What managed IT actually costs

In short: Up to 50 users, managed IT starts at £40 per user, per month, covering Microsoft 365 tenant management, patching across every managed device, managed endpoint protection, monitored and tested Microsoft 365 backup, and a 100% UK-based service desk available 24/7. Over 50 users, we do not publish a per-user rate, because at that size two businesses of the same headcount rarely need the same thing. Those estates are scoped and quoted directly, and the quote is itemised so it can be compared line by line against anyone else's.

Up to 50 users: the published rate

Under 50 users, estates are similar enough that a single per-user figure genuinely describes the work, so we publish one. You should be able to budget from this page without a discovery call, and the inclusion list matters more than the number when you are comparing us with anyone else.

If you are at this end of the range, the questions that come up most, what a small business actually needs in place, and when a monthly contract starts being worth paying for at all, are covered on IT support for small businesses.

Over 50 users: scoped, then quoted

Above 50 users the per-user model stops describing the work, so we stop using it. Publishing a rate at this size means either padding it to cover the worst estate we might meet, or discovering the gap after the contract has started. Neither is a good outcome for anyone, so we scope first.

That is not a longer route to the same answer. It changes what is being bought: at this size the engagement is usually multi-site, part on-premises, carrying a compliance obligation, and frequently sitting alongside an internal IT team that keeps some of the estate. What a scoped engagement typically covers:

• Everything in the managed baseline, across every site
• Multi-site networking, managed firewall and network monitoring
• Server, virtual and endpoint backup with tested restores
• EDR/XDR, email security and archiving, with managed response
• Conditional Access, device compliance and identity hardening
• Microsoft licence rightsizing and Azure cost management
• Compliance support: Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001 audit readiness, supply-chain questionnaires
• A named technical lead and a scheduled service review

What actually moves the number

Headcount is rarely the largest variable at this size. In rough order of how much they move a quote:

• How many sites there are, and what connects them
• How much still runs on-premises, and how many servers
• Which compliance regime applies, and what has to be evidenced
• How much of the estate is legacy or vendor-locked
• Whether an internal IT team exists, and what it keeps
• Coverage hours, and how much of the operation runs outside them

How the scoping works

1. Scoping conversation. What you run, what is working, what is not, and what has to be true in twelve months. No charge and no obligation.
2. Estate review. We look at the tenant, the devices, the network and the backups rather than taking a description of them. You get the findings whether or not you go ahead.
3. Itemised proposal. A quote broken down by line, so it can be compared against anyone else's rather than taken as a single number.

The estate review findings are yours whether or not you appoint us. We would rather be judged on what we found than on how the proposal was formatted, and a business that reads the findings and decides to fix things internally has still had a useful few weeks.

Co-managed arrangements, where an internal IT lead or small team keeps the day-to-day work and we provide the Microsoft, security and out-of-hours depth behind them, are priced against the split of responsibilities rather than per user. That is the most common shape at this size, and it is set out in MSP vs internal IT.

24/7 out-of-hours and on-call cover, sold separately

Not everything here is a contract for your whole estate. Out-of-hours and on-call cover is bought on its own, by businesses that already have IT handled during the working day and need the hours they cannot cover. It is not a tier above the two tracks above; it is a different purchase, usually made by a business with its own IT team.

Bought on its own, without a full managed contract. For businesses whose own IT team covers the working day and needs the hours it cannot, or a second pair of hands through a project, a vacancy or a period of leave.

• An internal IT team that covers office hours and nothing after them
• A single IT person who is currently the out-of-hours plan
• An operation running shifts, nights or weekends while IT works days
• A team carrying a vacancy, long-term absence or parental leave

Your team keeps ownership of the estate and the change process, we work to runbooks and escalation rules you approve, and the on-call engineer is UK-based rather than an answering service raising a ticket for the morning. Priced against the coverage window, the size of the estate and how much standing authority the on-call engineer holds, so it is quoted rather than published. A single agreed window costs materially less than genuine round-the-clock cover, and most businesses start with the former.

Full detail on out-of-hours and on-call cover, including where the boundary of standing authority sits.

Why so few IT companies publish a price

Two reasons, and only one of them is good. The good one is that managed IT genuinely varies: a 20-person accountancy practice running entirely in Microsoft 365 and a 20-person manufacturer with a server room, a production network and a compliance regime are not the same job, and pretending otherwise produces a number that is wrong for both. The less good reason is that an unpublished price cannot be compared, and a quote that arrives only after two meetings is harder to walk away from.

Our answer is to publish the starting figure and be specific about what moves it. You should be able to work out roughly where you sit before speaking to anyone, and then get a scoped quote that itemises the rest.

Hourly rates, monthly contracts and what each one actually buys

An hourly rate is priced for attendance after a failure. A monthly contract is priced for the work that reduces how often that failure happens, plus a defined response when one gets through anyway. The two are not competing prices for one service, they are prices for two different services, and comparing the rates alone will always make the hourly option look cheaper.

The structural problem with hourly IT support is timing. Nothing is being monitored or patched between incidents, so problems are found by the people they interrupt rather than by anyone watching, and unplanned attendance, particularly outside working hours, is priced at a premium precisely because it is unplanned. A quiet quarter is followed by an expensive one with no warning. If you want to compare the two models honestly, add up what last year actually cost including the downtime and the delayed projects, not the invoices alone. That total is the number a monthly contract is competing with.

There is a real case for hourly work. A very small operation with simple, low-risk IT, where an outage is an inconvenience rather than a cost, is usually better served paying for occasional help than carrying a monthly contract. The point at which that stops being true tends to arrive earlier than people expect, and it is usually a compliance obligation or a first serious outage that makes it obvious. We have written the models up in full in managed IT vs in-house IT vs break-fix.

How to compare two IT support quotes properly

Per-user pricing is only comparable once you know what is inside the rate. The same phrase, "fully managed IT", covers services that differ by a factor of several on inclusions. Ask every provider the same four questions and the cheaper quote usually stops being the cheaper quote:

• What is inside the per-user rate? Specifically: endpoint protection, backup, patching, and whether the service desk is included or metered.
• What is billed on top, and at what rate? Project work, on-site visits, out-of-hours attendance, onboarding and offboarding.
• What are the coverage hours, and who answers? A 24/7 claim can mean a UK engineer or an out-of-hours answering service that raises a ticket for the morning. Ask where the desk physically is.
• What happens at the end? Notice period, and what happens to your data, your tenant and your documentation when you leave.

A provider that answers all four plainly is usually the one to shortlist, largely independently of which number is lower.

Where the price goes up, and why

The entry rate covers a well-run Microsoft 365 estate on managed devices. Most of what takes it higher falls into three groups. Security depth beyond managed endpoint protection: EDR and XDR, email security and archiving, Conditional Access and device compliance rollout, posture assessment and hardening. Infrastructure that is not Microsoft 365: managed firewall and network monitoring, servers, and backup for anything beyond the tenant. And commercial work: Microsoft licence rightsizing and Azure cost management, which frequently pays for itself but is scoped rather than bundled.

Each is quoted against your estate rather than added at a list rate, which is the same reason the figure above is a starting price and not a rate card. If you would like the reasoning behind that approach, it is set out in full on the managed IT service page.