If you've asked a few managed IT providers for a quote and gotten back numbers that don't seem to relate to each other at all, you're not imagining it. "It depends" is the honest answer — but it's not a useful one on its own. What follows is what actually moves that number, so you can tell whether a quote is fair, padded, or missing something.
The Two Common Pricing Models
Most managed IT providers price one of two ways:
- Per-user, per-month: a flat rate for each person on your team, covering their workstation, account, and support. This is the most common model for offices under 50 people, because it's predictable — the bill doesn't spike because someone's laptop had a bad month.
- Per-device, per-month: similar idea, but billed per computer or server rather than per person. More common for environments with shared workstations or a lot of infrastructure relative to headcount.
Be cautious of anyone still pricing purely hourly with no cap — that model incentivizes slow work, not fast fixes, and makes budgeting nearly impossible.
What Actually Drives the Price
Two offices with the same headcount can get quotes that differ by two or three times each other, and it's usually because of these factors:
- Support hours. Business-hours-only support costs less than 24/7 coverage. If your business genuinely doesn't run outside 8-to-5, you shouldn't be paying for round-the-clock monitoring you'll never use.
- Compliance requirements. HIPAA, CMMC, PCI, or cyber-insurance-driven requirements add real work — documented policies, audit trails, specific security controls — and that work shows up in the price.
- Backup and disaster recovery scope. Nightly backup of a file server is a different job than full workstation imaging with tested recovery and offsite retention. Ask specifically what's included, because "we do backups" can mean very different things.
- On-site vs. remote. A provider who commits to on-site visits within a set window costs more than one who's remote-only. Neither is wrong — it depends on what actually breaks in your environment and how often.
- Security layer depth. Basic antivirus is not the same product as managed endpoint detection and response (EDR) with 24/7 monitoring behind it. If a quote seems unusually low, this is often where the corners get cut.
A Realistic Range
Across the industry, per-user managed IT pricing for a small office typically lands somewhere in the ballpark of $100–250 per user, per month, depending on the factors above. A bare-bones plan with business-hours support and light security sits toward the low end; a plan with 24/7 monitoring, managed EDR, compliance support, and tested backups sits toward the high end. Anything dramatically below that range is worth a second look — not because cheap is automatically bad, but because it's worth understanding exactly what's been left out to hit that number.
The Real Question to Ask a Provider
Rather than starting with "what's your price," ask "what's included, and what would trigger an extra charge." A flat-rate plan should mean exactly that — predictable, with no surprise hourly bill when something actually breaks. If a provider can't give you a straight answer on what's covered versus what's billable on top, that's more telling than the number itself.