[BUGS] IT Support Business with FreeBSD servers

[Jerahmy Pocott]

On 22/05/2008, at 6:46 PM, Brad Rushworth wrote:

> Should I go for 6-12 month contracts? Perhaps a discount per month for
> customers that sign a contract?

Is a fixed term contract really necessary? I mean they don't own the  
hardware, so they are pretty much stuck with you anyway, since if you  
just take the servers away they are going to be pretty screwed.. I  
thought your pricing was good, so long as you are providing a quality  
service, and by that I mean if something goes wrong with any of the  
servers you will have someone fix it the same day.

In general the people I'v worked for don't like contracts, especially  
if they are long term. I would suggest you offer a 12 month contract  
that allows them to cancel the service at any time in that period with  
no penalty, except of course that you take back all the equipment  
(unless they pay out the full contract + a fee to purchase the  
hardware). After the 12 month term they could retain the hardware for  
a small fee or renew the contract. It's not always the case, but in my  
experience many directors want to own the hardware at the end of the  
contract.


> Should I provide something basic and charge extra for add-ons, or
> provide something substantial in the standard package? As in, should  
> the
> default install come with MySQL, Apache, Samba, etc or are they add- 
> ons?

Perhaps say a 'base' server provides up to 'x' services and each one  
over that cost 'y' extra, so you could have a list of possible  
services like web, mail, file, etc and they can pick the ones they  
want..?