Support agreements

[AttitudeAdjuster]

Hi folks,

I am about to quote for the support of an application I have developed and at the moment have no idea as to what would be the ball-park figure for support. Naturally, as I wrote this I am aware of it's nature.

The app itself is a web based front end to a DB that logs employee attendance. Pretty simple stuff, just 3 or 4 tables and about a dozen PHP pages.

Is support done by the month/year or hours spent or some combination of the two like a certain amount of hours free then pay for extra time?

The hosting will be done at the client site and as I am fully occupied in another job I would like to do all support remotely. I see no problems with that aspect.

Thanks.

[malvolio]

Most of the deals I've use work on a percentage of the selling price (or annual licence fee), usually 15%-20%. You would need to get some proper Ts&Cs to cover the scope of the support though - you would want something more for a rewrite for a diffent database structure, for example

[madhippy]

where I work - consultancy type of thing - most of our support contracts are based on the customer buying a set number of days per year ... eg. a customer buys 15 days per year ... they can spend it on changes or bug fixes as they see fit ... might not work for you ... but it proves popular with customers as they get 'something' for their moneys worth ...

[DaveB]

Most support agreements I've dealt with as a customer rather than a supplier have been in the range of 10-20% of the original purchase price per year. This would normally include minor version updates and bug fixes / patches as they become available.

Some suppliers will include major version updates in the cost. Others won't but will support older versions.

[AttitudeAdjuster]

Hi,

Thanks for the pointers guys. I quoted something in the 15 - 20% range which went down well. So that is a good start as I was warned by another business associate that support can be a drain on resources.

Cheers!