We are launching our new company in a short time (1.5 months approx.) and had planned on using AddSupport.com as our outsourced technical support. At $14.95 US per month for up to 40 clients, it was perfect for us.

Now, we just found out they have gone out of business (before they offically launched) and are recommending BobCares.com.....$100 US per month for the start-up package.

a BIG price difference, since we only expect to be using the services for approximately 25 different clients in the first 3 to 6 months. (*we aren't marketing the company until the fourth quarter of '02....long story....)

So, anyway, can anyone help us find a company that can handle the technical support e-mail of our clients, at a price better than $100 US dollars per month. At that price, we will be spending more than we are bringing in.....well maybe not that much, but close too it....

Any pointers are appreciated....

I hate it when I don't read the information at the bottom of the page...

Anyway, I discovered the "Reseller Plan" at BobCares.com and it is a little better in pricing, but still a lot more pricey then AddSupport.com was gonna be.

AS - $14.95 for 40 clients

BC - $80.00 for 40 clients


So, other than that package....any other options?

You could check out www.rapidisupport.com -- the pricing is probably too high for you.

AT THIS TIME RAPIDISUPPORT IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING ANY MORE ORDERS. WE ARE AT OUR FULL CAPICITY OF CLIENTS. WE WILL REOPEN OUR SERVICE AGAIN SHORTLY

Can you PM me their pricing structure if you know it.....

Greetings:

Did you ever think the reason they went out of business might have to do with charging too low a price?

Thank you.

Originally posted by dynamicnet
Greetings:

Did you ever think the reason they went out of business might have to do with charging too low a price?

Thank you.

For another reason, http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47322

Greetings:

Is http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47322 another reason?

They are trying to use 3rd world country labor in order to have very low prices.

Thank you.

Originally posted by The Thinker
AT THIS TIME RAPIDISUPPORT IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING ANY MORE ORDERS. WE ARE AT OUR FULL CAPICITY OF CLIENTS. WE WILL REOPEN OUR SERVICE AGAIN SHORTLY

Can you PM me their pricing structure if you know it.....

Get on the live chat and talk with them.

Since you're first starting in a couple of months, I think you shouldn't look into outsourcing support just yet. You'll probably be able to do support by yourself for a while before you need to outsource.

Originally posted by Avail
Since you're first starting in a couple of months, I think you shouldn't look into outsourcing support just yet. You'll probably be able to do support by yourself for a while before you need to outsource.

This new company is a run-off of a current company I own. I already have approximately 20 clients of mine that will be immediately transferring thier services over.

I want to be able to provide them with 24/7/365 e-mail support. And at the same time, I want to have a teeny bit of a life with my family, so outsourced tech support is the way...

I have been running my other design/hosting business for over 5 years now and I know that my new venture is going to require outsourced tech support for sure.

$14.95 for support of up to 40 clients!:eek:
Do you really think you can hire a support technician for 2 cents/hour, and actaully have them stay in business AND provide any real support for your clients?
Even $100/month would be cheap.

There are many ways to look at it.....

For instance, I have many clients that only ask a question once every four months and it only takes a couple of minutes to reply and help them out......paying $2 per month to someone just incase they send an e-mail is a little extreme......in this case....

On the other hand, I have one client who runs about 10 domains on my servers right now.....send an e-mail every second day or so.....$2 per month to someone to support this client is well worth it!!

Each company is going to have different pricing structures because they will take the law of averages into account.....

Someone with 1000 clients would be paying hundreds of dollars every month.....but maybe only 50 send a request that month.....

Greetings:

Let's take the "average" philosophy into real life just a little.

You only have one job that is your sole source of income.

You make $50 per hour.

You are paid on an hourly basis with the total wages depending on the hours you work. You are paid weekly if you've done work that week.

Now, on average the company has 5 hours of work for you per week. There are some weeks where there is 0 hours, and others that there are 10 hours.

You have an apartment by yourself, a car, and have to pay for car insurance, food, etc. The company does not pay your health care because you don't work enough hours; you have to cover your own health care. You do pay taxes.

Your total living expenses comes to $1,000 per month not including health care and taxes.

Now, would you keep the job? Or do you find a job that has steady hours even if the hourly rate is a lot less?

A "for profit" business only works if a fair profit can be achieved within a reasonable period of time. Fair profit is usually defined as making the same or more return on your investment than other investment alternatives.

A fair profit margin should exist on every customer. This is capitalism, not socialism; so you don't look at one or some customers supporting other customers.

Each customer has to have its own fair profit margin.

And unless you've done financial models in the past, any guestimations on number of customers, average utilization, and lowest rate you can charge is fraught with potential for failure. Especially if you have no existing "personal" data to go on.

If you come into WHT and do a survey / poll, that data will only contain the statistical subset based on the type of companies visiting here in terms of the average age, finanicial well being of the company, customer base, etc.

And there are a lot of companies and customers not found here on a participitory level.

Given such, creating a business model based on surveys just done here is fraught with peril.

In ending, if a business is to thrive, a fair profit per customer must be achieved where fair profit is defined as an equal or greater return on investment than other investment sources. Which is only going to happen is you charge a fair rate; and, each customer has to earn their own keep.

Thank you.

I hate to say this but if you think these prices are high then you haven't been in the business long. My consulting rate is $100 and up and hour with a minimum of two hours. Sorry but these prices don't even make sense to me at times.

Originally posted by cahostnet
I hate to say this but if you think these prices are high then you haven't been in the business long. My consulting rate is $100 and up and hour with a minimum of two hours. Sorry but these prices don't even make sense to me at times.

I can't imagine anyone using you for technical support!! $100 an hour...two hour minimum....

If I had 50 clients paying $10 a month, I would be making $500 a month.....but if 10 of them sent one e-mail with a question, I would suddenly owe you over $2000 for reply to their question.....

I can see charging $100 an hour for going into a business and providing them with consulting services. But I can't see charging $200 just to reply to an e-mail saying things like "Your POP3 server is....." Then send me a bill for $200!!

I never said $100 an hour for small issue email support. These are consulting rates and if someone is having email or server issues and costing them thousands of dollars a day or even an hour, $100 an hour consulting fee is minimum.

I won't do business for $10 an hour even if it's answering small questions because time is money and I rather spend that time elsewhere.

I started a outsourced company with this in mind but closed the doors on it because you see everyone wants GREAT support for $1 or $2 here and there. I can't even hire anyone that can provide decent support for these kind of rate. So no more outsource support for other hosting companies!! Just not worth it. Hope this clears things up. Sorry for the confusion.

Greetings:

If you think $100 is bad, we are at $150 per hour ;-)

Ensim professional support is at $250 per hour.

Site Smith (now a part of MetroMedia Fiber) charges $250 per hour.

The list goes on in terms of what solid businesses in this industry charge.

Too expensive? Is that way you state when you go to the doctor and they work with you to cure cancer? Or any other pain?

If your accountant, lawyer, and other professionals charge you $90 to $350 per hour save you several thousand dollars because of proper planning, are they charging too much?

Companies like ours provide a solid return on investment when it comes to realistic alternatives.

Now, there are ways to structure the investment to make it platable.

"If I had 50 clients paying $10 a month,
I would be making $500 a month.....
but if 10 of them sent one e-mail with a
question, I would suddenly owe you over
$2000 for reply to their question..... "

Actually, your gross sales would be $500 per month. Less direct costs would be your gross margin. Then less your operating expenses you have your pre-tax margin <smile>.

If you had to hire 3 to 5 system administrators to provide 24x7x365 support to your clients covering tech support level 1 through 3 and true system administration, how much would you be paying in salary, benefits, payroll taxes, human resource management?

When you compare those costs to the investment required by most managed service providers, then you end up savings hundreds of thousands of dollars. So the actual hourly rate is meaningless.

I guess the question I have is why charge $10 per month for hosting. What are your true costs? What is your gross margin? What's your pre-tax margin? Where is the room for hiring employees, eventually building your own data center (presuming you don't have one), moving to larger facilities as needed, etc?

Thank you.

dynamicnet - couldn't have said it better. The $100 an hour is our minimum, it goes up depending on the job. I'm just so glad someone else on this forum really understands how true business really works and how techs (good techs) don't come cheap.

I sometimes laugh when I hear companies complaining about paying even $4 per ticket. If your ticket happens to be on a Windows box and the ticket happnes to be some issue on the server, you can end up spending hours at a time fixing that problem before you can even close that ticket. What do you think happened to the $4? I rather work at McDonald!! :)

Anyway glad someone else sees things the way I do. Knowledge isn't cheap. Bobcares can charge low rates because his cost of opperating is low.

...but your obviously missing the topic of my post.....

Where can I find outsourced technical support, at a more cost-effective rate than what BobCares.com supplys? Is there anywhere?

Thinker..... I think bobcares is about as cheap as it can get, they are based in India which has one of the lowest pay rates for decent technicians..... I really can't see where you would be able to get it cheaper than that...

No we're not missing the topic of your post. We're just trying to help you figure out your cost factors and be realistic. I'll say the answer is NO and if you do please let all of us know. In fact this forum is the only place I know where you can find rates lower than Bobcares.

In fact I'm going to say this (and everyone will probably get on my case) if you do find any company offering anything less, I can almost gurantee you that they won't be in business long. And then where will that leave you?

Greetings:

"...but your obviously missing the topic of my post.....

Where can I find outsourced technical support, at a more cost-effective rate than what BobCares.com supplys? Is there anywhere?"

Are we really missing the point?

The company you tried to go with went out of business because a deal to get cheap labor fell through. They probably went with cheap labor because they wanted to provide cheap prices.

Investigating Bobcares is on our to do list; but they are using labor from India which is usually 1/4th the investment of equivalent U.S.-based labor. So in the best case where their business model is sound, they should be very economical.

Now, if they are too expensive, then it may be a matter of your pricing model not allowing for any growth or support of your clients.

I'm not sure what you get for $10 per month hosting, but it sounds very cheap (yes, I know there is cheaper). Especially if you do not have your own data center.

Thank you.

Thanks guys....I guess BobCares.com is the most-cost effective at this point......

I have been running a web design/hosting business for over 7 years already with great success. This second company I am setting up, I would like a larger profit margin, so that is why I am looking at outsourced tech support and the options available.

You don't have to worry about teaching me about how I should factor my costs into my pricing model.....taught myself that 7 years ago! :)

Thanks for the input and suggestions...

cahost... actually I agree with you..... companies have to make so much money to be able to pay employee's, keep up office space for them and sustain their growth. I mean look at that other place, they had real good prices and closed down before they even opened up.

Greetings:

"You don't have to worry about teaching me about how I should factor my costs into my pricing model"

Actually, the best pricing model is based on perceived value (not cost) ;-)

You still need to compare the perceived value to a cost+margin basis.

But anytime you are able to have the investment picture for your services based on perceived value your actual margins will be higher than if you did cost+margin.

Thank you.

We're using BobCares...

at the same time, I want to have a teeny bit of a life with my family, so outsourced tech support is the way...


I didn't outsource our support until we had 1000 clients. I truly believe that you have to be on top of your support requests if you want to succeed in this business. Believe me, NO ONE will ever handle support for your clients like you do.

Just my $0.02 :)