IT management
How much does IT management cost for a business?
Short answer
IT management is a fixed fee per month. It depends on the number of workstations, the number of servers and locations, and the agreements on availability. Licences, such as Microsoft 365, come on top, and so does one-off work like a migration. A price per workstation says little unless you know what is in it. So compare what gets done, not only what it costs.
What is the price made of?
The monthly fee for IT management is built from a few fixed parts. If you know them, you can read a quote.
| Part | What it depends on |
|---|---|
| Workstations | The number of laptops and phones that are managed |
| Servers and network | The number of servers, firewalls and locations |
| Monitoring and backup | How many systems are monitored, how much data is kept |
| Availability | Office hours only, or outside them as well |
| Licences | Microsoft 365 and other software, per user |
The first four make up the management. Licences are a running cost you would have without an administrator too.
Why does almost nobody name a price?
Because a price without content says nothing. Two offices with twelve workstations each can have very different setups. One works entirely in Microsoft 365 and has a firewall. The other has three servers in a cupboard, an old accounting package that only runs locally and a second branch.
We do not name prices on this site either. You get a proposal after we have seen what runs at your place, with one amount per month and a list of what is in it.
How do you compare two quotes?
Put them side by side and ask what is actually done for each of these points:
- Updates. Are they carried out, or only offered?
- Backup. Is it made, monitored and also restored once in a while?
- Security. Who looks at alerts about suspicious sign-ins?
- Outages. Are they in the fee, or charged by the hour?
- Availability. On which days and at which times, and who picks up?
- Leaving. What do you take with you if you cancel, and with what notice?
The last point is skipped most often and is the most expensive when things go wrong.
What are the hidden costs of no management?
No management looks free. The costs arrive at another moment.
A colleague who does the IT on the side spends hours on something that is not their job. A backup that was never tested turns out to be empty on the day you need it. Licences of former employees keep running. And one successful attack, with a changed bank account number on an invoice, costs more than years of management.
That is not an argument to outsource everything. It is an argument to know what you already pay, in time and in risk.
What is reasonable for a small business?
For an organisation with a handful of workstations, full management is not always needed. A good first setup, with security and a backup, and help when you need it, is often enough.
From around ten workstations, or as soon as systems run that cannot go down, a fixed agreement pays off. Not because more goes wrong then, but because it costs more when it does.