What IT Support Costs a UK Small Business

Almost no IT company in London publishes its prices. Ask ten providers what support costs and you'll get ten versions of “it depends”, a discovery call, and a quote that turns up a week later. We think that's daft. So here's the straight answer: how IT support is priced in the UK, what pushes the number up or down, and exactly what we charge — published in full, further down this page.

The short version first. Most UK providers charge per user, per month, on a fixed contract. Ad-hoc support — an hourly rate whenever something breaks — runs higher over a year and is unpredictable by design. Our own plans are flat-rate: £99, £299 or £599 a month, with 17% off if you pay yearly.

The two ways IT support is priced

A fixed monthly contract is the standard model, usually priced per user. You pay an agreed amount each month and the provider handles support, monitoring and maintenance. The number varies enormously depending on what's bundled in — a bare-bones helpdesk at one end, full security and compliance cover at the other — which is why two quotes for the same office can be far apart and both be “correct”.

Ad-hoc support is the other model: no contract, just an hourly rate when you call someone. It looks cheaper because there's no monthly bill, and for a two-person business it sometimes is. But the incentive points the wrong way — the more your IT breaks, the more your provider earns. And because nobody is watching your systems between calls, problems announce themselves by stopping work, not by being caught quietly overnight.

What actually drives the price

Four things move the number more than anything else. First, headcount: more people means more accounts, laptops, licences and questions, which is why per-user pricing exists at all.

Second, security. There's a real gap between “we install antivirus” and proper protection — detection and response on every device, a hardened Microsoft 365 setup, and someone watching alerts around the clock. That's the difference our cyber security service covers, and it's the line item most cheap quotes quietly leave out.

Third, on-site versus remote. Remote-only support is cheaper to deliver, and most problems don't need a visit — 91% of the issues our helpdesk handles are resolved at first contact. But when hardware fails, someone has to turn up, and providers based far from you charge accordingly. Our office is on Paul Street in Shoreditch, so for much of East London and the City an on-site visit is a short walk, not a surcharge.

Fourth, compliance. Once clients, insurers or regulators start asking about Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001 or GDPR, you need a provider who can align your setup with that guidance and keep the evidence tidy. It's real ongoing work, and it's priced as such — in our plans it sits in the Enterprise tier.

The hidden costs of cheap support

The cheapest quote is rarely the cheapest year. Watch for three things. Repeat faults: a problem that comes back every month isn't being fixed, it's being managed — and on an hourly rate you pay for it every single time. Downtime: the invoice never shows the morning your whole team sat unable to work, but the wages, the missed calls and the annoyed customer are all real money. And project surcharges: some contracts define “support” so narrowly that anything useful — a new starter, an office move, a security review — becomes a separately billed project. Ask what a new employee's setup costs before you sign anything.

What we charge

Here are our actual numbers — the ones most providers save for the end of a sales call.

Every tier sits on the same foundation: 24/7 proactive monitoring, a 15-minute initial response target and the same UK-based team of four at Paul Street. Paying yearly saves 17% on any plan. And because the fee is fixed rather than per-ticket, a bad week never turns into a surprise invoice. If you're weighing up cloud costs alongside support, our cloud solutions page covers how we handle Microsoft 365 and Azure without the licence sprawl.

Nobody else publishes this because vague pricing keeps discovery calls alive. We'd rather you could compare us from this page. The same goes for performance: 96% of calls answered in under 15 seconds, 91% of issues resolved at first contact, customer satisfaction above 95%.

How to compare quotes fairly

Whoever you're talking to — including us — put every quote through the same six questions.

One last thing. The right price for your business depends on what you actually run — how many devices, what your Microsoft 365 setup looks like, what your clients expect of you. Price it on facts, not on a guess.