Anyone got experience of serviced offices? (e.g. Regus)

Hi there,

Yes I have and it depends on what your expecting to use the office for. We are a virtual company (i.e. everyone works from home) but keep a small rented office for customer meetings etc as it's much more professional.

Regus are very expensive as are many of the larger organisations. Whilst there costs are expensive if your looking for quality offices they can work out cheaper (and considerably more flexible) than taking on a lease, paying business rates, insurance, utility bills, building a network/phone system etc.

There are smaller (some times privately owned business parks) offices to rent that may be cheaper, however I would also suggest that you search for enterprise zones, contact your local business link, council etc......as some of these facilities can be excellent value (albeit not quite as lush as Regus etc..).

Hope this helps.

Mark Hutch

Thanks Mark.

To be honest I am primarily looking at the major players due to their good locations locally (i.e. within 10 minutes of a Starbucks!) and the fact that I can access their network of other centres (especially in Central London for meetings, etc).

One of the key things for me at the moment is only paying rent for what I need - so whilst we grow from 1 to 5 to 15 people we keep paying per person, rather than having a half empty space. It also helps that we can change and/or walk away from the agreement relatively quickly if either the business grows at a different rate to that predicted.

Cheers,
Richard.

When i looked for a small office i had exactly the same response. Although the office space was within the budget by the time you added internet access, telephone lines etc it was getting expensive. The biggest problem i had, and you should probabally look out for is the office company wanted to charge "BT standard rates" for any outgoing calls we made. as you know noone has payed BT standard rates for many years now and they are very dear. This might not be a problem for you but for us it was as we wanted the office to operate a small call centre!

by the way, £35 for broadband?!? thats dear enough anyway, but per desk that is silly. If you do purchase office space it might be worth getting a network setup which can be done fairly cheaply so that only one of your computers is connected to the broadband but the others can access the internet through the one that is connected.

Give me a shout if you need this setting up and i can let you know what is involved.

Thanks Charlie - yeah, I thought £35 for the "office" was rather step, given all the deals that are now in place for broadband, but per desk just made me gasp!

I will also make sure I ask about the phone charges - I know hotels used to make a reasonable amount of money out of the phones, but hadn't considered it for this, so I'll make sure I ask each candidate centre about that.

Cheers,
Richard.

I used Regus for a time. I had an office with two desks, which cost me around £900 per month for the rent and £35 per desk for broadband and £25 per desk for a telephone. I then moved to a larger office with four desks, and was charged around £1,700 per month. I sety up a wireless network so only needed one broadband package (Regus don't like their clients doing this). Take care about parking, as Regus charge around £35 per month in provincial offices. Having your nameplate in their reception costs around £70.

Regus are expensive, but th elevel of service is very high, as is the flexibility gained if you wish to move to larger (or smaller) offices.
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Sean Power
www.quadrigamotivation.co.uk
http://startup-it-security.blogspot.com/

"What I do today is important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it."

Thanks Sean - very useful info.

At the moment, they seem to offer the flexibilty that I need and are within budget (but that is going only on the charges that I know of so far!!) so seem like the right choice, certainly for the first 12 to 24 months.

I guess the critical question is - "were they worth the high price and would you use them again?"

Cheers,
Richard.

It worked at the time for me. One thing I would say is investigate the costs for everything - they are very good at surprising you with additional charges. Adding my company's nameplate to reception was one they got me with (another £70!). The flexibility in terms of office space if great, adn the fact that they answer the phones, deal with mail, receive faxes etc. all adds to the value. Another great benefit is that you can hotdesk in any of their locations - most have a coffee area with wireless access that you can use.

Push for as much discount as you can on meeting room space if you want to use it - we were getting around 20% towards the end (although we ran training courses so did use a fair number).

Get to know the centre manager - they can help or hinder you depending upon your relationship.

In summary, it was worth the high price and I would use them again.
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Sean Power
www.quadrigamotivation.co.uk
http://startup-it-security.blogspot.com/

"What I do today is important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it."