// loaded_cost.calc

The Loaded Cost Calculator: What Your Product Costs an MSP to Run

Your price is one line. This is the whole bill.

An MSP does not buy your product. They build a service on it, and every hour that service takes comes out of the margin you think you gave them. This works out what yours actually costs to deliver, the client size where your economics stop working, and what an hour off onboarding is worth. Companion to The Discount Isn't the Lever. The Hour Is. by Alec Stanners.

THE PRICING

Your price to the MSP

Per user, per month.

Their price to the end client

Per user, per month. Ask. Don't assume.

Average client size

Users at a typical client in the base you are aiming at.

WHAT IT COSTS THEM TO RUN

Loaded cost of an hour of their tech time

Salary, taxes, benefits, tools, divided down to an hour. This is the number most vendors never ask for.

Hours to onboard one client

3 hr

Start to finish, honestly. Tenant setup, policy, user comms, and the thing that always breaks.

Tickets per client, per month

0.5

Minutes per ticket

25 min

Vendor management, hours per month

0 hr

Release notes, patch cycles, the quarterly review somebody sits in. Spread across their whole base, not per client. Most vendors leave this at zero. Yours is not zero.

Clients you expect on it

How the vendor management hours get spread. Be realistic: full-base rollout is rare.

THE LOADED COST

Their gross spreadyour price against their sell price

$6.00/user/mo

Onboarding, year onesetup amortized over twelve months

−$0.47

Supporttickets your product generates

−$0.39

Vendor managementkeeping up with you

−$0.00

Year-one netwhat the first year actually pays them

$5.14/user/mo

Renewal-year netonce setup is behind them

$5.61/user/mo

Break-even client sizebelow this, year one costs them money

5.7users

One hour off onboardingwhere break-even moves to

4.7users

VERDICT

How to use this in a real conversation. Don't fill it in from your own assumptions and present the answer. Fill in the pricing yourself, then ask your partner for their loaded hourly rate, their average client size, and their ticket volume, and put their numbers in while they watch. If the math works you have made their case for them. If it doesn't, you found that out on a first call instead of in month nine.