What managed IT actually costs for a 20-person company

If you’ve ever tried to get a straight answer on what managed IT costs, you know the dance. You call three companies, get three vague proposals, and none of them will just tell you the number. Here’s the number, and what moves it.

The short answer

For a 20-person company in South Texas, managed IT typically runs $150 to $300 per seat per month — so roughly $3,000 to $6,000 a month for the whole team.

That’s our pricing, and it’s representative of the market for small-business managed IT done right. Anyone quoting you far below that is leaving something out — usually the security part, or the backup part, or the part where someone actually answers the phone.

What moves you up or down the range

Three things:

1. How much security you need. A professional office with client records to protect needs more security layering than a team that mostly lives in email and a browser. Security is the biggest driver of the range.

2. How complicated your setup is. One office, standard PCs, Microsoft 365 — straightforward. Multiple locations, a server in the closet, specialized software for your trade — more to monitor, maintain, and protect.

3. What shape you’re in now. If your systems are reasonably current, onboarding is smooth. If we’re walking into a network that hasn’t been properly maintained in years, there’s cleanup work before the monthly plan can do its job.

The free network assessment exists to answer exactly this: we look at your setup and tell you where you’d land, in plain English, before you commit to anything.

What the monthly number actually buys

This is where cheap quotes fall apart. A real managed IT plan includes:

• Proactive monitoring and maintenance. Someone watching your systems and keeping them patched and updated — so small problems get fixed before they become outages.
• Cybersecurity. Protection and monitoring bundled in, not sold as a scary add-on later.
• Backup and disaster recovery. Your data backed up automatically, and — this is the part people skip — tested, so you know it would actually restore.
• Help-desk support for your team. When something isn’t working, your people call us, not you.
• On-site support when it’s needed. Most things get fixed remotely. When hands are needed, we come to you.

If a quote doesn’t include all five, you’re not comparing the same thing.

The comparison that matters

The alternative most 20-person companies consider is hiring one in-house IT person. That costs more than the monthly plan, gives you one person’s knowledge instead of a team’s, and leaves you uncovered every vacation, sick day, and 2 AM server problem.

The other alternative is what most companies are doing now: nobody. The office manager doubles as the IT person, backups are a hope, and security is whatever came with the computers. That works until the week it doesn’t — and that week is expensive.

What to watch out for in any quote

• Vague scope. “Managed IT” with no list of what’s included isn’t a plan, it’s a prayer.
• Security as an upsell. If cybersecurity isn’t in the base plan, the base plan isn’t finished.
• Per-incident billing dressed up as managed. Real managed IT is proactive — you’re paying so things don’t break, not per break.
• No mention of backups. Ask the question directly: “If our server died tonight, how would you get us back?” The answer tells you everything.

The bottom line

$3,000 to $6,000 a month for a 20-person company. One predictable number that covers monitoring, security, backups, and support — instead of surprise bills and the most expensive IT strategy of all, which is hoping nothing breaks.

If you want to know where your company would land in that range, that’s what the free network assessment is for. We’ll tell you straight — and if you’re in good shape, we’ll tell you that too.

Frequently asked questions