Ironstack
THE MONTHLY RETAINER · HOW IT KEEPS RUNNING
Managed Sovereignty is the ongoing care of infrastructure and AI you own: updates, backups, monitoring and response, and a monthly report you can actually read. Three tiers: Base €150, Standard €325, Priority €575 per month, excl. btw. The exit clause applies every single month.
I · THE PROBLEM
Most companies do not stay on rented cloud because they love it. They stay because someone else carries the pager. The honest fear behind “we could never self-host” is rarely about features; it is the 3 a.m. question: who patches this, who notices when the disk fills up, who restores the backup, and does the backup even restore?
That fear is legitimate. A server nobody maintains is worse than a subscription. Owned infrastructure without care is not sovereignty, it is neglect with extra steps.
Managed Sovereignty exists to close exactly that gap: you get the ownership, and I carry the care. Not as a favor bolted onto a project, but as the actual product, with defined response windows and a report every month that tells you what happened in plain language.
II · WHAT IT IS, CONCRETELY
Managed Sovereignty is a monthly agreement per tier. The tiers differ in response windows and included hours, not in whether your systems are looked after; every environment I run gets the same discipline, because my monitoring does not know which tier you are on.
What custodianship covers · every month
Base €150 · Standard €325 · Priority €575 per month, excl. btw · exit clause every month
What you hold in your hands: the server under your accounts, the documentation and runbooks written for your team, and twelve health reports a year that double as an audit trail. If I disappear tomorrow, any competent engineer continues from the runbook. That is not a slogan; it is the design requirement.
The three tiers · monthly, excl. btw
Managed AI components add €75 each · servers billed at cost, itemized, no markup
The price is fixed and agreed before anything starts, and the number does not move. It changes only if you change tier or your environment materially grows, and then only with a new fixed number you approve first. Work beyond your tier’s hours is €90 per hour, excl. btw, and only ever after you approve it. Retainers are billed monthly in advance, with a 14-day payment term.
See the full price register for how the retainer fits with the rest of the services.
III · A FAIR MATCH
IV · WHERE IT SITS
Managed Sovereignty is the heart of Ironstack; the other services are how you arrive. The Audit tells you what you have and what it costs. The Stack builds fresh; Migration moves an existing environment, both through the same five-phase method. Phase five is literally called Handover & Retainer: the moment the build ends, this service begins. AI components live under the same roof, at €75 per month each on any tier.
You can also arrive sideways. Some clients start with a single automation project and grow into a stack; some bring an environment someone else built. The entry matters less than the destination: systems you own, running with care.
Every tier covers updates and security patching, backups with tested restores, monitoring, certificate renewals, and a monthly health report in plain language. Base, at €150, is care only, with response the next business day. Standard, at €325, adds two hours of changes and questions each month, with response within four business hours. Priority, at €575, adds five hours, same-day response, and a quarterly review call. All excl. btw.
Monitoring never sleeps and alerts me before most people notice anything. Each tier has an honestly defined response window, agreed in writing. I will not promise a 24/7 operations center, because I am one person; I promise a defined window and a documented recovery procedure that works without heroics.
Yes. Everything is documented for your team, not for me, so you can take over any month. Some clients run day-to-day themselves and keep a smaller tier for escalations. Both are fine; the documentation is the same either way.
No. The monthly price is fixed per tier and agreed before anything starts. It changes only if you change tier or the environment materially grows, and then only with a new fixed number you approve first. And you never depend on me: the exit clause applies every single month.
What was updated, what the backups did and whether restores were tested, uptime, anything that needs a decision from you, and what I recommend next. Written in plain language, not log excerpts.
Usually yes, after an audit. I need to know what is running before I take responsibility for it, and the audit is exactly that investigation. If your environment is something I cannot honestly care for, I will say so.
Tell me what runs where and what bothers you about it. You will get a straight answer. Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not need me.