What managed IT costs a firm of a particular size is the question I always get asked. The straight forward answer is: It depends.
What I build for a firm is put together for that firm. There is no shelf product with your name already on it. What does not move much is the shape of the thing, so it is worth walking through what usually sits inside one of these agreements.
How coverage usually gets built
Most of what I put together falls into one of three shapes. I use Core, Pro, and Ultra as shorthand for them. Treat them as samples rather than fixed products, because what sits inside each one moves depending on what the firm actually needs.
Core covers the essentials: monitoring, antivirus, IT documentation, remote support, email security, DNS filtering, multi factor authentication, security awareness training, hard drive encryption, firewall management, Microsoft 365 or Google licensing, cloud file share, and cloud file backup with monthly backup testing. Response time is four hours.
Pro adds a faster response, live support around the clock every day of the year, a set allowance of onsite hours, phishing protection, endpoint detection and response, dark web monitoring, password management, warranty management, WiFi management, and on premises disaster recovery.
Ultra adds the fastest response, a larger onsite allowance, a monitored security operations capability, network diagramming, identity and access management, a written disaster recovery plan, and a risk assessment.
Everything on those lists is scope, not a price list, and not a menu you have to take whole.
Why the price depends
Two firms with the same headcount can easily have different invoices, and headcount is rarely the reason.
It comes down to what lives in the building. How standard the setup is. Whether people work from one office or from anywhere. What obligations are attached to the data. And how much maintenance has been carried forward from previous years.
A single published figure would have to ignore all of that, and you would find yourself surprised by the real number later. What I can give you quickly is a rough range. How tight that range gets depends on how much I know about your setup, and a short call only supports a wide one.
What actually determines the price?
Headcount is the obvious starting point. More people usually means more devices, more accounts, and more support. That is also why most published pricing starts there.
But two firms with the same number of employees can have very different IT costs.
Where your systems live matters. Equipment you maintain yourself requires more attention, and eventually replacement. A standardized environment is also less expensive to support than one with six different ways of doing the same thing. Every exception creates work.
Then there are requirements that have little to do with headcount. If clients, insurers, or regulators require specific security practices and documentation, someone has to do that work.
And finally, there is what you bring with you. Older equipment, missed updates, and systems nobody has documented tend to make the first year more expensive.
That is why I would not compare IT providers on the monthly number alone. I would want to know what that number actually buys.
Ask what is included and what triggers another invoice. Ask what happens to the price when you add five employees, open another location, or need to replace equipment. Understand the length of the agreement and what happens when it ends.
And ask one question I particularly like:
What could we do over the next two years to bring this number down?
The answer tells you quite a bit about how the provider thinks.
The comparison worth doing
Firms often compare outside IT help with doing nothing, which makes outside help look like a new expense. But the current approach already has a cost. It is being paid in the hours of people hired to do something else.
The real comparison is between what you spend today, including those hours; what an internal hire would cost; and what outside support would cost and take off your team’s plate.
Sometimes the numbers say you should hire someone. When they do, I will tell you.
What you can expect from me
If something falls outside the agreed scope, you will know before the work begins.
There is more than one way to pay for support, and the right one depends on how often you need it. Some firms pay for support time as tickets come in. Some pay one all inclusive monthly rate. Some want a help desk staffed around the clock, every day of the year, which is its own arrangement.
I usually recommend the flat monthly rate, for a straightforward reason. When support is already paid for, nobody sits on a problem working out whether it is worth a phone call, and small IT issues have a way of becoming expensive ones when they wait.
Flat is not automatically the cheaper option, though. A firm with a stable setup that rarely needs anybody can spend less over a year paying by ticket. What it gives up is a number it can budget, and the freedom to call without doing arithmetic first. Which way that trade lands for you is worth working out before you sign anything, and I would rather do that arithmetic with you now than have you find it a year in.
The goal, whichever structure you choose, is that you know what you are paying for and why before the work starts.
Getting to a number
A short conversation about the factors above is enough to put a rough range in front of you. Tightening that range means looking at what you actually have, which takes longer and is worth doing before anybody budgets against a number. Either way, if your current setup is working I will say so.
Call to action
For a straightforward conversation about what this would cost your firm, call 617-221-4100 or use the contact form at cmitsolutions.com/boston-ma-1020. No obligation.
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