This is an important question. Not many MSP’s themselves would answer this for fear of exposing their prices. Or maybe they would… but regardless It’s also a tricky question because every business owner is different so it’s a little bit hard to answer because there’s an awful lot of variables. Right now, the way most managed service providers find a price is on a per employee basis. This means you hire a new employee your monthly contract is going to go up by that fee and those fees range depending on the provider. A good rule of thumb starting point is about $150 per employee. If you do that quick math and you have 20 employees, then you’re probably about $3,000 per month for a managed service agreement. Might be a little bit higher little bit lower but most providers need to do a bit of a network discovery and understand the technology you’re using and where that technology is used how many sites you are using. Once they have refined that down for the ends up being with in that ballpark.
Is That a Good Price?
For some business yes, if you compare that amount that’s the cost of a mid-range employee that you have in your staff… it’s a sweet deal. The MSP will come with 24/7 support, antivirus, and backups. Covering all the solutions so that you don’t have to worry about technology. For example, when using break fix you must buy all those extra add on options up front of that labor time. It also depends on the business and the business owner. If they see technology as a strategy and something that will help leverage and grow your business. You’re going to be more open to a managed service provider and paying that cost.
I Don’t See Technology as anything BUT an Expense…
You might be more comfortable using a break-fix provider so that you’re only spending when you absolutely must. You want to stretch out computers for longer. If your business model doesn’t require technology as being a business strategy it might work. So that’s something that we can’t really answer for you. It all depends on your own business, your own culture, and how you already leverage technology. Deciding on how important technology is to your business is key.
It’s a big choice to make to switch to an MSP. You don’t just have the one option. You have many different avenues to take. You can read about which option might be right for you here.
If you want to watch Serge from Skycomp Solutions talk about what the option you have are, you can follow the link here to our YouTube playlist. This has four episodes of Serge speaking to different options you have and giving you all the details.