IT support pricing: what's included, and what isn't

The four ways IT support gets billed

1. Break/fix, billed hourly

You call when something breaks and pay for the time. Nothing happens in between.

It looks like the cheapest option and sometimes it genuinely is, particularly for a very small office with a handful of computers and no server. The catch is that the incentive runs backwards: your IT company only earns when things go wrong. Nobody is patching, nobody is watching the backups, and the first sign of a problem is usually staff sitting idle.

Realistic fit: under about five people, low reliance on computers, tolerant of downtime.

2. Managed IT, per user

A flat monthly fee for each person, covering their computer, their phone or laptop if they have one, their email account and unlimited support.

This is the most common model now and usually the easiest to budget, because it scales with headcount rather than hardware. Hire someone, add a seat. It is also the fairest model when people have two or three devices each, since you are not paying per screen.

Realistic fit: most small businesses from about five people upward.

3. Managed IT, per device

A flat monthly fee per computer, server or firewall.

This suits businesses where the machines matter more than the headcount, which covers a lot of what we do. A pharmacy has fill counter stations used by whoever is on shift. A shop floor has shared terminals. Paying per person would undercount the work.

Realistic fit: shift work, shared machines, or a lot of equipment relative to staff.

4. Co-managed

You have someone in-house who handles the day-to-day, and you bring in an outside team for the parts they should not have to carry alone: security monitoring, backups, servers, projects and cover when they are out.

Realistic fit: 40 people and up with one internal IT person who is stretched.

What should be in the monthly fee

The word "managed" is not regulated, and two quotes with the same number on the bottom can cover very different things. Check each of these explicitly.

• Unlimited remote support, or a capped number of hours? If it is capped, ask what happens at the cap and what the overage rate is.
• Are on-site visits included? Plenty of contracts cover remote work only and bill travel and labor separately.
• After hours and weekends. Included, or billed at a premium? For a business that runs Saturdays this is not a detail.
• Security, or just support? Endpoint protection, monitoring and response are sometimes a separate line and sometimes bundled. Know which.
• Backup, including the storage. The software is cheap. The storage is the recurring cost, and it is often quoted separately.
• Microsoft 365 licenses. Usually passed through at cost on top. Check whether the quote includes them or assumes you already pay.
• Projects. A new server, an office move or a migration is nearly always quoted separately. That is normal. What is not normal is finding out afterwards.
• Onboarding. Taking over an unfamiliar network properly takes real work. Some companies absorb it, some charge a one-off fee. Both are defensible, but you should know before you sign.

What actually pushes the price up

• Servers on site. A physical server in a closet is the single biggest add. It needs patching, monitoring, backup and eventually replacing.
• More than one location. Two sites is more than twice the network complexity of one, at least at the start.
• Rules you have to follow. HIPAA, PCI, CMMC and cyber insurance requirements all add controls, documentation and reporting.
• Old equipment. Computers past about five years, or an unsupported version of Windows, generate more tickets and more risk. Some of that shows up in the monthly fee.
• The state of the handover. If nothing is documented, nobody has the passwords and the backups have not run since spring, the first ninety days are heavier.
• How fast you need answers. A guaranteed one-hour response costs more to staff than a best-effort one.

How the cost changes with the size of your business

Headcount is the first thing any provider will ask, because it changes not just the total but the shape of what you need. Three businesses of different sizes are not buying the same service at different volumes, they are buying different services.

Under about ten people

Often there is no server, everything runs in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and the real question is whether you need managed IT at all or whether break/fix plus properly configured backups would do. The genuine risks at this size are that nobody has ever tested a restore, and that one employee has quietly become the IT person on top of their actual job. A good provider will tell you if you are not ready for a monthly contract yet.

Around twenty people

This is the size at which informal IT usually stops working, which is why so many businesses start looking at exactly this point. You typically have a server or a line-of-business application that everything depends on, more devices than anyone is tracking, and enough staff that an hour of downtime has a real cost attached. Per-user pricing tends to become the sensible model here because it scales with hiring rather than with hardware. Expect the assessment to focus on what happens when the one critical system goes down, because that is where the money is at this size.

Fifty and above

Compliance obligations usually arrive before this point, and with them documentation, reporting and evidence that controls are actually working. Many businesses at this size already have someone technical in house, which makes co-managed the better fit: your person keeps the day-to-day and the relationships, and the provider covers monitoring, after-hours, security and the specialist work nobody wants to be the only person capable of doing.

Why nobody can quote you from headcount alone

Two twenty-person businesses can differ by a wide margin. One is a professional services firm with twenty laptops and nothing else; the other is a pharmacy with a dispensing system, label printers, automation hardware, a HIPAA obligation and a counter that cannot go down during business hours. Same headcount, genuinely different work. That is why a number quoted before anyone has looked at your setup is a guess, and usually a guess that gets revised upward once the real picture appears.

Why the cheapest quote is usually not the cheapest

When one quote comes in well under the others, the difference is nearly always in one of four places: the response time is best-effort, security is not really included, on-site is billed separately, or the support is one person with no cover. None of that shows up until the day it matters.

The useful comparison is not the monthly number, it is the monthly number plus what a bad day costs you. For a small business, a full day with the systems down usually costs more than a month or two of proper support. For a pharmacy or a practice that cannot serve people while the system is down, it costs a great deal more.

A sensible way to compare quotes

• Ask every company to quote the same thing: same number of people, same machines, same hours of cover.
• Ask what is explicitly excluded. This question tells you more than any other.
• Ask for the response time in writing, and what happens if it is missed.
• Ask who answers at 7am and who answers at 9pm.
• Ask for two references at roughly your size in roughly your industry.
• Check the contract length and the exit terms. A month-to-month agreement after an initial term is a reasonable middle ground.

How we handle it

We do not publish a per-seat rate, for the same reason no one can quote a roof without looking at it. What we do is a free IT check-up first: we look at your computers, network, backups and security, and give you a written picture of what you have. Then the quote reflects your actual setup rather than an average.

You can see how our plans are structured on the pricing page, and what day-to-day cover includes on managed IT services.