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White label OpenVZ management...
I provide white label hosting for a few people and one of my old clients just came back wanting me to manage things for him again. He was almost getting free service in the past and insists I'm trying to rip him off now with my new quote. I'm not going to say how much I quoted him, but I'd like some opinions on what you think would be a fair monthly price for something like this:
- Xeon 5420 w/ 16GB RAM and 1 Gbit port
- OpenVZ installation and management with installation of any control panel you want
- 60 second checks on uptime with proactive reboots if needed
- Unlimited support tickets with a 24 hour response/resolution guarantee
He doesn't pay for anything. The server, control panel, monitoring, etc... that's all taken care of by me. He pays me one lump amount for everything each month.
What's a fair amount to charge someone for what is basically running their entire back-end for them?
Comments
400 a month.
Though I could find cheaper with likely equivalent support, considering that you can't be expected to make up for good deals on something like that with volume sales (I assume), I'd say $250-$300/m minimum. More (up to $500) if the network is solid, consistent, and you're immediately on top of it when monitoring checks come back less than ideal.
$500-600
Your three quotes are all I need. I quoted him $375/month and he used to pay $190/month.
Hell I'd hire you if I can pay 190.
Yeah, so would anyone else in the world, seeing as how the server bills and other licenses came to about $130/month by themselves. I was only making like $50/month per server the last time he was my client and he opened at least one ticket per day.
Support to his customers or just directly to him?
That's worth something right there.
Just him. It's basically a step between a fully managed server and a full-time server admin.
So... uhh... you up for hire?
Bandwidth?
$190/month. Too cheapppppppp.
lol... not for $50/month. The cheapest work I do now is $99/month and that's for a client who handles his own billing for the server and solusvm.
Depends on the Datacenter they go with. Most people choose Datashack, so they get 10TB.
And I know. I'm in the wrong business. My old support guy just quit to do server management for real companies and is already banking about $7k/month.
@subigo are you renting those server or colocating? That could play a role on your pricing. But ya, in order to make a decent admin life, you should not charge a dime below 350
They're all rented. My quotes always depend on which datacenter they choose.
Then 4-600$ would be perfect considering that this proactive not reactive management.
when are you doing node management!?
a 100-200 USD is very reasonable. (per month)
I do it right now. I've been doing it for three years. I just don't advertise it, because it's a very specific type of management and I didn't figure too many people would be interested.
It is a very steep jump, its almost double the cost he is currently paying. It might be hard for him to find that extra amount so soon unless he doubles his prices. Your new prices are not bad its just your old one was to low, would it be possible to help him out and meet in the middle or something?
He's not currently paying anything to me, he's not my client right now. He was my vps client last year, grew his hosting company to the point of needing 11 nodes and I made him a deal. Then about six months ago he cancelled everything, moved to a different datacenter, and hired a "linux admin" who ended up being a 16 year old kid who got grounded from the Internet and disappeared for a month.
So now he wants to come back and he expects the old pricing, which isn't going to happen... because I basically ran his entire company for a year and I have no desire to be his dedicated 24/7 on-call admin for under $500/month again.
Good so! Stay tough! Sometimes it is better not to have a business than having a business that is only causing headaches for a small amount of profit!
So now he wants to come back and he expects the old pricing, which isn't going to happen... because I basically ran his entire company for a year and I have no desire to be his dedicated 24/7 on-call admin for under $500/month again.
Nice one
lol they can charge him
I do the same type of service, and have the same experience every now and then. People are really ignorant to the amount of work you put in. Like you said you practically ran his company for him. Just tell him the price and if he doesn't like it he can go and hire another kiddie.