For a small business, managed IT support typically costs between $99 and $220 per user, per month. Those are the ranges Novieri publishes: a Core plan runs $99–115 per user per month, a Complete plan $139–160, and a Premium plan with compliance support $189–220. For a 20-person company, that works out to a predictable monthly bill somewhere between $2,000 and $4,400, depending on how much coverage you need. Most teams land in the middle tier. Where your case falls inside a range depends on the size and needs of your operation, and the exact number should arrive in a written proposal, not on a surprise invoice.
Price tiers in managed IT are not marketing labels; they map to real differences in what gets done every month. Here is what the three levels usually cover, using our own managed IT service as the reference:
When you compare providers, make sure you are comparing tiers with the same contents. A cheap per-user price that excludes backups, security, or after-hours response is not cheap; it is incomplete.
Why is one company quoted $99 per user and another $115 for the same tier? A few factors move the number:
Almost every managed IT engagement starts with onboarding: deploying the management agent on every machine, documenting your network and accounts, fixing the most urgent problems found, and setting up monitoring and backups. At Novieri, onboarding equals one month of service and is billed once at the start. Whoever you hire, ask how onboarding is priced before you sign; a provider that skips it is a provider that will be learning your environment during your first outage.
The honest comparison is not managed IT versus free; it is managed IT versus a salary. A full-time IT generalist in the US commonly costs $60,000 to $90,000 a year before benefits, tools, and training, and one person cannot cover vacations, sick days, or a resignation. They also cannot be a helpdesk technician, a network engineer, and a security specialist at the same time.
A 15-person company on a Complete plan at $139–160 per user pays roughly $2,100 to $2,400 a month, about $25,000 to $29,000 a year, and gets a team, the tooling, documented processes, and coverage that does not take vacations. To be fair the other way: once a company grows past a certain size or has heavy on-site needs, an internal hire plus a co-managed contract can make sense. A good provider will tell you when you have reached that point instead of clinging to the contract.
Two quotes with the same monthly number can describe very different services. Before choosing, ask every provider these questions:
That last one matters more than people think. Everything about your environment should be documented and owned by you from day one.
Usually yes. Most providers set a floor because monitoring and tooling have fixed costs; Novieri's managed IT starts at 10 users for US clients. If your team is smaller, it is still worth a conversation: sometimes the right answer is a lighter arrangement until you grow, and an honest provider will say so. You can check every published range on our pricing page.
Typically no. Microsoft 365 licenses, hardware, and third-party software are billed separately at their real cost; the managed IT fee covers administering them. Be wary of bundles that hide license markups inside the per-user price. And you should not have to replace what you already own: a good engagement starts with a diagnostic, keeps what works, and proposes investments with priorities and budgets so you make the call.
Yes, and it is often the sensible path: start with the essentials, then add managed security or compliance support when a customer, a bank, or an auditor starts asking questions. If you are not sure which tier fits your operation today, tell us about your case and we will give you a straight answer, including the option of not hiring us yet.