are getting stricter in their policies due to the increased potential of Data breach. And so, it’s very important that you are following the rules to the best of the listed requirements.
Security
With any technology in a business there is always a need for some level of security. This can be as simple as user security levels or access to documents, offices, or your building inside your organization. Or, it may be to protect you from outside intruders using a firewall. In any case, you will need someone that can plan, administer, and continually secure your property, assets, and data.
SPAM Filtering
SPAM or unsolicited email can be a nuisance and a productivity killer. Having a filter in place to block unwanted emails may seem like such a trivial addition to the technology of your business, but there are configuration and continuous updates to keep out unwanted communications.
Users
When it comes to technology, which manages your staff when they come on board and ensures they have access to all of the right hardware, software or technology privileges? There is a significant amount of preparation, administration, and training with every employee. If you aren’t planning for this, you should.
Training
Most of the time, training is overlooked as it seems very simple. You can tell staff to read the online manual or video for new hardware or software purchases. Does anyone do this?
Labor
As your business grows, you will need to start investing in IT personnel. Adding new members to your team can be expensive when accounting for their pay, benefits, tools, and space in your business.
Hosting
Most businesses today host many of their applications, documents, and websites using servers. Whether they are hardware or software based, they constantly need to be monitored and maintained to keep your business running efficiently.
Details on Managed IT Services Pricing Models:
Monitoring Only Pricing Model:
This model puts the MSP in charge of network monitoring and alerting services. In this scenario, several different service levels can be employed. For example, an SMB-focused offering that provides operating system and software application patch management, antivirus/anti-malware updates, disk optimization and backup monitoring for a flat fee per month. This allows the MSP to bill for additional remediation activities identified through monitoring, as needed.”
Per–user Pricing Model:
Per-user pricing models charge a flat fee per end user per month and cover IT support on all user devices. While this straightforward pricing model can help cut out some of the guesswork, it has the potential to put the MSP in charge of a lot of devices. For instance, if a user has a company desktop, a company laptop, a company smartphone and a company tablet, the flat per-user fee covers the IT support of all of these devices. And so, the price per-user is usually higher. Depending on hardware and software used by your users, typical pricing ranges from $75 – $200 per month per user. This pricing model is easy for budgeting purposes and forecasting because as your business grows, you can easily approximate the added cost for each added full-time employee.
Per–device Pricing Model:
Another option is a charge per device. The premise is to develop a flat fee for each type of device that is supported in a customer environment. Typical pricing ranges from $10 – $300 per month per device. For instance, depending on make, model and year of manufacture, a basic per-device pricing model might designate a flat fee of up to $79 per desktop/laptop, $300 per server, $99 per multi-user network printer and $99 per managed network device.”
Tiered Pricing Model:
One of the most popular pricing models among businesses, the tiered pricing model sells bundled packages of IT services that increase in price as more services are added. A tiered pricing model provides you the flexibility you need to implement a comprehensive managed IT services solution. You can buy bundle of remote and/or on-site support hours per month that can be used for whatever IT services your business needs. You can bundle support hours to match business hours or 24/7 or as you see fit.
All you can eat:
In this pricing model where you pay fixed price per month for all the chosen services. The important point to remember in this price model is that it works best when you know all the services you need right at the start of your contract. The contract can include services and SLA to match your needs. You can choose to receive service as you like, within your business hours, 24/7, or as you see fit. Adding an additional service(s) midway through your contract may cost your extra on top of fixed monthly price. And depending on the services being added, it may impact your existing contract too.
A La Carte:
Those services could include discrete services, e.g. disaster recovery, managed backup, patch management etc.. A la carte pricing gives customers the ability to select and pay for just the services they need. They can also select multiple offerings to create a customized package of managed IT services.
They may even provide extra items added and offer them to you a la carte (menu of added services) or one customized proposal all bundled together. Getting one, flat based fee, whether monthly, quarterly or annually, makes it easy to understand and compare pricing to the other models or compare it to costs of hiring additional personnel. There’s no price range for this since each provider will provide a proposal to support your business.
Hiring Your Own IT Personnel vs. Hiring IT Company:
Above list is still just a drop in the ocean of IT Services for Business. Every business is different and has different IT requirements. You or Your IT personnel, being an individual, will always have less knowledge of what’s available in the market. And then out of all available options, what would fit best for your requirements and be the best cost effective for your use, are just some of the questions that still would need to be answered.
Among many other big factors, when you hire your own IT personnel, you are responsible for the cost his ongoing education/certification and other costs to keep him up-to-date with latest technologies, threats, trends, updates etc. and year-end bonuses, perks and backup personnel when on paid holidays just add to the already high cost.
When you are immersed in your business and your IT personnel busy managing your day-to-day IT management, it’s difficult for one person to take the best decision. But an IT company, that has been working with wide variety of clients for many years and in constantly updated with latest technologies, certainly has more knowledge about what’s available and out of that what would work best for your business requirement. We can guide you understand what IT services you should use and what would work best for your business environment. And we can keep you up-to-date with constant market research and changing trends in the business IT strategies.
Knowing the full list of IT services your business needs, you can get the pricing that your business maybe paying. And then, you can decide what is best for your company; hire your own IT personnel or Hire IT Company to provide you Managed IT Services.
Managed IT Service Provider (MSPs) plays an important role in your business. MSP provides IT experts, 24/7 support, Oversight to IT performance, Network Operation Centers (NOCs), Auditing, Reporting, IT planning and much more. All for pricing at a fraction of what it would cost for your business to try and provide these services by your Own IT personnel. Experienced, Dependable, Reliable, and Up-to-date IT Company can earn you better return on investment (ROI).
Feel free to Contact XllenTech Solutions to discuss more details.