Hourly, when something breaks
- You pay for nothing you do not use
- Honest for genuinely occasional problems
- A bad month can be a very expensive month
- Quietly discourages calling about small things
- Nobody is responsible for prevention, only repair
Guide
What IT support really costs
Not a number. The factors behind the number, and how each pricing model behaves once you are living with it, so you can judge any quote you are given.
Small business IT support is usually sold in one of three ways: hourly when something breaks, a fixed monthly fee for ongoing cover, or project work priced per job. Each is reasonable, and each behaves very differently once you are living with it.
We do not publish figures, on this page or anywhere on this site. A price without your requirements attached is marketing. What follows is what actually drives the cost, so you can read any quote you receive.
How the pricing models actually behave
The difference that matters is not the headline rate. It is what each model does to your behaviour.
Fixed monthly cover
- Predictable, which makes it budgetable
- Removes the hesitation before asking for help
- The provider now has a reason to prevent problems
- Poor value if you truly need help twice a year
- Scope matters enormously: ask what is not included
What actually drives the number
Roughly in order of impact.
- How many people, and how many devices. The most obvious driver and usually the one quoted against. Worth noting it is people and devices, not just people: one person with a laptop, a phone and a desktop is three things that can break.
- The state of what you already have. The single biggest variable and the one nobody warns you about. Support on a tidy, documented setup is straightforward. Support on an estate where nobody knows who owns the domain means the first months are archaeology. That is technical cleanup, and it is worth pricing separately rather than discovering it inside a support fee.
- How fast you need an answer. Response time is a real cost. A business that can wait until tomorrow is cheaper to support than one that cannot trade with the system down, and it should be, so be honest about which you are rather than buying the fastest tier by default.
- What counts as in scope. Email and computers, or also the website, the phones, the card machine, the booking system. Scope is where quotes that look different often turn out to be identical, and where quotes that look identical turn out not to be.
- Whether anyone internal can handle the basics. One person in the building who is comfortable restarting things and following instructions measurably reduces what you need to buy.
- Compliance and industry requirements. If you handle regulated data, requirements are set for you and cost what they cost. Ignore this at quoting stage and it reappears later.
Questions worth asking any provider
These matter more than the rate. A cheap arrangement you cannot leave is not cheap.
- What is the response time, in writing? And what happens when it is missed. A target nobody is accountable for is a hope.
- What is explicitly not included? More useful than the inclusions list. This is where surprise invoices come from.
- Who owns our domain and our accounts? The answer should be you. If it is them, ask what leaving looks like before you sign.
- What happens if we leave? A provider confident in their work will answer this easily. Hesitation here is the answer.
- Will we get a written record of our setup? If the only copy of how your business works lives in their heads, you are buying a dependency.
- Who actually does the work? Worth knowing whether you are getting the person you are speaking to.
- Is prevention part of this, or only repair? Decides whether you are buying an ambulance or a maintenance plan.
Who this is for
- Owners comparing support quotes and unsure why they differ so much
- Businesses deciding between calling someone when it breaks and a monthly arrangement
- Anyone who has been quoted and wants to understand what they are buying
- Businesses whose current arrangement is informal and finally outgrowing it
When this is not the right fit
- Anyone who wants a figure without a conversation. It would be invented, and we will not.
- Businesses needing full-time internal IT. At that size the calculation is different and worth taking seriously.
- Anyone shopping purely on lowest rate. That is a legitimate way to buy, but this page will not help you do it.
What SolvenceHQ can help with
We support small businesses on the ordinary things: computers, email, domains, the website, and the systems around them. If that is the shape of what you need, the conversation is short.
- Working out honestly whether you need ongoing support at all
- Reading a quote you have received from someone else
- IT support on an ongoing basis
- Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace administration
- Cleaning up first so support is not archaeology
- Care plans for the website side of the same problem
- A written record of your setup that stays yours
Common questions
Why will you not put a price on this page?
Because a figure without your requirements attached would be a guess dressed up as information, and you would reasonably hold us to it. The range for "IT support" across small businesses is genuinely enormous, and it is driven by things we cannot know from a web page: how many people, how much of it already works, and how quickly you need answers.
What we can do is tell you what moves the number, which is what the rest of this page is for. Then any quote you receive becomes readable, including ours.
Is hourly or monthly better?
It depends on whether your costs come from incidents or from upkeep. Hourly is honest for occasional, unpredictable work and it means you pay for nothing you do not use. It also means a bad month is expensive, and it quietly discourages you from calling about small things, which is how small things become big ones.
Monthly suits businesses that need things kept running rather than fixed. It makes budgeting simple and removes the hesitation before calling. It is poor value if you genuinely need help twice a year.
The honest test: count how many times you needed help in the last twelve months. Few and unpredictable, go hourly. Regular, go monthly.
What should be included that often is not?
Ask specifically about response time, what counts as in-scope, who owns your accounts, and what happens if you leave. That last one matters most and is asked least.
The pattern to avoid is a provider who holds your domain, your tenant and your hosting in their own accounts. It is not always malicious, it is often just how they set things up, but it means leaving is expensive. Ownership should sit with you. See technical cleanup if you suspect this has already happened.
Do we need support at all?
Plenty of small businesses genuinely do not. If your setup is simple, it works, someone in the team is comfortable with it, and the records are written down, then paying a monthly fee for reassurance is not obviously good value.
What changes the answer is dependency. Once losing email for a day would cost you real money, or once nobody in the building can fix the thing everybody relies on, the calculation is different.
Related services and guides
Small business IT consulting
Straight advice on the systems your business runs on.
Microsoft 365 administration
Licences, accounts, security settings and the day to day of running a tenant.
Technical cleanup
Untangle the accounts, domains and logins nobody has a full list of.
What a small business website costs
The factors that actually drive the number, explained honestly.
Care plans
Ongoing website care and support options.
Website maintenance checklist
What to check weekly, monthly and yearly.
Get a Quote
Want the number for your situation
That needs about ten minutes and a few honest questions about how your business runs. Tell us the shape of things and we will tell you what it would take.