How much does IT support cost for a small business in the UK?

Short answer: for a small office, expect somewhere between £40 and £90 a person a month for proper managed support, or £75 to £150 an hour if you only ring when it breaks. Ours is £55 a person a month, and the rest of this piece is about why almost nobody else will tell you their number before you’ve had a sales call.

I checked eight local IT support companies this week for a comparison. Not one publishes a price. That’s not because the prices are complicated. It’s because the price is meant to come after the meeting, once you’ve invested an hour and feel awkward saying no. So here is what the numbers usually look like, what should be inside them, and the three places an IT invoice quietly grows.

Want the number for your office now? Two people is £110 a month, five is £275, ten is £550, everything below included. Ring 0151 452 3060 and I’ll tell you whether it’s worth it for you.

The four ways IT support gets priced

Per person, per month. The cleanest model for a small office. One number per member of staff, whatever machines they use. You can work out next month’s bill from a headcount. This is how we do it: £55 a person, and that person’s laptop, desktop and phone are all in it.

Per device, per month. The same idea, counted differently. It suits places where machines aren’t one-to-one with people: a charity with volunteers on shared PCs, a workshop with a controller nobody sits at. We price charities per device (£35 a machine, no minimum) for exactly that reason. Watch for it where it doesn’t fit, though: a two-person office with a laptop, a desktop and a phone each becomes six devices, and the per-device price that looked cheap has tripled.

Block hours. You buy ten or twenty hours up front at a discount and use them as things go wrong. Sounds flexible. In practice the hours vanish on the boring stuff (updates, a printer, a new starter) and the moment you need real help you’re buying another block. Nothing in a block-hours deal pays anyone to stop things breaking, which is the whole point of the other models.

Hourly, when it breaks. £75 to £150 an hour is the range I see quoted round here, plus a call-out. Fine for a one-person business that rarely has a problem. Expensive the first time a problem takes a day, and there’s no backup running in the background, because nobody’s being paid to run one.

What should be inside the monthly number

If a quote is for “managed IT support”, these should be in it without an asterisk. If any is missing, the number isn’t comparable to one that includes them.

• Somebody who answers. Phone, email, portal, whichever, with a person at the other end. Ask how they answer the phone in the day. If the answer is a ticket number, price that in as your time.
• Backups that have been restored, not just taken. Files and email, daily, and somebody has actually tested pulling a file back. A backup that’s never been restored is a hope.
• Antimalware and updates on every machine. Done on a schedule, at a time that isn’t the middle of your working day.
• Monitoring. The failing disk gets noticed before it takes the records with it. This is what separates managed support from paying someone to turn up after the fact.
• Microsoft 365 admin. New starters, leavers, sign-in security, the settings nobody in a small office has time to learn.

What’s legitimately extra

Some things sit outside the per-person number in every honest quote, and it’s fair that they do.

• Microsoft 365 licences. Roughly £10 to £20 a person a month, paid to Microsoft. Some providers mark these up; we don’t, they go to Microsoft directly and you see the figure.
• A server, Azure, or network kit that genuinely needs looking after. Priced per box, after somebody’s seen it. A lot of small-office servers are doing a job Microsoft 365 already does, and the right advice is to retire them, not pay to maintain them.
• Projects. New machines, an office move, a migration. One-off, quoted, agreed before anyone starts.

The three places an IT invoice grows

Every one of these turns up in the reviews people leave when they move provider. None of them is a technical decision. They’re pricing decisions dressed as technical ones.

1. “Managed” kit that needs no managing. A £20-a-month line for looking after a broadband router that came in the post from the ISP. There’s nothing to manage. If a quote has a managed-network line, ask what’s on the network that needs it. If the answer is “the router”, strike it.

2. Out-of-scope tickets. The support contract covers “your systems”, and then the thing you rang about turns out not to be a system. A printer, a piece of software you bought yourself, the phone you use for email. Ask what isn’t covered before you sign, and get the answer in writing. Ours is simple: if a person uses it for work, it’s in.

3. Minimums and auto-renewals. A five-user minimum for a three-person office. A twelve-month term that renews for another twelve unless you write in during a two-week window. Ask what happens at the end of year one. Ours is rolling 30-day notice after the first year, no exit fees, because if you want to leave, the problem is ours, not yours.

How to compare two quotes on the same footing

1. Turn each into one figure: everything you’d pay in a normal month, divided by the number of people. Include the licences and any “managed” lines.
2. Check the five inclusions above are in both. If one leaves out backups or monitoring, add what that would cost to get from elsewhere.
3. Ask each provider one question: “When I ring at eleven on a Tuesday, who picks up?” The answer tells you more than the price.
4. Ask for the notice period and the minimum term, in writing, before the meeting rather than after it.

Do that and most quotes land closer together than their headline numbers suggest, and the differences that remain are the ones that matter: who answers, and what happens when you want to leave.

Our number, and what it’s for

£55 a person a month covers every machine that person uses, with backups that get restored, antimalware and updates on a schedule, monitoring, Microsoft 365 looked after, and me on the phone when you ring. Servers, Azure and network kit are priced per box on top, only if they need it, and you’d see the whole figure before agreeing to anything. Set up inside seven days or that month is on us.

It’s for offices of two to thirty people in the North West with nobody whose job is the computers. If yours is bigger than that, or has an IT person already, I’ll say so on the call and point you somewhere better.