Ask three managed service providers what they charge and you will get three answers that cannot be compared to each other. One quotes per user. One quotes per device. One refuses to quote anything until after a discovery call. None of them will tell you what the other two are doing.
That is not always evasion. Pricing genuinely depends on things a provider cannot know before looking at your environment. But the vagueness has a cost: business owners end up choosing on gut feel, or on the lowest number, and the lowest number is frequently the one with the most excluded from it.
This article gives you the actual ranges, the variables that move you within them, and — more usefully — the exclusions that turn a cheap monthly fee into an expensive year.
The three pricing models, and what each one hides
Almost every managed IT agreement is built on one of three structures. Understanding which one you are being quoted is the first step to comparing offers at all.
Per user, per month
You pay a flat fee for each employee, covering all the devices that person uses. Someone with a laptop, a desktop, a phone and a tablet costs the same as someone with one laptop.
This is the most common model for a reason: it is predictable, it scales cleanly with headcount, and it matches how most businesses actually think about growth. It also tends to favour the client in device-heavy environments.
Typical range: $100 – $250 per user per month for fully managed service. Lighter, helpdesk-only arrangements can run $60 – $110.
Per device, per month
You pay per endpoint — each workstation, server, firewall, and sometimes each mobile device. This can be cheaper if your staff share machines, and considerably more expensive if they do not.
Watch the server line specifically. Servers are usually priced separately and at a large multiple of a workstation, which is where per-device quotes tend to surprise people.
Typical range: $50 – $150 per workstation per month; $150 – $500 per server per month; firewalls and network gear commonly $50 – $200 each.
Tiered or bundled packages
Bronze, Silver, Gold — or some equivalent. Each tier bundles a defined set of services at a fixed price band. Simple to present, and genuinely easier to compare between providers who use the same structure.
The catch is that tiers are designed around what is easy to package, not around what your business needs. Businesses frequently pay for a higher tier to obtain one specific service buried in it, or discover the thing they most needed sits one tier above where they landed.
What actually moves your number
Within those ranges, a handful of variables determine where you land. In rough order of impact:
- User and device count. The single biggest driver, and the one with the most volume discounting. Per-seat costs typically drop meaningfully above 25 users and again above 75.
- Servers and on-premise infrastructure. Every physical server you still run adds cost, and adds it disproportionately. Businesses that have moved fully to cloud infrastructure pay materially less to manage what remains.
- Compliance obligations. HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and the FTC Safeguards Rule all require controls, documentation and evidence that general IT support does not include. Expect a real premium, not a rounding error.
- Security depth. There is a wide gap between antivirus with patching, and managed detection and response with a monitored SOC. Both get described as 'security' in proposals.
- Coverage hours. Business hours, extended hours, and genuine 24/7 with a human answering are three different cost structures. Read what 'after hours support' means in the contract, specifically whether it is included or billed.
- On-site requirements. Remote-first support is cheaper. If your environment needs regular physical presence, that is priced in — and travel time within a metro area is not free.
- Environment condition. An estate that has been neglected costs more to take over, and many providers price a remediation project separately before the monthly agreement begins.
What is usually not included
This is where quotes diverge most, and where the cheapest proposal often stops being the cheapest. Assume none of the following are covered unless the agreement says so explicitly:
- Software licensing. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace seats are usually billed on top, at cost or with a margin. A quote that looks low may simply have excluded them.
- Hardware. Workstations, servers, firewalls and network equipment are procurement, not managed service.
- Project work. Migrations, office moves, new site builds and major upgrades are typically scoped and billed separately.
- Third-party application support. Your line-of-business software — practice management, case management, accounting platforms — may be explicitly out of scope, or supported only on a best-effort basis.
- Cybersecurity tooling. EDR, email filtering, security awareness training and dark web monitoring are frequently add-ons rather than baseline.
- Backup storage. The service may be included while the storage consumed is metered.
None of these exclusions are unreasonable on their own. The problem is comparing a quote that includes licensing against one that does not, and concluding the second provider is cheaper.
Does location change the price?
Somewhat, and less than people expect. Managed IT is delivered mostly remotely, so labour cost differences between regions compress rather than disappear.
Where geography genuinely matters is on-site response. A provider that will physically be at your office in Manhattan within a few hours has a different cost base than one covering a wide upstate territory. Businesses in New York City typically see rates at the upper end of the ranges above; Westchester and Fairfield County sit slightly below that; and the further from a dense metro you go, the more on-site response time becomes the variable that matters rather than price.
If you have multiple locations across state lines — a New York office and a Connecticut one, which is common in this region — ask specifically how that is priced. Some providers charge per site. Some do not. It is worth knowing before you sign.
How to compare quotes so the comparison means something
Normalising proposals is tedious and it is the only way to make a real decision. Four things to insist on:
- Get every quote expressed per user per month, whatever the underlying model. Ask the per-device provider to convert; if they will not, that tells you something.
- Ask each provider for the same written list of exclusions, using the section above as your checklist. Get it in writing rather than verbally.
- Ask what the response time commitment actually is, and what happens when it is missed. A stated SLA with no remedy attached is a marketing number.
- Ask for the total first-year cost including onboarding, remediation and licensing — not the monthly figure. The gap between those two numbers is frequently substantial.
Red flags in a proposal
- A monthly figure with no written scope. If the agreement does not define what is included, the definition will be decided later, by them.
- Unlimited support with no fair-use definition. Unlimited is a pricing strategy, not a service level. Find out what happens in a genuinely bad month.
- No onboarding or discovery period. A provider quoting a firm number without examining your environment is either guessing or planning to revise later.
- Security described only as 'included'. Ask which specific controls. The difference between products sold under that word is enormous.
- Long lock-in with no exit terms. Ask what happens to your documentation, credentials and backups if you leave. The answer should be immediate and unambiguous.
A realistic expectation
For a business of 20 to 50 employees with a mostly cloud-based environment, modest compliance obligations and no unusual infrastructure, fully managed IT generally lands somewhere between $2,500 and $8,000 per month. Add compliance requirements, on-premise servers, or genuine 24/7 coverage and that rises.
That range is wide because the variables are real. Any provider who gives you a firm number before understanding your environment is quoting a number they intend to revisit.
The more useful question is not what managed IT costs, but what it costs compared to the alternative — the downtime, the security exposure, and the hours your team currently spends on problems that are not their job. That comparison is usually far more decisive than the difference between two proposals.