What IT Support Costs a Small Business in 2026

A fifteen-person office gets its first managed IT quote back. It's $2,500 a month, on a three-year agreement. The owner's first reaction is the same one most owners have: for what? Nothing really breaks.

That reaction is fair, and so is the quote. They're just answering different questions. The quote is pricing a promise that someone is watching everything all the time. The owner is pricing what went wrong last year. Which one matters more depends on the business, and you can't decide that without knowing what the options actually cost.

There are three ways to pay for IT (and a fourth nobody counts)

1. Managed IT, priced per person per month

A managed service provider (MSP) takes on your IT for a flat monthly fee, almost always priced per user or per device. Pricing guides published by managed IT providers this year cluster around:

• About $100 to $125 per user per month for basic coverage: a help desk, updates and patching, antivirus, and monitoring.
• About $150 to $200 per user per month for the standard tier most small offices end up on, which adds managed backup, stronger security tools, and Microsoft 365 administration.
• $200 to $300 or more per user per month when you handle regulated data, like patient records or financial information, and need the documentation to prove it.

So a fifteen-person office on the standard tier is looking at roughly $2,250 to $3,000 a month. Most of these agreements run one to three years.

2. Break-fix, priced by the hour

You call when something breaks and pay for the time it takes to fix it. In metro Atlanta, small business break-fix rates typically land between $100 and $300 an hour. Expect higher rates after hours or for emergencies, and watch for one-hour minimums and trip charges for on-site visits.

The math is simple until it isn't. A quiet year costs almost nothing. A ransomware cleanup or a dead server the week of a deadline can cost thousands in one shot, on top of the days you couldn't work.

3. Project-based, priced per job

A defined job with a fixed quote: moving your email to Microsoft 365, setting up Wi-Fi for a new office, replacing five laptops, getting backups working. You know the number before the work starts, and you're done paying when the job is done.

4. You

This is the one that never shows up in a budget. Most small businesses don't have an IT department. They have whoever is best with computers, and that's usually the owner or the office manager. Every Saturday spent resetting the router, chasing a printer driver, or figuring out why the new hire can't get into email is IT support. It's just paid for in hours you could have billed, or spent anywhere else.

Count it honestly. Five hours a month of your time, at whatever your time is worth, is often more than an outside person would charge for the same work, and they'd do it faster.

What's actually inside a per-user fee

Two managed IT quotes at $150 per user can cover very different things. Before you compare prices, get each provider to answer these in writing:

• What counts as a user? Is it per person, per device, or per mailbox? A part-timer with a laptop and a phone can count once or three times.
• What's excluded? Projects, new hardware setup, on-site visits, and after-hours work are commonly billed on top.
• How fast do they respond? "Unlimited support" means nothing without a response time attached.
• Who holds the admin passwords? You should, always. If the provider is the only one who can get into your Microsoft 365 or your firewall, leaving them gets very hard. This is the same problem I wrote about in Who Owns Your Business Email When Someone Quits?, just with a vendor instead of an employee.
• What happens when you leave? Ask what they hand over and how fast, before you sign.

The costs you pay no matter who supports you

Some IT costs don't depend on the support model at all. Budget for them separately so they don't get blamed on whoever is quoting:

• Software licenses. Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace runs from a few dollars to under twenty per person per month, depending on the plan. Accounting, scheduling, and industry software comes on top.
• Backup. A cloud backup service for computers and email is usually a modest monthly fee and the cheapest insurance in this whole list.
• Hardware. Plan on replacing laptops every four or five years. An old machine doesn't always need replacing, though. Some have more life in them than you'd think.
• Network gear. The router your internet provider left behind works until it doesn't. A proper business router or a couple of good access points is a one-time cost that ends a lot of "the Wi-Fi is down" afternoons.

Which model fits a business your size

There's no single right answer, but there are patterns.

• One to five people. A managed contract rarely pays for itself at this size. Project work for the big jobs, plus someone you can call by the hour who already knows your setup, usually covers it.
• Five to twenty people. This is where it depends. If an hour of downtime costs you real money, or you handle regulated data, managed IT starts earning its fee. If not, a good project-and-hourly relationship plus a few basic safeguards often does the job for much less.
• Twenty to fifty people and up. The volume of new hires, departures, devices, and questions usually justifies a managed agreement, or at least a retainer with guaranteed response times.

The cheapest IT dollar you'll ever spend

Most expensive IT emergencies at small businesses trace back to the same few gaps. Closing them costs very little:

• Multi-factor sign-in on email and anything that touches money.
• A password manager instead of sticky notes and a shared spreadsheet.
• Backups you have actually tested by restoring a file.
• One page that lists every device, account, and login, and who has access to each.

None of that requires a contract. All of it makes the next problem smaller, whoever ends up fixing it.

Where BurlinPro lands

My approach is the project-and-hourly model, with no long-term contract and no monthly minimum to get started. My standard rate is $150 an hour, and some work runs more or less depending on what it involves. Every job starts with a written estimate, and each item is marked required or optional so you decide what to fund. Software licenses are billed to you directly by Microsoft or Google with no markup from me, and any hardware is bought in your business's name. The sweet spot is businesses with roughly two to fifty people, and if you've grown to the point where a full managed contract makes more sense, I'll tell you that too.

If you're not sure what you're paying for IT today, or whether you're paying for the right thing, small business IT support starts with writing down what you have and where it lives. Or just reach out, and we'll figure out which of the four models you're actually on.