Managed IT Services Pricing 2026: What 10-, 25- and 50-Person Companies Pay (US vs EU)

Managed IT is the monthly contract a small company signs so someone else runs its computers, network, email and security. It's also one of the hardest prices to pin down, because the providers don't publish rate cards. They publish price guides.

I should be clear about where I stand. I spent 2019 to 2024 building, repairing and selling PCs at Aliteq's shop in Kathmandu, and today Aliteq is a US-based company where I build AI apps. I have never run a managed IT business, never sold a managed IT contract and never bought one. What I did for this piece is read the pricing pages, the one industry survey with public numbers and the government wage data, and do the multiplication for companies of 10, 25 and 50 people.

One thing to know before any number below: every managed IT price here is published by a company that sells managed IT, or by a directory that sells to them. The only survey is of the providers themselves, from 2023. I found no survey of what buyers actually pay. Read the ranges as asking prices.

What managed IT costs at 10, 25 and 50 people

A US company pays about $1,250–2,000 a month at 10 staff, $3,125–5,000 at 25 and $6,250–10,000 at 50. That's Solution Builders' published band for companies of 10–50 users, $125–175 per user for basic support and $175–200 for advanced, multiplied by headcount.

Here is the full bill, including the one-off onboarding fee that most first invoices carry. ITAdOn, another provider, puts onboarding at "typically 1–2 months of the recurring fee".

The last row matters. In Kaseya's 2023 Global MSP Benchmark Survey of 1,091 providers, 83% of them in the Americas, the most common per-user price was $50–100 a month, chosen by 22%. Only 16% charged more than $150. Kaseya sells software to MSPs and the data is three years old, but it's the only large sample of what providers say they charge. The price guides on page one of Google, all written by providers, mostly start at $100.

Size moves the rate too. A directory of MSPs, MSPCompanies.us, estimates that "a 15-person company pays $175–$200/user" while a 100-person company pays $110–140 for the same tier. It also puts New York and San Francisco at $180–250 per user and Phoenix at $120–170. Treat those as a directory's estimates, not measurements.

The four ways providers price it

Most providers charge per user, a few charge per device, and nearly all sell tiers. Per user is the one you'll see on almost every quote: one monthly price per employee, covering all of that person's devices.

• Per user. $100–250 for standard support and $200–400 for "security-forward" plans, according to ITAdOn. Datapath gives $100–400 as its overall range "before onboarding, projects, advanced security, and compliance work".
• Per device. VC3 publishes $50–100 per workstation, $100–400 per server, $30–75 per firewall and $15–40 per switch, each a month. This suits offices with shared machines.
• Tiers. ITAdOn describes a typical menu: basic remote help desk at $80–120 per user, standard monitoring and maintenance at $140–200, and premium compliance plus a virtual CIO at $220–350 or more.
• Monitoring only, or break-fix by the hour. Monitoring alone runs $30–50 per user (ITAdOn). Hourly break-fix support is $150–350 an hour at ITAdOn and $175–350 at VC3.

Per device can be cheaper when a small team has few machines. Here is the same 25-person office both ways, assuming one computer per person, one server, one firewall and two switches:

The per-device total looks lower, but check what it covers. A device price is a price for machines, so ask whether help with people's accounts, Microsoft 365 and phones is included too.

What the base fee covers, and what costs extra

A business-hours help desk and monitoring with patching are almost always in the headline price. Onboarding, after-hours work, projects, advanced security and compliance are the usual extras. Synergi Tech, a UK provider, puts it plainly: "Cyber security tooling, backup, project work and out-of-hours cover are the elements most often excluded from headline prices."

The extras are where two similar quotes split apart:

• Security. ITAdOn says managed security "can raise your baseline per-user fee by anywhere from 30% to well over 100%". It's the main reason a $150 plan becomes a $300–400 one.
• After hours. Hourly work outside business hours is billed above the normal $150–350 rate. Solution Builders gives the example of a provider advertising a low per-seat price but charging $200 an hour for tickets raised after hours.
• Compliance. MSPCompanies.us estimates HIPAA support adds $15–30 per user a month and CMMC $30–60.
• Backup. Sometimes monitored, sometimes excluded, rarely tested unless the contract says so. If yours isn't covered, our plain-English piece on backups and losing everything explains what a real backup needs.
• Software licences. Ask whether Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace licences are inside the per-user price or billed separately. Microsoft 365 Business Premium alone is $22 per user a month on annual billing.

In-house, MSP or co-managed?

At 10, 25 and 50 people, a full MSP costs less than one in-house IT hire. One US user support specialist costs about $7,364 a month in salary and benefits, and one systems administrator about $11,801. An MSP for 25 people is $3,125–5,000.

Those in-house figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median US wage is $61,860 a year for a computer user support specialist and $99,130 for a network and computer systems administrator (May 2025). Wages are 70.0% of total pay in private industry (June 2026), so I divide by 0.70 to add benefits. That gives $88,371 and $141,614 a year, before tools, training, recruiting or cover for holidays.

Co-managed IT means you keep an IT person and an MSP fills the gaps: after-hours monitoring, security, or a help desk when your person is away. No provider I read publishes a co-managed price. ITAdOn says it's priced "to the specific gap being filled", and MSPCompanies.us estimates it "typically costs 30–50% less per user". Even with that discount, it costs more than a full MSP at these sizes, because you're still paying a salary. Co-managed makes sense when you already have an IT person you want to keep, not as a way to save money.

One in-house person also isn't a department. Pebble IT, a UK provider, makes the point that the person "also takes holidays and gets ill". That's a provider's pitch, but it's a real gap to plan for.

UK and EU prices

UK and Danish providers publish lower per-user prices than US ones, once converted to dollars. UK providers quote £30–120 per user a month ($40–159), and Danish providers 300–1,200 kr for a 10–50 person company ($46–183). All converted at the ECB rate of 25 September 2026, excluding VAT.

The UK sources are consistent with each other. Gray IT publishes its own table of £300–1,200 a month at 10 users, £750–3,000 at 25 and £1,500–6,000 at 50, and warns that "anything quoted below about £25 per user is almost certainly remote-only cover". In Denmark, CZ puts onboarding at 5,000–25,000 kr ($763–3,814), and Supporters lists a complete package at 600–800 kr per user a month ($92–122) on a 12-month term.

For wider EU pricing I used Denmark as the sample, because its providers publish unusually clear price pages. I didn't find comparable public prices for Germany or other EU markets, so I haven't printed any.

Is your MSP quote fair?

A quote of $125–200 per user a month is inside the published US band for a 10–50 person company. Anything far outside it should come with a reason, like compliance work, 24/7 cover or a lot of servers. Before you compare two quotes, get these answers in writing:

1. What exactly is excluded from the monthly fee, and what's your hourly rate for it?
2. Is there an onboarding fee, and what does it cover?
3. Is after-hours and emergency support included, or billed per ticket or per hour?
4. Which security tools are included: endpoint detection and response, email filtering, managed detection?
5. Is backup included, and does the provider test a restore?
6. Are Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace licences inside the per-user price?
7. How long is the contract, and what does leaving cost?

A lower price that excludes security and backup isn't really cheaper. Several providers make this point in their own guides, and it holds up: the extras in the table above can add 30% to over 100% to the base fee.

What I'd do at 10, 25 and 50 people

Based on these numbers, I'd get two or three per-user quotes, compare the exclusions before the price, and budget one to two months' fee for onboarding. This is my reading of the published prices, not advice from experience of running an MSP.

• At 10 people, an MSP at $1,250–2,000 a month is a fraction of one $7,364 hire. Per-device pricing may be cheaper still if you have few machines.
• At 25 people, a full MSP at $3,125–5,000 is still well under one hire. Ask hard questions about security and after-hours cover, because that's where 25-person quotes diverge.
• At 50 people, a full MSP at $6,250–10,000 gets close to the cost of one sysadmin. This is where co-managed IT starts to make sense, but only if you already employ someone and want to keep them.

The rest of the Cloud & IT Infrastructure section prices the other decisions on the same list: backups, device management, the Windows Server 2016 deadline and whether to run AI on your own server or rent a GPU. Security questions that come up in an MSP contract, like what customers ask for in audits, are covered in the Security & Compliance section.