What does IT support cost? Comparing services and billing

IT support costs depend on which tasks are taken on and how your environment is set up. A low monthly price on its own therefore says little. I explain how I bill and what to clarify when you compare quotes.

Three ways to bill

For ongoing IT support I offer three options. They differ in who carries the risk when a month turns out quieter or busier than expected.

A block of hours sounds tidy, but it creates extra admin on both sides: tracking hours, reporting balances, topping up in time. It also slows things down in daily work. When something needs doing at short notice and the hours have run out, the client has to top up first and only then can I start. With an outage, that is exactly the delay nobody wants. That is why prepaid hours come last for me.

How a flat fee comes about

A flat fee is not a figure from a price list. I estimate how many hours a month are likely to come up. To do that I look at:

• number of workstations, staff and servers
• agreed response times
• areas of work you want covered, such as network, cloud or web services

This gives a rough number of hours per month. The flat fee is then a blended calculation: the hourly rate sits well below my standard rate, and in return you pay the flat fee even in months with fewer hours than estimated. That keeps your costs predictable.

A flat fee does not stay the same for ever. Usually once a year we go through the reports together: how much time did the work actually take, on what, and has anything changed in the environment? We then adjust the flat fee for the following year, up or down.

What a flat fee includes and what it does not

It includes my working time, my availability, the agreed response time and the knowledge I have built up over the years. By response time I mean, as my terms and conditions also state, the time until the first qualified response, not the time until the problem is solved. Clarify this difference with every quote you receive.

It does not include usage-based items, such as a charge for monitoring per workstation. Figures like these can change from month to month as devices come and go. Building them into a fixed fee would mean renegotiating it constantly. So I bill them separately.

Comparing IT support costs: what to look for

A company pays too much when its running IT costs do not match what is actually delivered. Typical cases are services paid for twice, and licences or contracts nobody needs any more.

Compare which services are included, how additional work is charged and which response times are agreed. Pay particular attention to whether maintenance, monitoring, checking the backups, IT security and documentation are covered.

A price per employee therefore says little. Two quotes with the same amount can contain entirely different services. What you can compare is the balance of cost, scope, quality of service and the risk the provider takes on. These questions help you assess it:

• Do you know which services your fee covers and which are billed separately?
• Does someone check your backups regularly, or will you only find out in an emergency whether they work?
• Do updates and monitoring run to plan, or does nothing happen until you call?
• Is there up-to-date documentation of your environment that you can access yourself?
• Are you paying for licences or contracts nobody uses any more?

Why I do not publish prices on my website

Because IT support costs cannot be put into a sensible standard figure. Two companies with the same number of workstations can need very different amounts of work, depending on servers, cloud services, line-of-business applications and the response time they want. A price of “from … euros per workstation” would promise more than it can deliver.

Instead, after a first conversation I am happy to send a non-binding quote and refine it once I have an overview of the work you want and its scope. With new clients we usually start by billing time spent. Over time I get to know the systems, can estimate the effort well, and trust has grown on both sides. We then usually move to a flat fee within 12 to 24 months. What such a working relationship can look like over the years is shown by the support for an agency I have worked with as its external IT partner since 2018.

Frequently asked questions

What does IT support cost per workstation?

I do not quote a fixed price per workstation, because it says little. Besides the number of workstations, the effort depends on servers, response times and the areas I look after. After a first conversation I prepare a non-binding quote.

Is a flat fee cheaper than billing by time spent?

The hourly rate within a flat fee is considerably lower. In return, you pay the fixed amount in quiet months too. Whether it pays off shows in the annual review, after which we adjust the flat fee for the following year.

Why do you rarely use prepaid hours?

Because they mean extra admin for both sides and slow down work at short notice. Once the hours have run out, the client has to top up before I can carry on.