Market rates, what moves them, and how WheelHouse IT prices.
Most managed IT providers who publish a per-user rate fall between $50 and $150 per user per month. That band is wide because the number depends on things nobody can see before looking at your environment, and roughly a quarter of providers do not price per user at all.
This page explains what the market charges, what actually moves the figure, and how WheelHouse IT prices. It does not quote you a number, and the last section explains why.
Kaseya’s Global MSP Benchmark Survey asked 1,091 providers what they charge for ongoing IT support. Among those offering per-user pricing:
| Per user, per month | Share of providers |
|---|---|
| $50 to $100 | 22% |
| $101 to $150 | 17% |
| $151 to $200 | 11% |
| $201 to $250 | 4% |
| More than $250 | 1% |
| Do not offer per-user pricing | 28% |
Source: Kaseya, 2023 Global MSP Benchmark Survey. Figures are what providers report charging globally, not a quote and not a recommendation. The published bands are three years old and regional rates vary.
The row worth reading twice is the last one. More providers decline to price per user than charge any single rate, because a per-seat figure assumes every user costs the same to support. A 50-person company with one server and standard laptops is not the same engagement as a 50-person company with three sites, a line-of-business application nobody still supports, and a compliance obligation.
Our own measured service figures, set against the published industry benchmarks, are on our service metrics page.
Three things that do not change after discovery. Only the figure does.
One monthly figure covers the managed services in scope, including helpdesk support, monitoring, patching, security tooling and account management. No hourly billing and no overage charges.
Microsoft licensing is priced at Microsoft’s rate with no markup, and Azure consumption is billed separately at cost. Your organization holds its own tenant and licensing in its own name.
New client agreements run month to month. No multi-year commitment and no termination schedule to work around, so the service earns its place on your budget every month.
Most managed IT agreements run one to three years, and the termination schedule is what keeps a client in place once the service stops being worth it. A month-to-month agreement removes that. If the response times slip, if the reporting stops arriving, or if the relationship simply stops working, you leave at the end of the month.
That changes the incentive on our side rather than yours. A provider on a three-year term is paid whether or not this month went well. A provider on a month-to-month term has to be worth renewing thirty days from now, every month, for the life of the account.
Six things, roughly in order of impact.
Security scope. Endpoint detection and response, email security, identity protection and monitoring are the largest single variable between a cheap quote and a realistic one. A quote that excludes them is not cheaper, it is smaller.
Compliance obligation. HIPAA, PCI DSS or a client security questionnaire means documented controls and retained evidence, not just working controls. That is ongoing labour.
Server and infrastructure count. Users drive helpdesk volume. Servers, firewalls and switches drive the engineering underneath it.
Sites. Two locations is not twice one, and three is not three times one. The jump is in the network between them.
Application estate. Standard Microsoft 365 is predictable. A vertical application with one vendor and no documentation is not.
Current state. An environment that has been maintained costs less to run than one that has not, and the first ninety days are different.
Because a number quoted before anyone has looked at your environment is a guess, and a guess that is too low is worse than no number at all. It gets corrected later, usually after the contract is signed, through change orders and out-of-scope billing.
What you can hold us to is the structure: fixed monthly fee, in-scope services covered, no hourly billing, no overage charges, month to month, licensing at cost. Those terms do not change after discovery. Only the figure does.
1. Free network risk assessment. We document what you have, what is exposed, and what needs attention first. It produces findings, not a price.
2. A conversation about what the findings mean. What we found, what we would do about it, and in what order.
3. A proposal with a fixed monthly fee, then a transition that runs in parallel with your current provider still in place.
Florida (954) 474-2204 · New York (516) 536-5006
Across providers who publish a per-user rate, the most common bands are $50 to $100 and $101 to $150 per user per month, according to Kaseya’s 2023 Global MSP Benchmark Survey. Those are global figures from providers who price that way, and 28% do not. Your figure depends on security scope, compliance obligation, server count, number of sites and the current state of the environment, which is why WheelHouse IT prices after a discovery conversation rather than from a rate card.
Neither is published. WheelHouse IT charges a fixed monthly fee covering the managed services in scope. Per-user and per-device structures are proposal-level detail, because the right structure depends on the environment and committing to one before seeing it produces a number that has to be corrected later.
Microsoft licensing and Azure consumption are billed separately at cost with no markup. Hardware is purchased by your organization. Project work outside the managed scope, such as an office move or a major migration, is quoted separately rather than absorbed into the monthly fee or billed as a surprise.
Onboarding is scoped and quoted as part of the proposal rather than hidden in the monthly fee. What it costs depends on the condition of the environment at handover, which the risk assessment documents before anyone proposes a number.
The fee is reviewed against actual use at the strategic business review rather than left to the renewal date. Adding or removing people does not trigger a renegotiation of the agreement, and there is no renewal date to wait for, because agreements run month to month.
You give notice and leave. There is no multi-year commitment and no termination schedule. Your organization holds its own Microsoft tenant and licensing in its own name throughout, so there is no account to reclaim. A provider who holds your tenant under their own account turns that into leverage the day you want to go, which is a fair question to ask anyone you are evaluating.
More questions are answered on our FAQ page.
15 minutes is all it takes to see if our approach aligns with your needs.
Call, chat, email, or fill out the form to be connected with a technical advisor.
