Managed IT for a US small business typically runs $100 to $200 per user per month. Published 2026 pricing guides put the full range wider, roughly $75 to $400 per user per month, and almost all of that spread is scope rather than geography.
This post lays out what those guides report, what moves a quote up or down, and where our own published tiers sit against that range. Every figure below is per user per month on a monthly plan.
What published pricing guides say
The published ranges cluster between $100 and $200 per user per month, with outliers on both ends. Here is each source and what it reports.
- A 2026 managed IT pricing guide from MyDataPath and a pricing guide from Flamingo both put the broad market at $100 to $400 per user per month.
- Petronella's 2026 guide reports $100 to $300, with a small-business national average of $150 to $200.
- CloudSecureTech's pricing statistics report $100 to $200 as typical and a national midpoint near $142 across 47 metros.
- IT Budget Calculator reports $75 to $250, citing ChannelE2E's MSP 501, ConnectWise benchmarks, and the Service Leadership Index.
- Two more published guides, serenitllc.com and mspcompanies.us, report $100 to $175 for small business and place Texas-tier metros such as Dallas at $120 to $180 as mid-tier markets.
None of these guides breaks Houston out on its own line. The nearest Texas datapoint is that Dallas mid-tier figure. Read Houston as a mid-tier Texas metro, not as a coastal-priced market.
What drives the price up or down
Scope drives the number far more than the vendor's brand does. Five things move a per-user quote more than anything else.
User count. Per-user rates fall as headcount rises. The fixed work of running a program does not double when the team does, so it spreads across more seats.
Compliance scope. An office under the FTC Safeguards Rule or HIPAA needs written program work, a risk assessment, access reviews with sign-off, and evidence someone else can read. That is documentation labor stacked on top of the technical work, and it prices higher than plain support.
On-site needs. Remote-only support is cheaper than a provider who shows up. An office with on-premise servers, lab equipment, or a front desk that cannot wait until tomorrow prices above a cloud-only team of the same size.
Security stack depth. Endpoint protection, email security, MFA and conditional access, web and DNS filtering, encrypted backup, and vulnerability scanning each carry license cost per seat. A plan with 24/7 SOC log monitoring behind it is a different product from a plan with antivirus and a backup job.
After-hours coverage. Patching and updates run after hours on a managed plan, and that time is priced in. Weekend and overnight response widens the gap further.
Where our four tiers land in that range
Our published from-figures sit at or below the low end of every range above. Tier 0 Helpdesk from $47, Tier 1 Manage from $78, Tier 2 Comply from $103, and Tier 3 Accelerate from $124 per user per month. The plans page carries the current numbers and is the source of truth if anything here goes stale.
Read "from" honestly. Those are the blended per-user rates a larger team reaches, and /plans states plainly that plans start around $75 per user per month for a small office and that the per-user rate drops as the team grows past ten. A five-person office pays inside the published market range, not under it.
Three things make the larger-team numbers possible, and none of them are clever. The practice is founder-led, so there is no account-management layer between you and the person doing the work. There is no office lease to carry, and the focus on small offices keeps the stack standard instead of rebuilt per client.
What "unlimited in-scope" means
Unlimited in-scope means you are not billed per ticket for the work your plan already covers. The site-wide line is exact: each tier includes unlimited in-scope support, and work outside your plan is quoted separately. You see the quote before that work starts.
Outside the plan means two different things. It means project work that is not part of a monthly plan at any tier. It also means anything sitting in a tier above the one you bought.
That second case is the one people miss. If you are on Tier 0 Helpdesk, the backup, MFA, email security, and endpoint protection in Tier 1 Manage are not included, and the written security program work in Tier 2 Comply is not either. Buying a lower tier and expecting higher-tier work to arrive as a favor is how relationships go bad in month four.
When we are not the right answer
Sometimes you should buy cheaper, and sometimes you should buy bigger. Both are worth saying out loud in an article about price.
Buy cheaper if you have a handful of users, no regulator, everything already in Microsoft 365, and no servers. A part-time contractor or hourly break-fix help will cost you less than any per-user managed plan, including ours. At very small headcounts our per-seat rate is inside the market range rather than under it, so the price advantage you may have come here for mostly shows up above ten users.
Buy bigger if you need staffed coverage across multiple sites, a dedicated on-site engineer, or a name a large enterprise client already recognizes on a vendor questionnaire. A founder-led practice concentrates risk in one person. Monitoring at Tier 2 runs through a 24/7 SOC partner, but the day-to-day relationship is still one person, and you should ask any small provider, including me, how escalation and coverage work before you sign.
Now the other direction. A $47 helpdesk tier is not enough for a regulated office, and no price comparison should end with a CPA firm or a medical practice buying Tier 0. Tier 0 is support. Hardened builds, encrypted offsite backup with tested recovery, MFA and least-privilege access, email authentication and phishing filtering, endpoint protection, awareness training, and vulnerability scanning all start at Tier 1 Manage.
The compliance work starts a tier above that. The written information security program for FTC Safeguards, the written risk assessment, access reviews with sign-off you can show an auditor, vendor risk reviews, the rehearsed incident response plan, and audit support are Tier 2 Comply. If your office is covered by the Safeguards Rule or HIPAA, comparing us to anyone on the Tier 0 number is comparing the wrong thing.
One more limit. Your firm designates its own Qualified Individual and keeps the legal accountability for compliance. We support that person and do the implementation work. What we deliver is a gap assessment and a plan, not certified, guaranteed, or audited compliance.
Frequently asked questions
How much does managed IT cost per user?
Most published 2026 guides land between $100 and $200 per user per month for a small business, with the full range running about $75 to $400 depending on scope. CloudSecureTech reports a national midpoint near $142 across 47 metros. Petronella reports a small-business national average of $150 to $200. Texas mid-tier metros such as Dallas are reported at $120 to $180 by serenitllc.com and mspcompanies.us.
What is included in per-user pricing?
It depends entirely on the tier, which is why a bare per-user number tells you almost nothing. A support-only plan covers help desk, remote and on-site help, and new-hire and departure setup. A managed plan adds monitoring, hardened builds, after-hours patching, Microsoft 365 management, encrypted offsite backup, network and firewall management, MFA and access control, email security, endpoint protection, training, and vulnerability scanning. A compliance plan adds the written security program, the written risk assessment, access reviews with sign-off, vendor risk reviews, SOC log monitoring, tabletop exercises, and audit support. Ask any provider which of those are in the number they quoted you.
Why do MSPs not publish prices?
Partly for a fair reason and partly for an unfair one. The fair reason is that a per-user price without a defined scope is close to meaningless, and two quotes at $150 can describe very different work. The unfair reason is that a quote given only after a discovery call can be priced to the buyer rather than to the work, and an unpublished price cannot be compared. Our numbers are on /plans because a buyer should be able to check the range before booking anything.
Is cheaper IT support worth it?
Sometimes, yes. If you have no regulator, no servers, and a small cloud-only team, hourly help is a reasonable buy and a managed plan is more than you need. If you are a CPA firm, a title company, an insurance agency, or a medical office, cheap support without backup, MFA, email security, endpoint protection, and a written program is not a saving. It is an unfunded obligation you still owe, and the first insurance application or client security questionnaire will surface it.
The current per-user figures and what sits in each tier are on the plans page. If you already have a provider and are working out whether to move, read switching IT providers.
Hammad Arain is the founder of Arain Systems. He has seven years in regulated IT across healthcare, oil and gas, and a managed service provider serving banks and financial institutions.