Pricing · Published Numbers
Most MSP websites hide pricing behind a "request a quote" button. We think that wastes your time and ours. Here are the real market ranges, what actually drives the number, and exactly what the cheap option cut to get cheap.
Last updated: July 13, 2026
Fully managed IT runs $100 to $250 per user per month in most US markets, Birmingham included. Where you land depends on three drivers: compliance requirements, security depth, and response commitments. A business with no regulatory exposure and standard business hours sits near the bottom. Healthcare practices, financial firms, and professional services firms sit at $150 to $250, because HIPAA, GLBA, and SEC Reg S-P controls, audit-ready documentation, and clinical-hours or market-hours response commitments are materially more expensive to deliver.
A complete managed agreement covers unlimited help desk support, 24/7 monitoring and alerting, endpoint security and patching, email security, identity protection with MFA, encrypted backup with tested restores, vendor management, documentation, and a recurring strategic review. Compliance-focused agreements add the regulatory layer: risk analysis support, written incident response, evidence collection, and a signed BAA where PHI is involved. If a quote excludes any of this, it is not a lower price. It is a smaller product.
Very low pricing is achieved by cutting things you cannot see until the day you need them. The usual list: thin or absent security tooling, an outsourced overseas help desk, no compliance documentation, backups that have never been through a tested restore, no after-hours coverage, and response times that are aspirations rather than SLAs. The money you save reappears as risk, and risk in healthcare, financial services, and professional services has a regulator attached.
| Line Item | What a Real Agreement Delivers | How the Cheap Quote Got Cheap |
|---|---|---|
| Help desk | Local, named technicians, unlimited support | Offshore queue, per-ticket fees after a cap |
| Response time | Written SLA. Ours: critical issues actively worked in 15 minutes, 24/7/365 | "Best effort," business hours only |
| Security | EDR, email security, MFA, monitoring, response | Antivirus and a firewall from 2021 |
| Backup | Encrypted, monitored, restore-tested on a schedule | A sync job nobody has ever restored from |
| Compliance | Risk analysis, incident response program, evidence binder | Not included, quoted later as a project |
| AI governance | Discovery, policy, monitoring of staff AI use | Does not exist |
AI services are priced as a per-user add-on to a managed agreement, from roughly $8 per user per month for governance to $45 and up for advanced tiers. Our published tiers: AI-Governed at +$8 per user per month adds AI usage discovery, written policy, and monitoring. AI-Enabled at +$20 adds Copilot deployment, data protection configuration, and staff training. AI-Advanced at +$45 adds premium Microsoft AI licensing, including the new E7 Frontier Suite tier, and custom agent deployment. Microsoft's licensing changes took effect July 1. If your quotes or renewal math predate July, they are already out of date. Details on our AI services page.
Free assessments are sales calls wearing a lab coat. Ours is a paid, fixed-fee engagement because the deliverables have standalone value: a documented map of your environment, your compliance gaps, the AI tools your staff are already using, and a prioritized remediation plan you can execute with us or with anyone else. You are buying findings, not a pitch. That changes the quality of the work, and it filters for businesses that take this seriously, which is who we want to work with anyway.
Take your total headcount, multiply by the range for your industry, and treat the result as the floor for a complete agreement. A 30-person medical practice: $4,500 to $7,500 per month. A 12-person RIA: $1,800 to $3,000. Then add AI services based on tier. If quotes come in dramatically under your floor, you now know which table row got deleted. If they come in over, the provider should be able to show you exactly which obligations in your environment drive the difference, line by line.
Start with the assessment. We document your environment, hand you the findings, and quote from facts instead of assumptions.