What Outsourced IT Support Costs a Small Business

Updated 10/20/2026.

Most outsourced IT support for a small business is priced per user per month, and that monthly rate is only part of what IT costs. The useful number is the total cost of ownership: the people, the process and the technology it takes to keep a business running, counted over the years you use them. This page shows what drives that cost, how providers price the work, what an in-house IT person costs, and one five-person office priced twice, in 2012 and today.

What drives the cost of IT

Our founder has been making this case to small businesses and their advisors since 2010, in a deck titled Selling IT Outsourcing: Reducing Total Cost of Ownership for IT Infrastructure. It sorts the cost of IT into three drivers.

People. The skill and cost of the staff, how fully their time is used, how they are organized, and whether the help desk resolves problems or only takes tickets.
Process. The service levels promised, and how problems, changes and new software are handled.
Technology. The computers and programs, running them, and in time replacing, upgrading and retiring them.

The monthly invoice shows only part of that. The rest is time: staff waiting on a fix, a computer set up by hand, a server nobody planned to replace.

What an outsourced provider should cover

The same deck defined managed IT as five jobs bundled together: watching the network, security, backup and recovery, getting software onto computers and keeping it patched, and a service desk. On our cloud desktops, these come with the monthly price:

Monitoring around the clock.
Backup. The server that holds your company files is backed up every day, and each daily copy is kept for 30 days.
Software. QuickBooks and the other software you license are installed on our servers, not on each computer. QuickBooks Update runs there every night, so a new version reaches everyone at once.
Service desk. The requests on our support page, with a two-hour response in the published hours and sign-in help at any hour.

The same idea, in practice

In 2008 a national franchisor asked our founder, then at Uni-Data & Communications, to fix a problem many growing businesses share. Its franchisees ran the company’s own franchise software alongside QuickBooks on their own computers, each of a different age and setup, and the software versions drifted apart from one location to the next.

The answer was to move the software and the data onto hosted desktops in the data center. Each franchise signed in to its own private desktop, and every location got the same software and the same updates at the same time, with little more than a good internet connection on site. The arrangement ran for more than seven years.

Our cloud desktops work the same way today: the software sits on our servers, QuickBooks Update runs there every night, and each person signs in from any computer with a web browser.

How outsourced IT support is priced

Per user per month. One rate for each person supported. It is the easiest model to budget and to compare between providers.
Per device per month. A rate for each computer, server or other device the provider manages.
Hourly, or break-fix. No charge until something breaks, then an hourly rate. A quiet month costs little, a bad month costs a lot, and nobody watches the systems in between.
Project fees. A quoted price for a one-time job such as an office move, a new server or a migration.

Whatever the model, ask what the rate leaves out. Software licenses, hardware, setup fees, after-hours work and restoring lost data are the usual extras.

What an in-house IT person costs

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for computer user support specialists at $61,860 (May 2025). For full-time workers in private industry, wages are 68.5 percent of what an employer spends and benefits are the other 31.5 percent (June 2026). At that ratio, a support specialist paid the median wage costs the employer about $90,300 a year, before training, tools, or cover for vacations and sick days. One person also covers one shift. For a small office, that arithmetic is the case for buying support by the user. As the 2010 deck put it: you don’t outsource staff counts, you achieve service levels.

A five-person office, priced in 2012

In 2012 our founder turned the deck into a white paper, Evaluating Small Business Technology Total Cost of Ownership and its Effect on ROI: When to Move to the Cloud. It priced one five-person office two ways. Buying everything outright looked like this:

Buying it, 2012 prices	Up front
Five computers	$6,180.00
A server (Dell PowerEdge T420 with Small Business Server 2011)	$4,661.00
Microsoft Office 2010, five-user license with Software Assurance	$2,940.00
QuickBooks Pro 2013, three-user license	$749.95
Total up front	$14,530.95

The server then had to be housed, maintained and replaced within its three-to-five-year life. Renting desktops in the cloud cut the up-front cost to the five computers and put the rest on a monthly bill of $247.50 to $347.50: $150 to $250 for cloud access, $60 for five Office subscriptions and $37.50 for five QuickBooks subscriptions.

The paper’s point was the structure, and the structure still holds. A capital purchase commits you to the equipment whether you use it or not; a monthly service grows and shrinks with the number of people you have.

The same office on EEZYCLOUD today

Five people, prices on 10/20/2026	Per month
EEZYCLOUD cloud desktops, 5 users at $58.30	$291.50
Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot, 5 users at $32.00 (your own subscription, billed by Microsoft, paid yearly)	$160.00
QuickBooks Desktop	your own license
Server, backup system, setup fee	none
Total	$451.50

That comes to about $5,420 a year for five people, roughly what the in-house IT person above costs an employer in three weeks.

Why Business Premium: Microsoft 365 desktop apps on a cloud desktop that several people share need shared computer activation, and Business Premium is the only Microsoft 365 business plan that includes it. A business already paying for Business Premium adds nothing here. The computers you already own are enough, because staff sign in from any computer with a web browser.

What the $58.30 includes

The cloud desktop on Microsoft Azure, with your licensed software installed on it.
Daily backups, each kept for 30 days, and restores on request.
Monitoring around the clock, and email support.
The infrastructure: servers, storage and their upkeep. There is no setup fee.
Month-to-month terms with no long-term contract. If you leave, we help you export your data.

Requests sent during the published support hours get a response within two hours. Outside those hours the help desk handles sign-in and password help, and everything else is picked up the next business day. You bring your own software licenses; we never sell them.

Questions to ask any IT provider

The 2012 paper closed with a list of things to look for in a provider. Here it is, brought up to date, with our own answers.

Where does my data sit? Ours sits in Microsoft Azure data centers in the East US region.
What does the monthly rate leave out? Ours leaves out your software licenses and your own computers.
How often are backups made, and how long are they kept? Ours run daily and are kept for 30 days.
Does the help desk resolve problems, or only take tickets? Ours resolves the request types listed on our support page, from password resets to file restores.
What are the support hours, and how fast is the response? Ours are published, with a two-hour response inside them.
Who can ask for changes? We act only on requests from the people your business has authorized.
Is uptime measured, and is the record published? We publish a measured monthly record on our uptime page and quote no percentage.
Do I keep my own software licenses? With us, yes. You bring your own.
Is there a long-term contract? Ours is month-to-month.
How do I leave? Cancel any time, and we help you export your data.

Frequently asked questions

How much does outsourced IT support cost for a small business?

Most providers charge per user per month, so ask what the rate includes and what it leaves out. On EEZYCLOUD a five-person office pays $291.50 a month ($58.30 per user) for cloud desktops, daily backups, monitoring and email support, plus its own Microsoft 365 and QuickBooks licenses.

What should outsourced IT support cover?

Five jobs: monitoring the systems, security, backup and recovery, installing and patching software, and a service desk that resolves problems rather than only taking tickets. Ask which of them a provider's rate includes.

Is outsourcing IT cheaper than hiring an IT person?

For a small office, usually. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median wage for a computer user support specialist at $61,860 (May 2025); with benefits at the private-industry average, that is about $90,300 a year in employer cost. Five users on EEZYCLOUD with Microsoft 365 Business Premium cost about $5,420 a year.

What does EEZYCLOUD's $58.30 per user include?

The cloud desktop on Microsoft Azure, daily backups kept for 30 days, monitoring around the clock, email support and the infrastructure, with no setup fee and no long-term contract. Software licenses are your own.

Which Microsoft 365 plan works on a cloud desktop?

Microsoft 365 desktop apps on a shared cloud desktop need shared computer activation, and among Microsoft's business plans only Business Premium includes it. Microsoft sells it as Business Premium with Copilot at $32.00 per user per month, paid yearly.