How to cost yearly support?

[pr1]

Retainer is the way, I had one for £2K a month for up to 20 hours a month support , extra hours charged extra

One year I had zero calls

Long since finished now


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was that as an IPSE director?

[GhostofTarbera]

Retainer is the way, I had one for £2K a month for up to 20 hours a month support , extra hours charged extra

One year I had zero calls

Long since finished now


Sent from my iPhone using Contractor UK Forum

[Paralytic]

Assuming this is not a full time support role, as jamesbrown suggested, I'd quote this on a use-it-or-lose it retainer of <roughly expected number of hours required per month> * <your hourly rate>, with clauses written in that additional time will be charged at the same rate each month. You can play with this and have an lower rate for your retainer and a higher rate for additional hours (or vice versa).

If the number of hours when you're actually needed is expected to be low, you could also quote it as a low monthly fixed retainer (for being on-call) and then a higher per hour charge for any work you do do. This might be more palatable for your client.

The exact model should be determined by what level of support they require.

The client will likely want an SLA that you'll have to consider. Assuming you've also got other clients, can you just drop that work and attend to, eg, a DB being down, or will you give them, eg, a 4 hour SLA.

Also make it clear whether this is just 5 x 8 support (weekdays, 9am - 5pm) or whether they want out-of-hours or weekend support.

[jamesbrown]

Not sure whether there's a usual way, but I would generally sell time in chunks (use it or lose it). I guess it depends on how well you and the client can estimate the actual time spent. I have no idea what time would be consumed, in practice, maintaining db servers. However, unless it's clearly full time, if I got a quote like yours, as a client, I think I'd be concerned about the large upfront cost for unspecified gain. Better to chunk things out and sell smaller blocks of time, use it or lose it, IMO, with an option to buy more under the same conditions. In my experience, there tends to be a lot of "lose it" because it's a comfort blanket for the client, but your type of support sounds like more hard work/grind, so I don't know...

[quackhandle]

A tech company I have done a few bits of work for have asked what my costs would be for support/admin for a given number of db servers for a tender they are putting in.

Not really done this before, but would it be a simple case of using day rate x 5 x 52? Most of the work will be done remotely/working from home.

qh