How Much Should IT Support Cost?
I met a small business owner the other day who had a successful bookkeeping business. She knew enough about IT to be her own IT person up to now, but as her business grew so did the time commitment to keep all the PCs, software, printers, and phones up and running.
When she found out that I am a tech consultant that specializes in serving small businesses as their outsourced IT department, she asked “How much does that cost?”
The answer to that question varies a lot depending on the business. In this post, I’ll give you our current pricing range, and the process we go through to determine where the best value is for each client that we work with.
In-House vs. Outsourced IT Support
The first consideration any business owner has when they decide to get expert IT help is whether they should hire a permanent staff member or engage a company like ours to handle their tech. The biggest potential advantage to hiring someone internally is that they are guaranteed to be available to you as long as they are not on vacation or out of the office for some other reason.
While there can be advantages to hiring someone internally, contracting an IT Managed Services Provider (MSP) like ours has three important points in its favor:
- A Deep Bench: Instead of relying on a single IT employee, when you work with an MSP you gain access to the collective expertise and experience of their entire organization. You want to pick a group that will have one of those experts committed to learning about your organization and being your go-to expert, but the other people on the team are ready to jump in when your expert is unavailable, or the wisdom of the tribe is needed to solve some tricky issue.
- Proactive vs. Reactive Approach: In-house IT organizations are notorious for falling into a reactive approach to supporting the business, waiting for colleagues to tell them something is wrong and then focusing their energy on fixing things that are already broken. A good MSP will spend the majority of their time implementing preventative measures that minimize everyone’s downtime, improves overall reliability, and enhances the overall productivity of the business.
- MSPs Are Cheaper Than In-House: A good IT person is very expensive to hire and, once you find one, the cost to keep them trained on the latest equipment, software, and cybersecurity systems can really add up. An MSP will gain you access to a well-trained team at a fixed monthly cost that can scale up and down with your business. By leveraging the combined learning of an MSP’s staff, you can minimize your IT budget to get the most out of your investment.
What Should I Expect To Spend?
As of today, our MSP portfolio of service offerings ranges from about $30/month per employee for those that are only looking for help with equipment monitoring and cybersecurity, to $125/month per employee for the business that wants us to serve as their full-service IT department. You can take a more detailed look at our range of IT support offerings on our IT services information page.
If you’d like to talk to me about whether our services are a good fit for your business, feel free to schedule a free consultation with me and I’ll be happy to help you decide what’s right for you.