If you are a small to medium-sized business, it’s likely you won’t have the budget to hire an in-house IT team but still want to ensure your systems are up-to-date, working efficiently and securely. Luckily there is the option to outsource your IT to an external provider instead, giving your business cost-effective access to IT professionals.
Naturally, the barrier to making that decision could be the cost. When looking at different IT providers, there are varying approaches to pricing IT services which make it hard to know what is the fair price to pay. Unfortunately there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to working out the price of outsourcing your IT requirements, but, in this article, we will break down how IT support providers typically price their services and what factors can change that price.
How IT Service Providers Price Their Services
There are different ways providers may price their services. Below are the four most common ways they do it.
Monitoring Only
With this pricing structure, the IT service provider will only monitor your systems and alert the client if there are any problems that need attention. This would be a flat fee usually paid monthly or annually.
Per-User
This pricing structure is the most common in the IT support industry. The client will pay a fixed fee per user within their organisation. This means as your company grows or shrinks, your IT costs grow and shrink with it.
Per-Device
The per-device pricing method is similar to the above but instead of charging per user, the client will be charged per device. This method is good for certain business types, but unfortunately as lots of software licensing is now per-user anyway, the per user option is usually more suitable
Ad-hoc
If a client was to pay an IT service provider ad-hoc, they would only pay when they require support. This could be a good option if you rarely require support although you could be met with a large bill if you suddenly require lots of support – especially as ad-hoc labour rates are typically inflated when you’re out of contract. Or even worse, your provider may not be available as they will typically prioritise contracted customers. Important IT services such as cloud storage and cyber security will rarely be charged on an ad-hoc basis.
How much do IT service providers charge?
The average cost of ongoing IT services is between £55-£120 per user if the IT provider is using the per-user pricing model. The range is dependent on the requirements of the business and what the IT provider includes as part of that fee and what is deemed as an additional cost.
As with most things, there are likely to be IT service providers charging less or more than this range. When selecting a provider, it’s important to research their experience to see if they’re likely to deliver an efficient and effective service.
Is outsourcing your IT services worth it?
Now you have all the information, the final question you need to answer is “is it worth it?”. The key here is not to see IT as a cost but as an investment. If you partner with an IT professional, you are likely to see a return on this investment in terms of increased staff productivity and reduced downtime. Achieved by keeping your IT up-to-date, spending less time battling with your systems and ensuring minimal downtime is incurred.
It’s also going to be more cost-effective than employing your own in-house IT team. Once you get to a certain size it may make sense to start investing internally,, but in the majority of industries this won’t be until at least 200+ employees.
If you think it’s worth outsourcing your IT, get in touch with us for a no-strings-attached chat to see how we can help you.