Price increase letter to IT support and MSP clients
Copy it, replace the bracketed bits, send it. Below the letter: the text-message version, how much notice to give, and what to say when they push back.
Hi [NAME], As per our agreement, this is [NOTICE PERIOD] days' notice of the annual adjustment. From [DATE], your per-user rate moves from [OLD PRICE] to [NEW PRICE] — an increase of [PERCENT]%. The bulk of this is vendor licensing. [MICROSOFT / SECURITY VENDOR / BACKUP] increased [PERCENT]% this year and that flows directly through. You are also at [N] active seats against the [ORIGINAL N] in the original agreement, and the security scope now includes [SPECIFIC — MFA enforcement, EDR, phishing simulation] which was not in the original. I have attached a breakdown so you can see exactly what moved. If you would like to review the tiers instead — some clients move [SPECIFIC SERVICE] to a lower tier — I am glad to walk through it on a call. [YOUR NAME] [BUSINESS NAME]
90 days, and it should already be in the agreement
5–8% annually, contractually
The text-message version
For the customers whose entire relationship with you lives in a phone. Send it before the visit, never on the invoice.
Hi [NAME] — sent through the annual agreement review by email, [NOTICE] days' notice as per contract. Nothing surprising in it. Happy to jump on a call whenever suits.
Why it is going up, in words you can use
“Rising costs” persuades nobody because everyone says it. Name the actual driver in IT support and managed services instead:
- vendor licensing — Microsoft, security stack, backup — rises every year and gets passed straight through
- headcount seat drift: they have more users than the contract was written for
- security scope has grown well past what was agreed
When they push back
You will hear these within a week. Having the answer ready is the difference between holding the price and folding on the phone.
- "We'll put it out to tender."
- Welcome it and make switching visible: offer a full documentation and offboarding pack as part of any tender. Clients rarely proceed once the migration is concrete, and offering it makes you look confident rather than captive.
- "Absorb the licensing increase this year."
- Never absorb a pass-through — it becomes the permanent baseline. Show the vendor invoice instead. Pass-throughs are the easiest increase to defend precisely because they are not yours.
Is a price rise even the right move for you?
Sometimes it is not. Sometimes the money is in a service plan for customers you already have, or in the job you are quoting below cost without realising. Describe your business in one sentence and you will get three specific moves back — priced per month, with the arithmetic written out so you can put your own numbers in.
Free, no signup, about thirty seconds. If one of them is a price rise, you will get the number to put in the brackets above.
Give me three movesOther trades
A template, not legal advice. If you have a written contract with these managed services clients, check what it says about notice periods and price changes before you send anything — the contract wins over any template, including this one.