Nobody in this industry likes publishing numbers. Here are the pricing models, the ranges the market actually charges, what belongs inside a monthly fee, and the six costs that tend to show up in month four.
Try to price IT support online and you will hit the same wall on every site: a contact form. There is one defensible reason for that and one that is not so defensible, and it is worth separating them.
The defensible reason is that identical-looking businesses cost wildly different amounts to support. Two fifteen-person offices, same industry, same town. One runs modern laptops, everything in Microsoft 365, no server, and a staff that has been using the same software for years. The other has two aging on-premise servers, a line-of-business application that stopped getting updates in 2011, a firewall past end of life, and no verified backup. Supporting the second costs two to three times what supporting the first costs. A single published price would overcharge one and lose money on the other.
The less defensible reason is that opacity is commercially useful. Without published models or ranges, buyers cannot compare quotes, and price drifts toward whatever the customer appears able to pay. Every business owner who has collected three IT quotes has felt that — three numbers that cannot be laid next to each other because none of them describe the same scope.
So here is the middle ground. We will not invent a price for a business we have never seen. We will publish everything else: how the models work, what the market charges, what a monthly fee normally covers, what it normally does not, and the specific questions that make two quotes comparable. Take all of it to whichever provider you end up hiring, including one that is not us.
Model by Model
Almost every quote you receive will be one of these, or a blend of two. Knowing which one you are looking at is most of the battle.
One monthly rate per person, covering every device that person uses.
Best for: Offices where people carry a laptop, a desktop, and a phone. Budgeting is trivial: cost moves with headcount.
Watch for: Confirm in writing whether servers, firewalls, and network equipment are included in the per-user rate or billed on top.
One monthly rate per managed endpoint, regardless of who uses it.
Best for: Shift-work environments where several employees share one workstation, and shops with unattended equipment.
Watch for: Device counts drift upward. Ask how a device is defined, and what happens to the bill when a machine is retired.
One number for the whole environment, quoted after the provider inspects it.
Best for: Businesses that want a single predictable line item and do not want to think about seat counts every month.
Watch for: The value lives entirely in the scope document. A flat fee with a long exclusions list is not actually flat.
Bronze / silver / gold bundles at published per-seat prices.
Best for: Fast comparison shopping and businesses with very standard needs and no server.
Watch for: The tier you need is rarely the one you first want. Security tooling and backup often sit one tier above the advertised price.
Prepaid bank of labor hours drawn down as you use them, at a discount to hourly.
Best for: A bridge between break-fix and managed, or a supplement for an in-house team that occasionally needs depth.
Watch for: Expiration dates on unused hours, and rounding rules — fifteen-minute increments and one-hour minimums are very different.
Pay only when something breaks, billed at an hourly rate plus travel.
Best for: Very small, very simple environments with low downtime cost and no compliance obligation.
Watch for: Nothing funds prevention, so cost is unpredictable and concentrated in bad months.
What the Market Charges
These are the bands most small-business IT quotes fall into as of 2026, across the industry rather than at any one provider. Use them to sanity check what you are handed, not as a price list.
| What you are buying | Typical range | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Fully managed IT, per user | $75 – $200 / month | Small markets cluster low; compliance-heavy and metro providers sit high |
| Fully managed IT, per workstation | $30 – $100 / month | Usually excludes the human using it — check what support is bundled |
| Managed server | $150 – $500 / month each | Physical, virtual, and cloud instances are often priced differently |
| Co-managed IT (supporting your own staff) | $40 – $90 / user / month | Tooling and escalation without full-service helpdesk |
| Hourly break-fix labor | $100 – $200 / hour | One-hour minimums and trip charges are common in rural service areas |
| After-hours and emergency labor | 1.5× – 2× standard rate | Ask where the business-hours boundary sits — 5pm and 6pm differ a lot |
| Project work (migrations, cabling, office moves) | Quoted per project | Nearly always outside a monthly agreement, in every model |
| One-time onboarding / remediation | $0 – several thousand | The single most under-disclosed number in the industry |
Ranges reflect general small-business market pricing and are provided for comparison only. They are not a Hughes Technology quote — ours is issued in writing after a free assessment of your specific environment.
Scope Is the Real Price
Two quotes can differ by 40% and be identical in value, or match exactly and differ enormously. The exclusions column is where you find out which.
Read the Fine Print
None of these are dishonest when disclosed up front. All of them are a problem when they surface after you have signed.
A monthly rate is quoted, you choose the provider, and then a four-figure onboarding or remediation invoice appears. Ask for it in the first conversation, in writing, before you compare monthly numbers.
A twenty-user minimum on a twelve-person business quietly raises the real per-user rate by two thirds. It is a legitimate business practice and a completely different price than the one advertised.
"Unlimited support" that means unlimited between 8am and 5pm. If your business runs evenings, weekends, or a second shift, that exclusion is where most of your tickets will land.
Microsoft 365, antivirus, and backup licensing resold above list price. Not wrong — providers do real work administering licenses — but you should be able to see the markup rather than discover it.
Three-year terms with a thirty-day cancellation window, or termination fees equal to the remaining contract. Find the notice period before you sign, not when you want to leave.
If "project" is defined loosely enough, routine changes become billable. Ask for three examples of work the provider considers a project versus routine support.
Make the Quotes Comparable
Send this list verbatim to everyone you are considering, us included. Answers in writing turn three incomparable numbers into an actual decision, and the willingness to answer tells you almost as much as the answers do.
A provider who responds with specifics is one you can hold to something later. A provider who deflects to “it depends, let us set up a meeting” on all eight is telling you how the relationship will go.
Our Approach
We price managed IT as one flat monthly fee. Not hourly, not per incident, not with an after-hours multiplier waiting behind it. The number is quoted in writing after a free assessment, and the scope and exclusions are on the same page as the price so there is nothing to discover later.
We do not publish a per-seat figure, and we want to be straight about why. To publish one honestly we would have to set it high enough to cover the worst environment that might sign up — the one with two unsupported servers, a firewall past end of life, and eight years of undocumented changes. Every business whose systems are in decent shape would then be subsidizing that. Quoting after we look is the fairer trade, and it is the only way we can commit to a fixed number and mean it.
The free network assessment is a real deliverable, not a sales visit with a clipboard. You get a written inventory of every device, license, and warranty; a list of what is unpatched, unsupported, or unbacked-up, ranked worst first; and rough costs attached to each item. It is yours to keep whether you hire us, hire somebody else, or fix it in-house.
And if the assessment concludes that a monthly agreement is more structure than your business needs, we will say that. We would rather have the conversation again in two years when it fits than take a contract that does not.
FAQ
For fully managed IT, the broad market range in 2026 runs from about $75 to $200 per user per month, with small-market providers clustering in the lower half of that and metro or heavily compliance-focused providers in the upper half. Device-based pricing typically runs $30 to $100 per workstation and $150 to $500 per server each month. Hourly break-fix work in western Kentucky generally falls between $100 and $200 an hour with a one-hour minimum. Those are ranges for comparison, not quotes — the honest answer for any specific business depends on how many servers you run, what compliance you carry, and how much deferred maintenance is already sitting there.
Partly for a legitimate reason and partly for a bad one. The legitimate reason is that two fifteen-person businesses can differ by a factor of three in real cost: one runs everything in Microsoft 365 with modern laptops, the other has two aging on-premise servers, a line-of-business application from 2011, and no backups. Publishing one number would misprice both. The bad reason is that opacity makes comparison shopping hard and lets a provider price to what the customer looks able to pay. A reasonable middle ground — and the one we take — is to publish the model and the ranges openly, then quote a firm number after actually looking at the environment.
Per-user pricing charges one rate for each person, covering however many devices that person uses — laptop, desktop, phone, tablet. Per-device pricing charges for each managed endpoint regardless of who uses it. Per-user is usually better for offices where people carry two or three devices, and it makes budgeting trivial because the number moves with headcount. Per-device tends to be cheaper for shift-work environments where several employees share one workstation, and for businesses with lots of unattended equipment. Neither is inherently more honest; what matters is that servers, firewalls, and network gear are priced clearly under either model rather than appearing as a surprise later.
Almost universally excluded: hardware and software purchases, third-party license fees such as Microsoft 365 or backup storage, major projects like a server migration or an office move, structured cabling, and work caused by something outside the provider's control. Commonly excluded but negotiable: after-hours support, on-site visits beyond a set number, and remediation of pre-existing problems found during onboarding. Read the exclusions section before the price section. A low monthly rate with a long exclusions list frequently costs more over a year than a higher rate that genuinely covers labor.
Six show up repeatedly: a large one-time onboarding or remediation fee disclosed after you have chosen the provider; a minimum seat count that charges you for twenty users when you have twelve; after-hours and emergency multipliers on labor the quote implied was included; license markups on Microsoft 365 or antivirus resold above list; automatic annual renewal with a short cancellation window; and project work carved out so broadly that routine changes get billed separately. None of these are unethical if they are disclosed up front. All of them are a problem if you find them in month four.
Sometimes, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. If a lower quote covers the same scope, the same response times, and the same security baseline, take it. What usually happens instead is that the cheaper quote covers fewer devices, excludes servers, offers business-hours-only response, treats security tooling as an add-on, or assumes a much lower ticket volume than your environment will actually generate. Put the two quotes side by side on scope rather than on price, and the gap either justifies itself or disappears. If a provider will not give you scope in writing, the price is not comparable to anything.
Flat monthly, quoted after a free assessment, with the scope and the exclusions written down before you sign anything. We do not publish a per-seat number because we would have to pad it to cover the worst-case environment, and that is unfair to businesses whose systems are in good shape. The assessment is genuinely free and produces a written inventory and risk summary that is yours to keep even if you hire somebody else. If the honest recommendation is that you do not need a monthly agreement at all, that is what the assessment will say.
Before comparing prices, it helps to know which model you are buying at all. See managed IT vs. break-fix for the one-year cost math, in-house IT vs. outsourced if hiring is the alternative you are weighing, and switching IT providers if you already have somebody and the price is the reason you are looking.
A free assessment, a written inventory and risk list you keep either way, and a flat monthly quote with the exclusions printed next to the price. No obligation and no pressure.
Murray, KY 42071 • Serving Calloway County and western Kentucky
Ready to Transform Your Technology?
Let’s discuss how we can help streamline your IT infrastructure, improve security, and accelerate your business growth with our comprehensive technology solutions.
Ready to discuss your technology needs? Our team of experts is here to help you find the perfect solution for your business. Contact us today for a free consultation.
Phone
(270) 807-1000Service Area
Murray, KY & Western Kentucky — Remote Support Available Nationwide
Support Hours
24/7 Emergency Support
For urgent technical issues or emergency support, our team is available 24/7 to ensure your systems stay operational.