Put a number on what an outage costs you, using your figures rather than anyone else’s. Built for small businesses across Chester County PA, northern Delaware, and northern Maryland, though the arithmetic works anywhere.
$0
Every hour you are down: $0
$0
The same outage, at the frequency you entered. This is the figure worth putting next to what you spend on preventing it.
Treat what you see above as the floor rather than the whole bill.
The figure above is only as good as the hours you put in it, and most businesses have never tested that. I will go through what you have, what would actually be recoverable, and how long it would realistically take. Fifteen minutes, no charge.
Book a 15 minute callI will send your numbers and the working behind them as a document you can keep or put in front of whoever signs off the budget. One email, and I do not add you to a list.
It assumes you run the business rather than the network. If you can answer questions about how your office works, you can complete it.
Every other IT cost arrives as an invoice, so it gets scrutinised. Downtime arrives as a quiet day where nothing shipped, and it never appears on a statement. That is the only reason it feels cheaper than it is.
The clearest part of the cost is the simplest: you are paying people to sit and wait. That figure alone is usually larger than owners expect, and it is the one number here that is not an estimate.
Every figure on the result comes from what you enter. There is no industry average buried in it, no assumption you cannot see, and nothing comparing you to a benchmark you did not agree to.
It is hard to weigh up spending on backup or continuity against a vague sense that outages are bad. It is much easier when the outage has a figure next to it, and easier still when you can see the annual exposure.
There is no industry benchmark hidden in this and nothing averaged in from anyone else. Every figure is your own numbers multiplied together, which is the only reason the result is worth putting in front of someone.
| Figure | How it is worked out |
|---|---|
| Wages paid for work that did not happen | People who cannot work x Average hourly cost per person x How much of their work stops x How long you are down |
| Revenue lost outright | Revenue you would lose per hour x How long you are down |
| What one outage costs you | Wages paid for work that did not happen + Revenue lost outright |
| Your exposure over a year | What one outage costs you x Times a year this happens |
It is a floor, not a bill. It counts the wages you pay for work that does not happen and the revenue that does not come back. Catch-up overtime, missed deadlines, staff time spent on the recovery itself, and the customer who quietly leaves are all real and none of them are in there.
The hours matter more than anything else. Every other input moves the answer a little. That one moves it proportionally, and it is the input most people are least able to answer, because they have never tested a recovery to find out.
It cannot tell you how long you would really be down, and that is the input the whole figure turns on. Most businesses have never tested a restore, so the honest answer is that nobody knows until it happens. Everything else here is arithmetic. That one number is a guess until somebody checks.
It is free and the full result appears as you type. Email is only needed if you want the figures sent to you as a record, which is optional.
Entirely from you. There is no industry average or benchmark hidden in the arithmetic. Wages lost is your headcount times your hourly cost times the share of work that stops times the length of the outage. Lost revenue is your hourly revenue times the length. The total is those two added together.
Because the wage is not what an idle hour costs you. Payroll taxes, benefits, and the rest of the employment cost keep running too. A common rough approach is the salary divided by about 2,000 working hours, then increased by somewhere between 20 and 30 percent. An approximate figure is fine, the result is a scale rather than an invoice.
That is what the third input is for. Move it down and the wages figure falls with it. Very few outages stop everything, and pretending otherwise would produce a number you could not use in front of anyone.
Only if the work genuinely does not come back. A dental practice that cannot see patients for a morning usually loses those appointments for good. A firm that catches up on Tuesday has not lost the revenue, it has lost the wages twice. If you are unsure, leave it at zero. The wages line is the honest floor.
Not on its own. It is arithmetic, and it works out the same whoever looks after your IT. What it does tell you is roughly what an outage is worth avoiding, and that is the number worth having before anyone quotes you for preventing it.
Quite a lot, and it is listed on the result rather than buried here. Catch-up overtime, missed deadlines, staff time spent on the recovery, anything permanently lost, and the customer who quietly leaves. Treat what this produces as a floor, not a ceiling.
Longer than most people expect. A business with tested backups and a plan can be substantially working within a day or two. A business that has never tested a restore is often measuring in weeks, because the first thing they discover is which systems were never being backed up. If you are not sure which of those you are, that is worth knowing before you need the answer.
All free, all a couple of minutes, and none of them ask for anything before showing you the answer.
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Start itTwelve questions on the tenant settings that decide whether one stolen password becomes an incident.
Start itTwelve questions on the difference between having backups and being able to use them.
Start itI will walk through what came back, tell you which items genuinely need attention and which can wait, and you are under no obligation after it.
Free, no obligation, and you talk directly with a senior engineer.