Managed Agent — Transparent Device Maintenance & Security

$50 per enrolled device per month. Month-to-month. No MSP contract. Live work is separate.

Core premise

Small businesses should not have to prepay a vague monthly IT retainer just to access high-quality support. Routine maintenance should be inexpensive and explicit. Premium senior support should be paid for only when it is actually needed.

The Managed Agent is the maintenance and security layer. The live service I sell is my professional time.

What this document proves

One-sentence client explanation: Routine maintenance stays inexpensive; premium senior support is paid for only when actual work is needed.

The public example: a small restaurant facing opaque IT billing

Source: Reddit r/sandiego thread, "Best San Diego IT support?"

This public thread is a current example of the same failure pattern I saw nearly two decades ago, and it is why I built my model differently.

The post describes a Gaslamp-area Mexican restaurant owner dealing with the modern restaurant technology stack: POS systems, internet service, security systems, digital ordering, delivery platforms, and support lines that were not solving the operational problem. This is not a tech company. It is a small business that needs systems to keep working and needs to understand what it is paying for.

According to the post, the owner was paying $1,850 per month for IT support. They said that for six months they had no issue and, from their perspective, the provider did not have to work for them. Then the restaurant internet went down after a firewall failure. The provider came to the restaurant, replaced the firewall, worked six hours, and charged $1,410 on top of the $1,850 monthly fee. The owner asked whether that was normal.

Neutrality note: This example is used solely to illustrate the mathematical contrast between a bundled-retainer model and a per-device model. No claim is made about the quality of that provider's work or the validity of any specific charge. The agreement, scope, hardware cost, warranty status, travel, after-hours status, and service terms are unknown. The $1,410 bill may have included legitimate hardware, materials, configuration, travel, replacement work, or other valid labor. The narrower and stronger point: the client did not clearly understand what the monthly fee bought, what it excluded, and why a major event still produced another bill.

The comments under the thread reinforce the same issue. One commenter explained that a managed-service agreement may bill monthly whether or not time is used, and that materials and related labor may still be separate. Another noted that $1,850 per month is roughly a $22,000 annual spend and could be cheaper than hiring an employee. Both observations point to the same requirement: the scope must be explicit before something breaks.

The problem is not that every MSP is bad. The problem is ambiguity: a vague monthly IT bundle creates distrust when the client later discovers that hardware, infrastructure, emergency work, or incident labor may still be billed separately.

The different model: a device layer plus actual time when needed

My model removes the ambiguity by separating maintenance from live work.

The billing rule: I do not sell a vague IT bundle or a prepaid labor contract. The Managed Agent subscription keeps enrolled devices maintained, secure, visible, and support-ready. If you do not request live work and no separate event occurs, the only recurring bill is the enrolled-device fee.

When you actually need senior support, you pay for senior support. If you do not need my time, there is no live-support bill.

Managed Agent rate: $50 per enrolled device per month. Month-to-month. No managed-service contract.

Supported enrolled devices can include macOS, Windows, Linux, iPhone/iPad, Android, and ChromeOS/Chromebook. Feature depth varies by platform and enrollment method.

What the device fee buys

What remains separately billed

The 10-minute no-bill lane

Clients need to be able to call their IT company and ask whether something matters without fear of instantly creating an invoice. Brief advisory calls up to 10 minutes are no-charge. Ten minutes is long enough to describe the issue, decide whether it is real work, and choose the next step. If the conversation becomes troubleshooting, research, configuration, documentation, support, recovery, incident work, or goes beyond 10 minutes, it becomes billable work.

Per the billing policies, courtesy time is capped at 10 minutes per issue within any 24-hour period, so a single concern cannot be repeatedly re-raised to stay inside the no-bill window.

The restaurant math: $1,850/month equals 37 managed devices

The public thread gives a useful number: $1,850 per month. Under this model, that amount is not a vague support bundle. It maps directly to a device count.

$1,850/month / $50/device/month = 37 managed devices

I do not know how many eligible devices that restaurant actually had. A restaurant can have more technology than people expect: POS stations, a back-office computer, tablets, phones, kiosks, delivery devices, and other systems. Maybe they really had a large managed environment. If they had 37 eligible endpoints, $1,850/month would equal 37 explicitly counted managed devices in my model.

But a smaller restaurant may have closer to six eligible endpoints: for example, several POS stations, one tablet, and one back-office computer. In that case the Managed Agent layer would be $300/month, not $1,850/month.

ScenarioCalculationMonthly base
6 eligible devices6 × $50$300/month
37 eligible devices37 × $50$1,850/month
Public example base feeGiven in thread$1,850/month

If a six-device restaurant pays $1,850/month, that behaves like $308.33 per device per month before any incident bill. That is not proof that the public contract was wrong. It is proof of why my model is different: the device count, scope, and billing boundary are visible before enrollment.

Annual proof: a 6-device restaurant, one real incident, and even 60 support hours

The yearly view is the strongest proof, because quiet months are where vague retainers become expensive. Use a conservative small-restaurant example of six managed devices. The actual Reddit device count is unknown.

Annual scenarioCalculationYearly cost
Transparent base device layer6 devices × $50 × 12$3,600
Transparent year with one 6-hour incident$3,600 + (6 × $275)$5,250
Transparent year with incident + example $600 firewall$5,250 + $600$5,850
Public example base-only year$1,850 × 12$22,200
Public example incident year$22,200 + $1,410$23,610
ComparisonTransparent modelPublic exampleDifference
Incident year before hardware$5,250$23,610$18,360 less
Incident year with $600 firewall$5,850$23,610$17,760 less
60 hours of senior support$20,100$22,200 base-only$2,100 less
60 hours + $600 firewall$20,700$22,200 base-only$1,500 less
60 hours + $600 firewall$20,700$23,610 incident year$3,910 less

The 60-hour stress test: For a six-device restaurant, the recurring device layer is $3,600/year. Sixty hours of senior support at $275/hour is $16,500. Add a hypothetical $600 firewall and the year is $20,700. That is still below the public example's $22,200 base-only year, and $3,910 below the public example's $23,610 incident year. This does not mean 60 hours is included. It proves the expensive part is prepaying a vague retainer during quiet months.

Support-hour thresholds

ThresholdCalculationHours of senior support
Match $22,200 base-only spend, no hardware($22,200 − $3,600) / $27567.6 hours
Match $22,200 base-only spend, with $600 hardware($22,200 − $3,600 − $600) / $27565.5 hours
Match $23,610 incident-year spend, no hardware($23,610 − $3,600) / $27572.8 hours
Match $23,610 incident-year spend, with $600 hardware($23,610 − $3,600 − $600) / $27570.6 hours

A six-device restaurant could use about 67.6 hours of senior support before matching the public example's annual base fee, or about 72.8 hours before matching the public example's incident-year spend. Even after reserving $600 for hardware, the thresholds are still about 65.5 and 70.6 hours.

"But my CFO wants a fixed monthly number"

You can have this enterprise agent — top of the food chain — cheaper than any other company would give it to you. The $50/device/month layer is the predictable line item. It does not change month to month.

When something actually breaks, you escalate by cost:

Most of my clients and I never have this conversation. They are already on the other side of it. They know what a bundled retainer would cost them over a year. They would rather take the chance that nothing happens, and accept that if it did and they were down, a single missed lunch service could cost them $15,000 in lost revenue. That makes the premium hourly rate easy to justify, and that rate is appropriately matched to the depth that 27 years of this work builds.

The DNS tool and the field notes are the public version of how deep this work goes. Average IT does not go that deep on how the actual internet works. That depth is what you are buying when you call, and it is why you do not need to buy it monthly.

Why $50/device/month is not unlimited support

There is also a hard internal cost: the management portal itself has a current floor of about $300/month with a 26-device minimum. That is why the $50/device price has to stay tightly scoped.

((device count × $50) − $300 portal floor) / $275 = professional labor hours funded per month
ScenarioClient revenueAfter portal floorSenior time fundedMeaning
4 devices$200/mo−$1000 hr; loss before laborEarly/underfilled portal state.
5 devices$250/mo−$500 hr; loss before laborStill below the portal floor.
6 devices$300/mo$00 hrCovers about the portal floor only.
26 devices$1,300/mo$1,0003.6 hr/mo; about 50 min/wkMinimum buy-in filled; still very limited included labor.
37 devices$1,850/mo$1,5505.6 hr/mo; about 1.3 hr/wkSame base price as the public restaurant example.
50 devices$2,500/mo$2,2008.0 hr/mo; about 1.85 hr/wkViable only because live work remains separate.

At 26 devices, the entire pool funds only about 3.6 hours/month after the portal floor. At 50 devices, it funds about 8 hours/month. That is why the price is low, but the scope must be precise.

Device boundary: endpoint agent vs. infrastructure

A restaurant has many technical assets, but not every asset is a Managed Agent endpoint. This distinction prevents the same ambiguity that causes billing disputes.

CategoryManaged Agent endpoint?Notes
Windows/macOS/Linux computersUsually yesAgentable when the operating system and access permit enrollment.
iPhone/iPad/AndroidYes, if enrolledMDM capability varies by supervision, OEM, OS, and enrollment method.
ChromeOS/ChromebookYes, if enrolledPolicy, app, and OS update management; not full desktop-style remote control.
POS terminalsMaybeOnly if the POS vendor and operating system permit third-party management.
Payment terminals/PIN padsUsually noOften vendor-controlled and compliance-sensitive.
Firewall/router/switch/access pointNoNetwork infrastructure; supportable, but not an endpoint-agent device.
Cameras/NVR/DVR/printersNo by defaultSupportable as infrastructure or peripherals, but not counted as Managed Agent endpoints by default.

Security baseline agreement

Plain English: If you enroll a device, you are agreeing to best-practice management for that device in the ways the platform supports. If you want unmanaged devices, ignored updates, disabled controls, or unsupported exceptions, do not enroll that device in the Managed Agent layer.

Why this platform, and why now

I have tested other MDM/RMM-style tools over the years. I was not willing to sell clients a white-label tool just because it existed. This offering exists because the platform is mature enough for me to put my name on it and manage devices according to real baseline security practices.

Management platform: ManageEngine Endpoint Central Cloud — Security Edition.

ManageEngine describes Endpoint Central as a unified endpoint management and security platform for managing and securing desktops, laptops, servers, and mobile devices. Its official product materials describe centralized endpoint management, patching, remote troubleshooting, mobile-device management, and endpoint-security capabilities. Feature availability depends on edition, platform, enrollment method, and configuration.

Platform limits:

Final ethics statement

The ethical advantage is not that the service is free or low-end. It is that the client sees the math, the scope, and the billing boundary before enrollment.

The Managed Agent is a precise, low-recurring-cost maintenance and security layer. The premium service is my senior professional time, billed only when actual live work is needed. No hidden bundle. No vague all-inclusive promise. No managed-service contract.

For the underlying hourly consulting rates, travel policy, payment terms, scheduling, and cancellation policy that govern live work, see Rates & Billing.

Sources