Most IT companies will not tell you what they charge until they have had a meeting with you. There is usually a reason for that, and it is rarely one that works in your favour.
Below is everything we charge. Not a starting-from figure, not a range, and not the flattering half of the list.
The rates
| Rate | |
|---|---|
| Standard hours — Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm | £45 per hour |
| Out of hours — evenings, weekends and bank holidays | £90 per hour |
| Minimum charge | £45 |
These are the prices you pay. There is nothing to add to them — no VAT line appearing on the invoice to turn £45 into £54.
The standard rate is the same whatever the work. A failed hard drive, a network rebuild, a migration, an afternoon of somebody’s laptop misbehaving — £45 an hour. There is no premium tier for the difficult jobs and no consultancy rate because somebody senior turned up.
Out of hours
Work outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm is charged at £90 an hour.
That is not a penalty, it is what it costs to have somebody working on a Sunday instead of being somewhere else. Most work does not need to happen out of hours, and where it does — a migration that has to run overnight, a server move that cannot take the office down on a Tuesday — the extra is usually far less than a day of lost work.
We will always tell you before doing something at the higher rate. It never appears on an invoice as a surprise.
Pay As You Go
Most of our clients work with us this way. You call when you need us, we do the work, we bill the time. Nothing between times.
It suits a business that has occasional problems rather than constant ones — which, if your equipment is reasonably current and reasonably well looked after, is most businesses.
If you would rather plan ahead, you can buy a block of hours in advance and draw it down as you use it. It does not expire, and it is the same rate — there is no discount to chase and no pressure to use it up before it disappears.
No contract
There is nothing to sign and nothing to cancel.
No minimum term, no notice period, no exclusivity clause stopping you using somebody else, and no annual renewal that quietly rolls over in March. If we stop being useful, you stop calling. We would rather earn the next job than trap you into it.
When we would tell you to do something different
Pay As You Go is not right for everybody, and the honest position is worth saying out loud.
If you are calling us most weeks, hourly billing stops being the cheapest way to work with us and starts being an administrative nuisance for both of us. At that point it is worth a conversation about a regular arrangement instead — we do that for some of our larger clients.
We will raise it with you rather than wait for you to work it out. Billing you by the hour for work that would cost you less another way is not a business we want to run.
Why we price it this way
A fixed monthly IT contract works very well for the IT company. Predictable revenue, and every month you do not call is a good month for them.
That is an odd incentive to build a working relationship on. We would rather be paid for work we have actually done — which means we earn more when we are more useful to you, and nothing at all when your systems are quietly getting on with it.
It is the arrangement we would want if we were the ones buying it.