Managed IT for a small business is almost always sold as a flat monthly fee, and the fee is usually counted one of three ways: per person, per device, or as a tiered package. Ours is published: $175 per user, per month, with a 5-user minimum, and Microsoft 365 licenses billed separately at Microsoft’s price. So an eight-person office in Alabama pays $1,400 a month with us. The rest of this article explains how the pricing models work, what tends to be left out of a quote, and how to compare two quotes fairly, whoever you buy from.
The four ways IT support is priced
1. Per user
You pay a set amount each month for every person who uses a computer for work. That person’s desktop, laptop, phone, email account and questions are all covered under their seat. It is the easiest model to budget, because your bill moves only when your headcount does. The thing to ask: who counts as a user? A part-time bookkeeper with a login usually does. A shared shop-floor computer with no named user may be counted differently.
2. Per device
You pay a rate for each thing being managed: one price per workstation, a higher price per server, sometimes separate prices for the firewall, switches and printers. It can work out cheaper for an office where several people share a few machines, and more expensive where each person has a desktop, a laptop and a phone. The thing to ask: what happens to the bill when you add a second laptop for someone?
3. Tiered packages
Bronze, silver and gold, or names to that effect. The lowest tier often covers monitoring and updates only, with help desk time billed on top. Security tools, backups and on-site visits appear as you move up. Tiers make the starting price look low. The thing to ask: which tier includes someone answering the phone when a computer will not start, and is that time unlimited?
4. Hourly, also called break-fix
No monthly fee. Something breaks, you call, you pay by the hour, sometimes with a trip charge or a minimum. Some shops sell prepaid blocks of hours at a discount. This suits a very small office with simple needs and a tolerance for downtime. Its weakness is built in: nobody is paid to watch your systems between calls, so problems are found when they have already stopped your work. Monthly costs also swing, which makes them hard to plan around.
What is usually included, and what often is not
Two quotes with the same monthly number can cover very different work. These are the lines to look for.
| Item | What to ask |
|---|---|
| Help desk | Is remote support unlimited, or capped by hours or tickets? Phone and email, or a portal only? |
| On-site visits | Included, scheduled, or billed per trip? |
| After hours | Is emergency support outside business hours included, billed extra, or not offered? |
| Monitoring and updates | Are computers, servers and the network watched around the clock, and are updates installed for you? |
| Security tools | Are endpoint protection, email filtering and staff training in the price, or separate line items? |
| Backups | Who checks that backups ran, who pays for the storage, and who tests a restore? |
| Microsoft 365 | Is administration included? Are licenses in the price or passed through? |
| Projects | New server, office move, email migration: included or quoted separately? |
| Hardware | Computers, firewalls and switches are nearly always bought separately. Confirm it. |
| Vendors | Will they call your internet provider or software vendor for you? |
For reference, ours covers unlimited remote help desk by phone and email, 24/7 monitoring and alerting, patch management, Microsoft 365 administration and support, backup monitoring and management, advanced security monitoring, network and firewall management, security awareness training, quarterly on-site visits, vendor management, monthly reporting and after-hours emergency support. The full list is on the managed IT page.
Set-up fees
Most providers do some paid work before the monthly plan begins. It goes by different names: onboarding fee, set-up fee, assessment. It pays for documenting your network, installing monitoring and security software on every machine, and fixing whatever is urgently wrong. That work is real, so a charge for it is not a warning sign. A charge you only learn about on the first invoice is. Ask for the amount in writing, ask what you receive for it (a written report you keep is a fair expectation), and ask whether it applies if you decide not to sign up. Our first step is an IT assessment: a hands-on review that is quoted up front, with findings in plain English.
What drives the number up
- Headcount or device count. The base of nearly every quote.
- Servers and locations. An on-site server, a second office or a warehouse network adds equipment to manage.
- The state of what you have. Old computers, an out-of-support operating system or no working backup mean catch-up work, usually billed as a project.
- Compliance. Defense suppliers working toward CMMC, or any business with a security questionnaire from a customer or insurer, need documentation and controls beyond everyday support. Expect it to be scoped separately. Our CMMC guide explains who that applies to.
- Coverage hours. Around-the-clock staffed help desk costs more than business-hours support with emergency cover.
- Specialty software. Line-of-business systems with their own servers or vendors add support time.
- Planning. Budgeting and roadmap sessions, often called vCIO, may be included in a top tier or sold as an add-on. Ours is a paid add-on, quoted.
How to compare two quotes, line by line
- Convert both to the same unit. Work out the total monthly cost for your actual headcount and device count, then multiply by 12. Add any set-up fee to the first year.
- Put the table above next to each quote. Mark each row included, extra or missing. Anything marked missing is something you will still pay for, either to someone else or after an outage.
- Add licenses separately. If one quote bundles Microsoft 365 and the other does not, subtract the license cost before you compare.
- Read the term. How long is the agreement, how do you leave, and what happens to your passwords and documentation when you do? You should get all of it.
- Check the minimum. Many plans have one. Ours is five users, so an office of three pays for five.
- Ask what is not covered. A good provider answers this without hesitating.
What it costs with us
One plan: $175 per user, per month, minimum 5 users. No tiers and no hourly billing. Microsoft 365 licenses are billed separately at Microsoft’s price. vCIO strategy sessions, CMMC consulting, a custom on-site schedule and custom development are quoted separately before any work starts.
That makes the arithmetic simple: 5 people is $875 a month, 10 people is $1,750, 20 people is $3,500. The managed IT cost calculator does it for any headcount and lets you set it beside your own hourly bills or a salary figure.
Is managed IT worth it for a small office?
It depends on what an hour of downtime costs you and how much of your week already goes to technology. If one person in the office has quietly become the IT department, that time has a price too. A fair test: add up what you paid for IT help over the last 12 months, including the hours your own staff spent, and compare it with the yearly figure from a flat plan. If the flat plan costs more, look at what it adds that you do not have today: monitoring, tested backups, security training, someone accountable.
If you want a number for your own office, request an IT assessment or call or text 256-624-7313.