Ask three IT providers to quote the same 25 person business and you get three numbers that are almost impossible to compare. One quotes per user. One quotes per device. One quotes a package with a tier name on it. The totals might land within a few hundred dollars of each other, and the value could still differ by a factor of two. Not because anyone is lying. Because the pricing model itself changes what a provider is motivated to do after you sign.
We will be candid here, including about our own industry. Every pricing structure creates incentives. Some line up with what you want. Some quietly point the other way. Here is how the common models work, what each rewards, what each discourages, and the questions that pull real scope into the open.
Per User: Simple Math With One Blind Spot
Per user pricing charges a flat monthly rate per person, no matter how many devices that person uses. A salesperson with a laptop, an office desktop, and a phone counts as one. Most providers moved this direction for a good reason: it matches how support gets consumed. People generate tickets. Devices in a closet do not.
- What it rewards: Nobody discourages a second monitor, a tablet, or a home setup. Extra devices for an existing person cost you nothing.
- What it quietly discourages: Cleanup. Nobody is watching device count, so a workstation that should have retired three years ago stays on the network.
- Where it breaks: Equipment with no human attached. Servers, network gear, kiosks, and scanners do not fit a per user count, so they get priced separately. That second line is where per user quotes stop being simple. Ask what counts as a “user” too: a six hour a week bookkeeper and a shared front counter login get billed differently by different providers.
Per Device: Where the Math Turns Against You
Per device pricing charges for each thing that connects: every workstation, every server, sometimes every firewall and switch. It is the older model, and genuinely the fairest option for some businesses. Twelve people with twelve computers often find it cheaper.
Trouble starts when device count outruns headcount, which happens more than people expect. A dental practice with imaging workstations and check in tablets can easily run three devices per employee. A fourteen person company with forty five endpoints then pays like a forty five person company, though it will never generate forty five people worth of tickets.
- What it rewards: Lean environments. If your device count is tight, per device usually produces the lowest honest number.
- What it quietly discourages: Consolidation advice. A provider paid per device has no financial reason to tell you six machines could become two. Most say it anyway. The incentive still runs the wrong way.
- Where it breaks: Device dense businesses, and anyone adding lots of small connected equipment.
Tiered and All In: Two Kinds of Fog
Tiered packages give you a bronze, silver, and gold style menu. What matters is not what is in your tier. It is what sits one step above it. That is where providers park what they expect you to eventually need, usually the same four: security tooling, longer backup retention, after hours coverage, and planning time. Ask what is in the next tier and you learn what the provider thinks you are missing.
All in pricing sounds like the fix. One number, everything included, and it is the most predictable model when written honestly. But “unlimited support” almost never means unlimited work. Nearly every all in agreement, including honest ones, separates support from projects. Support is fixing what broke. Projects are migrations, office moves, and anything with a start and end date. Billing projects separately is fair. It becomes a problem only when nobody told you where the line sits.
The Questions That Reveal What Is Actually Included
- After hours and weekends: Included, billed hourly, or unavailable? What is your written definition of an emergency, and who decides if my problem qualifies?
- Projects: Where is the line between covered support and a billable project? Give three real examples of each.
- Onboarding and offboarding: Is setting up a new hire included? Is onboarding our whole environment included or a one time fee? That fee is often the biggest number in year one.
- Third party vendor coordination: Will you call our industry software company, copier vendor, or internet provider for us, and is that billed? One of the most valuable things an IT partner does, and one of the least consistently included.
- Hardware and licensing: Are Microsoft or Google licenses inside the monthly price or passed through? Is hardware marked up, and how much?
- Security tooling: What protection is included at this price, and what sits one tier up?
- The exclusion list: May I see the written list of everything this agreement does not cover?
Send that same list to every provider and compare answers, not prices. You are not being difficult by asking. In its 2021 guidance for customers of managed service providers, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recommends requesting service level agreements with a clear delineation of operational IT and security services, plus a shared responsibility model covering the vendor’s responsibilities, the customer’s, and anything shared. That guidance adds a line worth repeating: outsourcing IT does not remove risk management responsibility from leadership. The Federal Trade Commission’s small business vendor security guidance agrees, advising businesses to put security provisions in vendor contracts and adding, plainly, “Don’t just take their word for it.”
Why the Cheapest Quote Per Seat Often Has the Longest Exclusion List
Here is the part that does not flatter our industry. The headline seat price is a marketing number. The exclusion list is the real price. To advertise a low rate, a provider must move cost out of the base agreement, and that cost does not evaporate. It reappears as hourly billing on exactly what you will need.
For rough context, in our Denton County market in 2026 we generally see fully managed agreements land around 100 to 250 dollars per user per month depending on how much security tooling and licensing is bundled in, with co-managed arrangements lower because your team keeps part of the work. Treat that as a ballpark and confirm current pricing locally. A quote well under the local band usually means one of three things: less time spent on you, scope moved to hourly billing, or licensing that is not included.
In fairness, sometimes cheap is cheap because the environment is simple and the provider is efficient. The test is never the number. It is whether the scope behind it is written in plain language. If you are still deciding whether to outsource at all, our guide on what to look for in an IT partner covers the criteria beside price.
The Bottom Line
There is no dishonest pricing model. There are only models that fit your business and models that do not. Per user fits people heavy companies. Per device fits lean, hardware light ones. Tiered works if you read the tier above yours. All in works if you read the exclusions first. Any of them can be quoted to look cheap in January and feel expensive by June. The model is not the tell. The written scope is.
So compare scope, not seat price. The provider who answers with specific, slightly uncomfortable honesty about exclusions is usually the one worth hiring. Since security is where tier gaps hurt most, it helps to read why cybersecurity is no longer optional for mid-sized businesses before choosing a tier.
If you want a straight answer about what your business would cost to support, and an equally straight answer about what would not be included, we are glad to walk through it. No pressure and no jargon, just the scope in writing so you can compare it to anyone else’s. Contact us today.
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