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Fully Managed, Does it sell?
Hello People,
Just a quick question really, when buying a server, vps or dedicated, you get some managed and some un managed, does fully managed really sell?
I mean these days you can pick up a vps for say $5 or you can get the same server fully managed with cpanel for $30 does fully managed actually sell or do people just look for un managed services?
What are you thoughts on this?
Comments
Unmanaged and managed both sell. On this specific forum I doubt it. Two completely different target markets.
It really depends on the respective user.. If the user is a newbie, he would probably not have enough idea about maintaining vps/server and securing it, or troubleshooting any service etc.. In such case such users tend to choose for managed servers. There are people who do purchase vps/servers and later try searching for someone to manage them.. but if the web hosting company itself is offering managed servers/vps, chances are that your issues will be dealt in timely manner as you wont need to wait for your system administrator to fix an issue.
of course i understand that on this forum more then likely not, i just thought i would try to get some information from the low end market place also, not just premium forums.
this is so true, about not having to wait for things to be done.
Thank you both for your input!
I've been looking for a cheap managed server. I CAN manage my server, but I'm sometimes very busy and don't have time to, so I want someone to manage it for me.
its hard to say really, we most likely all have other expectations when it comes down to managed hosting. i expect that they take care of anything im asking and that they will take full responsibility if shit hits the van, mainly because you pay a ripoff price for specifications that you can get MUCH CHEAPER anywhere else.
I have a client that has paid me mid 5-figures for a site. They decided they want to go with a managed ... GoDaddy server. Why? Because brand name and "we can phone them anytime and they'll take care of the problem". Given that they are not techies, I can't say this is not a good decision for them. So, yeah, there definitely is a need!
I literally felt your pain just then.
Managed does sell. The technically savvy/inclined will go for unmanaged because they can take care of things and a lot of the time it's cost-effective to do so.
Plenty tech-savvy people do managed too, because it's cost-effective to do so. Sometimes an extra $20/m is worthwhile.
I think deadbeef's example sums it up nicely.
If I were to start a hosting company, I'd certainly prefer to market towards the managed bunch.
Try https://redstation.com UK
Their normal servers are almost fully managed, you can choose a wide range of combinations
Managed will drive you insane as a provider. Customers logging into the server, installing thing, breaking things, deleting things then screaming at you when this happens and tell you its fixed.
Yomura bought a managed server company a few years back and having trawled the tickets this is all I saw.
If you're paying $50-75/hour for an engineer and you have a customer earning you $200/month, they only have to consume a few hours a month and you are loss making just on the engineer time.
This is why managed is such a grey area. Some will do X Y or Z but if you want A B or C thats excluded. Then the customer can't understand the difference between why X is included and A isn't; and you end up with unhappy customers very quickly.
I think you need a very strong stomach and very cheap engineering time ($1/hour) to make it profitable.
I mean, that sounds more like semi-managed with retarded customers to me. You could always do FULLY MANAGED as in the customer gets admin access to wordpress.. or maybe cpanel access if they need a panel...
And then again... I've had clients break a wp-install with cracked themes, get blank pages, then blame me.
@Jonchun managed customers still demand root access. Also managed customers still as you say bugger up wordpress, or delete everything then want it recovered.
guess I'm lucky then. I've never had managed customers "demand" root access unless they were knowledgeable enough to not FUBAR things. I may have been lucky/my target audience could be a bit different from general public though.
wordpress wouldnt be included in a managed vps would it? surely that would simply include server software, such as cpanel etc etc, not any kind of cms ?
Depends on what type of clients you have. To me, if a managed client asks to have a wordpress site up and running, I have no issues setting up a standard nginx reverse proxy on top of lamp, and uploading the latest version of wp for them. Varying levels of management I guess.
We have a very specific policy which we let customers know of in advance. The management provides 4 hours a month of management services and if the customer decides to modify the server without discussing it with us first, we retain the right to A. refuse to manage what they installed B. Terminate their management package. While it isn't unheard of to go over the 4 hours a month, we are pretty strict about customers making changes and then trying to get us to fix their mistakes. We request that you make all requests through us, even if its just you wanting to change a configuration file so that we know what was changed and what to do if there is an issue caused by this.
Also another thing we do is we only manage the system and its services, we do not manage customer content or their websites. That is for a web developer, not someone doing server management.
If you do management be sure to cover your own butt is all I can say. "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater", so to speak and give away hours of free management.
my 2 cents.
Cheers!
That really depends on what if offered under the managed terms, good management knownhost, wiredtree, etc probably do cover WP installs done via cPanel, perhaps not custom 3rd party app's but they charge enough to have good qualified staff that can troubleshoot php problems etc and they work with known environments that they literally do fully manage.
Personally I call server OS, updates and security semi-managed.
Fully managed needs a very clear definition, if one is not provided assume that your wasting your time paying for it and anything that is outside of that definition but not explicitly stated as beyond the scope (e.g. ruby, python, database replication) can also be done but at a fair additional rate p/hour.
To me, if I were to have a fully managed VPS with no root access. The host should install and manage and troubleshoot everything I need in the server. Whether it be varnish, plex, wordpress or icecast...
Of course, if there's a panel that lets a customer to do some basic tasks, they can be exceptions.
Afterall, if I can't do it myself and if I'm paying for it and I don't have the access for it, it is only to be expected.
As for Mark's comment, I think if you think the customer is having such problems/requests every month, it doesn't look profitable. But once everything is up and running I don't see a problem for the host. They keep earning till there's a problem. And if everything is setup fine and customer has no root access, it's not that easy to break things in a way that'ld require hours of engineer time.
Then the PEBCAK errors start, fingers everywhere!
'I was on the Internet and found this command that's supposed to double my disk space, it said rm -rf / ; I did it and have lots of space but I can't find my files can you fix it for me'
...
True but trust me, I seen the tickets. Some customers get almighty stroppy when you say no root access. They think you are trying to lock them out of their system
@MarkTurner, well in that case you offer them the extra mega ultra super deluxe managed package. Which gives them root and a backup of everything just for 5x the fully managed price.
It's managed for a reason, for management and for security. Why do they need root access?
OR
You just say them that anything they'll broke when they root access, it's not guaranteed to be recovered.
@Nomad - I have never been involved with managed services, I just remember reading through quite a few hundred tickets from a company we bought that did offer it.
It was painful reading. Just the way some of the people were abusing their support staff for their mistakes. One guy was demanding root access and when he was told that was not possible he said it was because his server wasn't a dedicated server but a VPS then started a storm on WHT; and the support people didn't want to get caught out. Obviously it was a dedicated server but you know how people get imaginative.
Managed for the right type of customer is easy, its definitely easier to get a trained engineer do it right first time rather than have them open a ticket when they want someone to bail them out because they'll done something crazy.
But expectation in managed services is high and the higher the price the more exponential the expectation. I think if you can define it and formalise a contract (well written, definitive) then you have a chance of making money. But other than that, I see customers treating managed services like their lackeys and becoming abusive if the problem isn't resolved in 2 minutes.
I based this observation on one company with about 3000 managed servers, 10% of the customers are a joy and they understand how it works; the other 90% are abusive, incompetent (but pretend to be knowledgeable by quoting the output of their latest Google search) and just keep getting themselves into hot water and then running to the managed support expecting them to keep picking up the pieces.
Local managed solutions is a good way to test the waters before dealing with random people over the Internet. Definitely agree with Mark on the limits of the management and the cost of labor of the support. However I've seen some folks take full management, not use it and only use it as "fire insurance" when SHTF. I've testing a similar managed solution, one with a reseller operation and another with a profitable forum, with clear defined management in the agreement with no issues.
Announcing "fully managed" to the general public opens up a can of worms.
Even breaking it into tiers of unmanaged, semi-managed and fully managed can help as semi-managed would be like post-configuration / migration of data stuff. I know of customers who paid for semi-managed just as easily as fully managed who just needed a little bit extra support beyond unmanaged and providing a resource to the customer to resolve the issue.