The short answer
For a Southwest Florida business with 10 to 100 employees, fully managed IT with security included typically lands between $125 and $225 per user per month. Below that range, something important is usually missing. Above it, you're either paying for enterprise-grade compliance work or for a brand name.
That's a wide range on purpose. Here's what actually moves the number.
What drives the price up
- Servers and locations. A business with two on-premise servers and three offices costs more to monitor, patch, and back up than a single-office business running entirely in Microsoft 365.
- Compliance obligations. HIPAA and the FTC Safeguards Rule add risk assessments, documentation, audit logging, and evidence collection. Done properly, that's real work, and it should appear as a line item.
- Security depth. Endpoint detection and response, email security, multi-factor authentication, awareness training, managed firewall, dark web monitoring. Each one costs the provider money per user. A quote that includes all of them will be higher than one that includes antivirus and calls it security.
- On-site expectations. Same or next business day on-site coverage across Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties requires technicians on the road. Remote-only providers can price lower because they never show up.
- After-hours coverage. 24/7 monitoring is standard. 24/7 live help desk is not, and it's expensive.
What drives the price down
- A clean environment. Modern workstations, a single Microsoft 365 tenant, and no legacy servers are cheaper to support.
- Co-managed arrangements. If you have an internal IT person, you may only need coverage for the users and systems they can't handle.
- Fewer, newer locations. One office with structured cabling and a documented network is the easy case.
How to compare two quotes
Put them side by side and ask these questions of each:
- Is security included, or is it a separate package? If EDR, MFA enforcement, email filtering, and training aren't in the base price, add them before comparing.
- What's the response-time commitment? "We respond quickly" is not a number. Ask for the average first-response time and how outages are escalated.
- Is on-site included? Some quotes bill every visit hourly on top of the monthly fee.
- Are backups tested, or just running? A backup that's never been restored is a hope, not a plan.
- What happens at renewal? Ask about the term, the exit process, and who owns the documentation and passwords if you leave.
- Who answers the phone? A local technician, or a call center two time zones away?
Why we don't publish a flat price
Every environment is different, and a starting price that's wrong for you is worse than no price. What we do publish is exactly what's in the plan: one managed plan with security built in, priced per user, with compliance as the only add-on. After a free assessment, you'll have a written number within one business day.
What a fair quote looks like
It itemizes users, servers, and locations. It names the security tools. It states a response time. It explains the onboarding fee. And it's signed by someone you can call. If the quote you're holding doesn't do those things, that's the first thing to ask about.
