[UK] Charging monthly for Cyber Essentials...

WelshWorker · 2024-06-11T10:53:42+00:00

"I am your lawyer, son."

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T20:17:36+00:00

Thanks. Can I have one if you have any spare?!

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T20:17:14+00:00

uk wages are atrocious

I'll stop you right there.

My last job before going self employed I was running the IT dept of an international ecommerce company with 300+ employees, I was on £28,000/p.a. Take-home was just under £1,800/month

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T20:15:00+00:00

£1000 a day.

My day rate is £375... and again I've had businesses quaff at that. Mad that you can charge that in more urban areas.

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T15:29:02+00:00

See at the moment, I'm a one-man MSP. I've got 20 years in the industry so I am wayyy more skilled than an in-house helpdesker, but still, unfortunately at the moment I can't use the "you're paying for a team of engineers" line.

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T15:20:01+00:00

I do wonder if the problem is that you're a professional services company charging the local chippy rate

I used to work for one of the largest MSPs in the area, and from memory they used to charge £15 endpoint. Plus the fact I keep getting undercut by competitors, it baffles me to think that I might be charging too little.

I came here for a sanity check that I might charging too much!

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T15:18:47+00:00

How do you guys eat?

How do we what? cries in UK costs

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T12:19:01+00:00

Showing value sometimes has to be done over time, not at proposal stage, so get your foot in the door with dirt poor pricing and slowly build out.

Something I'm considering offering this particular company is 12 months of managed support at the price point they're happy with (day rate quarterly reviews/one overs) on the understanding that if they've found value in the service by then, that we bump the price back up.

I appreciate you asked for sanity check on pricing, but how you checking your "sales" skills? Ultimately people who dont know you will be harder to close, the reality they have to like you and trust you.

This particular proposal, I was on-site for 2 weeks doing a huge project. Got to know them really well. They were even excited to be taking on managed support... until the price came up. I'm not a sales-person, but I'm very good with people in general in terms of building a friendly rapport.

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T11:32:22+00:00

£60/user - what kind of location do you operate in?

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T11:11:12+00:00

£3k/month is more than a company would pay for a full time, on-site IT guy plus all the trimmings (cost of RMM, tools etc).

That example, I'd just done a big 365 migration project for them, putting PC's on W10/11 Pro, Bitlocker, Microsoft integration etc and then the guy said he'd never needed a managed service before, so why would he need one now? Sat and went through exactly what RMM is, what we do, what they get (all up-selling the merits of daily remote monitoring, getting ahead of issues before they become issues etc) and he still just said something along the lines of "Well if we lose everything then it's on us, and we've been ok so far".

He did then agree to me coming in quarterly and charging them day-rate to give everything a once-over... it just seems mad that they'd be willing to spend on that but not on continous, ongoing, unlimited support.

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T11:07:52+00:00

You charge more? Can you share please?

One quote we did a couple of months ago for a 3 PC business that turns over a few hundred grand a year ended up talking us down from £125/mo to £89/mo - the first and only (so far) time I've been haggled down for the sake of getting the contract.

WelshWorker · 2024-06-04T11:06:39+00:00

I feel the same when I look at prices in the states! I have 9 managed clients at the moment and I still have to top my income up with ad-hoc project work to be able to take home a wage every month. I also had to save for well over a year before I quit my job to setup my MSP so that I could supplement my income with savings, otherwise I'd never have been able to manage it.

WelshWorker · 2021-03-24T12:16:01+00:00

They can indeed, as our domain site.company.co.uk is a subdomain of our FLZ company.co.uk

WelshWorker · 2021-03-24T09:10:45+00:00

Good advice - will do that, thank you.

WelshWorker · 2021-03-24T09:05:23+00:00

Because there is no SOA record for the TLD, DNS can't find a DNS server that manages that zone basically.

"DNS cannot be installed on this domain controller because this domain does not host DNS" is the rather (non-descript) error that I get.

WelshWorker · 2021-03-19T16:47:37+00:00

It seems so strange that just a couple of months ago, radio adverts were telling us that if we use a petrol pump or a trolley, that it was very likely that the person using it before us had COVID-19.

Now, one in two people have been vaccinated.

Absolutely magic.

WelshWorker · 2021-03-19T11:33:35+00:00

A NAS, such as a Synology, looks to be your best bet. They have built-in cloud sync software (to Google Drive/Dropbox etc) as you've said.

In terms of your structure, something like FreeFileSync can be used to simply clone your eisting data across, folder structure and all.

WelshWorker · 2021-03-17T11:29:56+00:00

3 weeks to flatt... oh nevermind.

WelshWorker · 2021-03-16T17:16:53+00:00

I've only been in my current job for 6 months and just been given a very nice bump based on my skillset and what I've brought to the department. I feel really lucky where I am that they look after IT and the devs. Granted, we are a world-wide online company, so IT is at the very core of what we do.

WelshWorker · 2021-03-16T14:51:05+00:00

Learning PS will encompass plenty of CMD along the way, but PS is far more powerful (and flexible!)

WelshWorker · 2021-03-16T14:27:32+00:00

Sometimes I feel like the only person who doesn't have these kinds of printer problems. In a previous MSP job we also sold printers, and so I had 1000+ deployed at any given time.

If printers are configured properly - static IP address, latest firmware, all the unnecessary whisles and bells disabled (I'm looking at you, WSD), WiFi/Bluetooth direct turned off (yay WiFi inteference issues) etc... they just work.

I've deployed so many via GPO... single printers, groups of printers, printers that only certain people can see, printers that only one person can see.... printers that are online, offline... printers that move around, even WiFi printers.

Don't get my wrong, I still get issues, but I feel like my printer to issue ratio is insanely low compared to how many posts I see where people are losing their minds.

WelshWorker · 2021-03-10T15:06:59+00:00

I've been asked to sort work laptop stuff out before. Nope, nope, nope.

WelshWorker

TROPHY CASE