Rocket Web
Yes. We have a robust Managed Services division at Rocket Web. Our Managed Services team consists of eCommerce PMs, UX/creative, backend developers, frontend developers, SEO and strategy. Our goal is to provide a well-communicated process and structured tasks organized into sprints.
Our plans are offered with either a monthly retainer of hours or an on-call hourly service.
Our monthly retainer hours come in 50, 100 and 150 hour packages, with the hourly rate dropping a bit on each tier of hours that increase. We do offer custom packages over 150 hours, but rarely offer hour packages below 50. Occasionally, we do offer a package of hours that tier down from larger hours per month to fewer over the course of the year or sometimes when merchants have a really slow month. The benefit of being in a package hour approach is that Rocket Web can forecast your hours into our bandwidth with a guarantee that we can commit to those hours plus 50% above that package without an issue. The other benefit is that keeping constant work going positions merchants to use the time to add features, functions, new design, etc. when typically, they would have been stagnant with pushing forward.
Our on-call Managed Services are selected when a merchant does not really know how many hours per month they will be using. The downside with a package like this is that Rocket Web cannot forecast the merchant's needs ahead of time. If for two months only 30 hours have been used, but then on the third month they suddenly need 100 hours, it may be hard to provide that bandwidth on very little notice. Another downside is the rate is higher per hour to account for the unknowns in forecasting and needs. The upside with a package like this is the merchant only pays when they decide they need help. This can be helpful to merchants to have an expert Magento group on-call for their needs when issues arise.
Our Managed Services contracts run for 12-months. In the history of Rocket Web, we have never have had a merchant exit a contract.
Our approach can be summed up with the word "purposeful." We have organized our teams, tools and process to encourage a purposeful approach to Managed Services. Our plans and approach are not for everyone. If a merchant only wants to casually approach their eCommerce site or is looking for the cheapest company, then we are not the right company.
Many other companies that provide Managed Services out-source their merchant's packages to a third-party company. The hour packages are typically small to average and sometimes have lower hourly rates. Their goal is to gain a large volume of merchants and then hope that the merchants never submit support tickets. Our approach is the opposite. We encourage and pursue merchants to use their hours for the month. Weekly status updates or calls keep merchants moving along. It is extremely rare for a merchant not to use all their hours for the month.
The other way Rocket Web is different from other companies is that all our services are included in Managed Services. What this means for merchants is there is full access and utilization of UX, creative, responsive, frontend, backend, etc. If you have a new project that will take a few hundred hours to complete, with other companies they will break it out as a separate proposal on top of the managed hours they are already charging you for. With Rocket Web that project can be completed with your current Managed Services hours and used over the course of 2-4 months to complete that project. If you want the project to move faster and be completed in one month instead of 2-4 months, then we can break it out as a separate proposal to expedite the project.
The point is that we are a professional services company that grows and succeeds only when our clients grow and succeed.
We get this question asked all the time. Some times our hourly rate is more than other agencies. Our response is, "How long does it take another developer to complete a set of tasks?" In many cases we have had clients come to us and spend 80 hours per month with another agency at $X per hour while Rocket Web is able to complete the same amount of tasks at 25% less hours with better quality. If we are $20 more an hour it's actually still less expensive to go with our hourly rate rather than spend more hours at a cheaper rate. In the Magento world there are no "special" deals - you pay for what you get in the end.
It is risky to offer 24/7/365 support in the way that merchants are asking the question. An agency that offers this level of support is either offering a managed hosting technician whose responsibility is primarily server level support or a developer who is not as familiar with your site as they need to be.
Rocket Web has a tightly defined process for development, testing and deployment. Because of this effort we have a proven track record with successful code pushes and uptime with our deployments. We typically only deploy Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but sometimes on Mondays when needed. We want the latest code push for a site to be done Thursday morning so we have assurance that the site uptime is rock solid going into the weekend.
We have noticed over the last several years that 90% of the time, a site issue is related to the managed hosting provider. Managed hosting providers like Nexcess are already under a 24/7/365 support plan. We let our clients know that when a site issue takes place, put a ticket into both the managed hosting partner and to Rocket Web. Tickets entered during our business hours will be responded to in about 20 minutes and typically resolved within a few hours if we find the issue quickly. If the managed hosting provider has the ticket, and they can resolve it because their system is the issue, then the 24/7/365 hosting support your business already pays for will be worth it.
