Know your cost floor before any model
Add up what an hour of delivered support truly costs: technician loaded pay, tools, vendor licenses, insurance and a share of overhead. Multiply by the hours a typical client consumes monthly, including the unglamorous work — patching, documentation, account reviews. That figure is your floor; pricing below it is a loan to your client that comes due as rushed work.
Track hours per client even if you sell flat-rate. Without that data you cannot tell which agreements fund the business and which quietly drain it, and renewal conversations become guesses.
Choose a model clients can understand
Per-user pricing is the most legible for clients: a monthly amount per person covering their devices and support. Per-device models suit environments with shared machines, like clinics or shop floors. Tiered packages work when the tiers differ in ways clients actually value — response times, included projects, security tooling — rather than arbitrary feature gates.
Whatever the model, publish the rules internally: what is included, what is billed separately, how headcount changes adjust the invoice. Most pricing disputes are scope disputes wearing a costume.
Write scope boundaries like they will be tested
They will be. Define after-hours support, project work, on-site visits, new-location onboarding and legacy-system exceptions explicitly. A client who learns at month four that server migrations are projects, not included support, feels misled even when the contract was technically clear.
Boundaries protect the relationship in both directions. Clients get predictable invoices; your team gets permission to say 'that is a project, here is the quote' without guilt or awkwardness.
Discount deliberately or not at all
A discount given to close a deal teaches the client that your prices are negotiable and your costs mysterious. If you adjust price, adjust scope with it: fewer included hours, longer response windows, annual prepayment. The trade keeps the math honest and the value legible.
Review pricing annually against your cost data. Tool costs, wages and client expectations all drift; a modest, explained annual adjustment is far easier than a desperate correction after two unprofitable years.
When you do raise prices, pair the notice with evidence of value: tickets resolved, incidents prevented, hours of downtime avoided. Clients rarely object to paying more for something they can see working; they object to paying more for a mystery.
Working list
Your checklist
- A calculated monthly cost floor per typical client
- Hours-per-client tracking, even on flat-rate agreements
- A written included-versus-project scope list
- Rules for how headcount changes adjust invoices
- An annual pricing review tied to real cost data
Mistakes that cost MSPs real money
- Pricing from competitors' websites instead of your own costs
- Unlimited-everything packages that punish you for the client's growth
- Discounting price without reducing scope
- Leaving after-hours and project terms implied instead of written
- Never raising prices until the account is already unprofitable