Small business owners generally understand how important their IT systems are to their business’s success. One survey found that 78% of small business owners planned to make technology a top investment in 2022. But what is the cost of IT support for small business?
Often, it will run you around a few thousand dollars a month, which is not that much when you compare it to network downtime which can cost thousands of dollars per minute or a data breach which can end a small business.
In other words, preventing these two occurrences alone more than makes up for your technology investment.
You may still be wondering, however, what the exact IT support cost for a small business is?
Frankly, that depends.
In order to determine an estimate, however, you need to determine if you choose to staff an in-house IT team, or opt for outsourcing IT support to a managed services provider.
IT Support Cost for Small Business: What to Consider
In order to keep your technology at its peak efficiency, you need tech support to remove IT roadblocks and solve recurring issues. Trying to run a business without a dedicated IT support team can be extremely difficult, otherwise.
So the need for IT support is clear. What’s not clear, necessarily, is whether your business is better off with outsourced IT companies (typically referred to managed services providers or MSPs) or an in-house team.
This is an important decisions, as the responsibilities of your in-house or outsourced team can include:
- Cloud management, support, and implementation
- Remote monitoring 24/7
- Network support, updating, patching, and upgrading
- Technology procurement
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- IT roadmapping and strategic planning to avoid IT scaling impediments
- Cybersecurity solutions and hardware management
- Software license management
- Data backup and disaster recovery planning
Not to mention automation, data migration services, project management, network cabling, etc.
The list, in other words, goes on.
You’ll need trained specialists to handle these tasks (not all businesses will need all these services, but many often benefit from the full suite, especially as they grow).
As you decide between in-house management and MSP support to handle the above tasks, it’s important to note that the cost of IT support for small businesses varies greatly between the two.
Consider that the average salary of a IT administrator is about $65,000. And that’s only a single person. Finding a person that has proficiency in all the above tasks with experience and being able to offer them the average salary would be difficult indeed.
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The average cost of IT support services is comparatively much less, especially for small and medium-sized businesses; you’ll likely pay anywhere from $100 to $500 per user or per device. The main determining factors being the services package you opt for and the scope of the work you need.
IT managed support pricing is almost always more cost effective than hiring on an in-house team, though there are situations where an in-house team is preferable.
Let’s break down the advantages and disadvantages of both in-house and outsourced support below.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of In-House Support
Despite the cost disparity, it still might be advantageous for certain businesses to hire on in-house help.
If your business requires highly specialized support on-hand at all times for very unique systems, then it can make sense to have an in-house team to manage that system. MSPs can and do offer fast reaction times, but if this is a business critical device or system that requires intense, constant care, in-house does start to make sense.
You may also prefer having an employee that you can physically see working rather than have a full team that is out of sight and mind.
That said, all these advantages need to be weighed against small business IT support pricing that is often much, much more afforable.
You also have to deal with personnel management when working with an in-house employee, meaning paying vacation, sick days, recruitment and hiring, replacement and onboarding, office space, etc.
Contrast this your monthly IT support contract pricing which include:
- 24/7/365 monitoring and technical support
- A full team of specialists
- On-site support teams on-call to help
- No additional costs
- No management necessary
You can also combine an in-house team with outsourced support so you can keep costs down, a hybrid solution that works for some businesses.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourced Support
You can’t beat small business IT support pricing when compared to in-house pricing.
If your main concern is ROI, then the answer is obvious: outsourced IT support services pricing will deliver more for less in almost every situation.
End-to-end management takes care of all your needs, eliminates your personal IT burden, empowers you with a team of subject matter experts, and is otherwise far more scalable compared to an in-house team.
How Your Services Package Can Impact the Cost of IT Support for Small Business
If you do opt for an outsourced support team, you’ll next need to determine your services package as that will dictate how much you pay per month.
Your overall monthly fee will be determined by:
- Scope of the work
- Your business’s size (number of users)
- What and how many devices your business is using
There are other factors, but those are the main ones.
You can then choose a la carte service plan or a fully managed option. In the former, you can add and drop services as needed. This ensures that you only pay for what you need. But it does have a drawback: as your business grows, adding on individual services can cause a high spike to your monthly IT support contract pricing.
A fully managed service is much cheaper if you plan on availing yourself of a good number of the services available. What’s more, by getting fully managed services, your MSP gains a holistic view of your business, allowing them to implement complementary solutions that generate overall higher ROI.
| Learn more about the IT services Attentus Technologies provides: Managed IT Services Remote IT Services Data Backup and Recovery VOIP Services |
A final option is a pay-as-you-go or break/fix plan that works on an hourly rate or by issue solved. If your business requires only basic technical support and monitoring and then this is the cheapest of the three service packages. That, however, can change quickly if you run into a month that has a particularly high need for IT support. And, as mentioned earlier, you will miss out on the synergistic benefits of having your IT fully managed by a reliable partner.
Cut Your Average Cost of IT Support Services Without Sacrificing Quality When Connected With Attentus
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Attentus Tech is ready to handle every single one of your IT demands – and do it without causing your budget to run out of control.
We have over 18 years in the business and a 96.6 CSAT rating – clients appreciate working with us, and we are passionate about supporting their growth with leading technology services.
On average, we spend roughly 20 minutes per month per user on reactive issues. That means if you have an asset go down, we’ll have it back up in 20 minutes or less, on average.
Attentus Tech is the answer to every one of your IT issues; get a wide range of IT services from CSSP to field IT support to fully optimizing your business IT infrastructure. We ensure that our clients never pay for services they don’t need and always get the most out of their IT budget.
Get in touch with us today to learn how our IT services can help drive growth for your business.
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