Our prices

Really, when it comes down to it, the main thing we provide (or "sell" to) our clients, is our time. Years and years of blood, sweat and electrons have gone into making us the high calibre Engineers we are - so our time is quite valuable to our clients. We dedicate time to continual learning and tinkering, which means we can solve many technical problems and questions quicker than the average Engineer - resulting in higher quality and much faster solutions. AND, with greater consistency across all our Engineers. We spend less time consulting to, and supporting, our clients than our competitors and therefore provide superior value overall.

 

Our time is charged in blocks of minutes depending on what we are doing: support is in 10 minute blocks; web development in 30 minute blocks; and consulting in 60 minute blocks.

 

We have summarised our fees into two brief PDFs - depending on whether you choose to place one or more servers/computers under contract with us (see the 'In Contract' Fee Schedule), or not (see the 'Out Of Contract' Fee Schedule). Click on the link to the PDF, or if you would like to save a copy, right click the link and choose to 'Save As'.

 

Our fees may change from time-to-time, but we will provide at least 3 months notice in writing to our clients beforehand.

 

'Out Of Contract' Fee Schedule (i.e. pay-as-you-go)

If you choose not to place any servers/computers under contract with Lucidica then our pay-as-you-go or 'Out Of Contract' Fee Schedule is for you. There is no minimum contract length.

 

'In Contract' Fee Schedule

Most of our clients choose to place one or more servers/computers under a 6 month contract with Lucidica, as this provides them tremendous value - peace-of-mind with those machines under contract, and a whopping 20% off all our hourly rates . We are responsible for proactively maintaining any machine under contract - if anything goes wrong with them we fix them remotely at no additional charge. This is what you get for a server or computer under contract:

 

  • Unlimited remote support of your servers under contract

  • MailSure authentication of your servers under contract

  • Unlimited remote support of your computer under contract

  • Free off-site backup for each computer under contract (includes: software set up; monthly subscription to the leading 3rd-party off-site backup partner we use; and up to 2 Gb of free data backup storage) - if you sign a contract before 31 March 2008

  • Free virus & spyware software for each server and computer under contract

  • Free emergency computer loan when a computer fails

  • Free product advice and procurement

  • Free 1 hour strategic I.T. Consulting visit from a Lucidica Senior Engineer each quarter

 

Please get in touch if you would to view the full details of a contract.

 

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) About Our Pricing

Can you provide a fixed fee at all?

If you have a technology project you would like us to undertake (e.g. consulting or web development), we are more than happy to provide you a fixed fee for this work - once the scope of the project is clearly defined and agreed to by both parties. Any support work is charged in blocks of 10 minutes but if an issue takes more than 6.5 hours in the one day, we will automatically charge you the day rate - which is more than 20% lower than the hourly rate.

 

What are your response times to support issues?

This depends on whether you are 'in' or 'out' of contract with us. 'In contract' clients take priority and Lucidica guarantees them the following response times (and if we don't achieve these times then the time spent on the support issue will not be charged to you!).

  • Standard Response - We guarantee to acknowledge your standard issue within 2 business hours of receipt, and have an Engineer on-site or remotely addressing the issue within 4 business hours of acknowledgement

  • Emergency Response - We guarantee to acknowledge your emergency issue within 2 business hours of receipt, and have an Engineer on-site or remotely addressing the issue within 2 business hours of acknowledgement. An emergency issue is one that will severely impact the productivity of your business

The 'Out Of Contract' clients have double the above response times.

 

Do you charge for out of hours support?

Our office hours are 8.30am - 6.00pm Monday-Friday (excluding bank holidays). If you need support outside these hours we always have an Engineer 'on call' at our phone number to help you. We do charge an hourly surcharge for this time (see the Fee Schedules above) but will inform you of this when you call, before this charge is incurred.

 

Do you charge for coming on-site?

Most support issues can be resolved remotely, without our Engineers needing to go on-site to your office. However if there is a need to come on-site, there will be minimum number of hours we need to charge for the support item, and a travel fee may apply if you are in zone 3 or beyond (see the Fee Schedules above).

 

Can I get more than a 20% discount off your hourly/daily rates?

Yep, there are two ways you can get more than a 20% discount off all our hourly and daily rates: 1) your enterprise is not-for-profit (e.g. a charity); or 2) you put more than 20 servers/computers under contract with us. If either of these are your situation, please get in touch and we will provide you a customised quote.

 

OK...where are the hidden charges!?

There aren't any! We have tried to keep our fee structure as simple as possible, but as you can understand, we provide various levels of value in the time we give you so can't have one simple flat fee. Fees for our services are listed above and our fixed-fee projects or products are quoted on a case-by-case basis. If you are not sure on how we charge, please get in touch and we will explain it further.