Managed IT · Pricing Guide · 8-minute read
Almost nobody in this industry publishes what they charge. Ask three providers for managed IT pricing and you’ll get three discovery calls before you get three numbers, which makes it very hard to tell whether a quote is reasonable.
So here’s ours. Most RDI managed IT agreements land between $125 and $185 per user per month, with servers quoted separately. Below is what sits at each end of that range, the three things that move your number, and what to check in any proposal you’re comparing, including ours.
The short version
- $125 to $185 per user per month covers most RDI agreements. Servers are quoted separately.
- The rate is the same for seven users as it is for seventy-five. No small-account premium.
- Managed detection and response is in every configuration, including the entry one.
In this guide
Why two managed IT quotes can differ by half
“Managed IT” isn’t one product, which is why two proposals for the same office can land very far apart. Broadly, three different things get sold under the name.
Remote support only
Someone answers when a user calls. Monitoring is often just online or offline, patching is limited, and security is whatever antivirus came with the machine. Cheapest to buy, and the work that prevents problems is the work that’s missing.
Full management
Helpdesk plus real monitoring, patch management, user administration and vendor coordination. This is the first tier that reduces the number of things going wrong rather than just responding to them.
Security-first managed IT
Everything above, plus detection and response on every endpoint, email threat protection, and identity and cloud monitoring. Usually sold as the premium tier. This is where our entry configuration already sits.
When a quote comes in dramatically under everyone else, it is almost always because it is the first kind being compared against the second or third. The difference shows up later, in incidents nobody caught and in the security questionnaire a client sends you.
What RDI charges, and what’s inside it
Our agreements are priced per user, per month, at a flat rate. Two configurations cover most businesses:
| Configuration | Per user / month | What’s included |
|---|---|---|
| Essential | around $125–150 | Monitoring agent on every workstation, full NOC service (proactive monitoring, patch management, remediation and escalation), live end-user helpdesk, and fully managed endpoint detection and response with SOC-handled triage |
| Complete | around $160–185 | Everything in Essential, plus premium email threat protection and security monitoring and policy enforcement across cloud services and identities |
| Servers | quoted separately | Server monitoring agent plus full NOC service for the server, including after-hours alerting. Typically a few hundred dollars per server per month |
Pricing as of Q4 2026. These are the bands our agreements fall into, not a quote. Your number depends on the factors below.
The rate doesn’t change with your headcount
A seven-person firm pays the same per-user rate as a seventy-five-person one. There’s no small-account premium and no volume discount, so the quote scales in a straight line as you hire.
That matters if you’re small. A lot of providers price smaller offices higher per seat, on the reasoning that overhead is the same either way. We would rather have the seven-person firm and keep them as they grow.
Worth knowing
Managed detection and response, with triage handled by a security operations center, is in every configuration we sell, including the entry one. In most proposals you’ll compare, that’s an upgrade or an add-on line.
The three things that move your number
Where you land inside the range comes down to three decisions, and you can work out roughly where you’ll sit before anyone visits.
1. Helpdesk hours. A weekday helpdesk running 6am to 8pm costs less per user than 24/7/365 coverage, and the gap is meaningful. If your team works business hours in one time zone and nothing breaks overnight that can’t wait until morning, the weekday option is the sensible one. If you run shifts, support clients in other time zones, or can’t afford a Saturday outage to sit until Monday, pay for the round-the-clock desk.
2. How much security you layer on. Endpoint detection and response is in the base. Premium email threat protection and cloud and identity security are the two modules that take an agreement from the lower band to the upper one. If you handle money, health information, legal matters or client data, or if customers send you security questionnaires, these are the ones worth buying.
3. Servers and on-premise systems. Servers are priced per server, not per user, because the work is different: monitoring, patching, remediation and after-hours alerting on a machine the whole business depends on. An office with one on-premise server and an office that’s entirely cloud-based will have different totals at the same headcount. This is also why legacy on-premise applications cost more to support than people expect.
What’s quoted separately
Every managed IT agreement has a boundary between ongoing service and project work. A provider that won’t tell you where that line sits is a provider you’ll argue with later. Ours:
- Onboarding. Taking responsibility for an environment means discovering and documenting it, deploying agents, standardizing endpoints, reviewing administrative access and verifying backups. That’s a one-time item billed with your first invoice. Every invoice after the first is the monthly figure.
- Hardware. Workstations, servers, firewalls, switches and access points are quoted as equipment.
- Projects. Office moves and buildouts, cabling, network redesigns, email and cloud migrations, and large device refreshes are scoped and quoted on their own.
- Backup. Priced to what you’re protecting and how long you need to keep it. See Data Protection for how we handle retention and test restores.
If a competing quote has no onboarding line at all, ask what’s being skipped. Standardizing an environment is real work, and a provider who isn’t doing it in the first month is inheriting whatever was already broken.
How to compare two quotes without being an IT expert
Six questions, answered in writing, will tell you more than any sales presentation. Ask them of us too.
Scope and coverage
- What hours is the helpdesk staffed, and who answers — their own team or an answering service?
- Is on-site included? If so, how fast and how many hours. If not, what’s the rate?
- What counts as a project rather than ongoing service? Get the list before you sign, not after.
Security and control
- Is endpoint detection and response included or an add-on? And is multi-factor authentication enforced for every user?
- What’s the backup retention policy, and how often is a restore actually tested?
- Who holds administrative access and documentation? You should retain control of your own Microsoft 365 tenant, domain and firewall.
Question five is the one most worth pressing. If a provider can’t tell you the retention policy and the restore testing schedule, you don’t have a backup program. You have a monthly invoice.
Question six matters more than it sounds. If leaving a provider means losing access to your own tenant or your own documentation, the price on the proposal isn’t the real cost of the decision.
Who the cheapest plan actually fits
There are businesses a basic remote-support plan genuinely suits: a very small team with no compliance obligations, nothing on-premise and a high tolerance for a slow day, or a company with a strong internal IT lead who needs overflow help rather than a managed service. If that’s you, buy the cheap plan with clear eyes. It is the right tool.
It stops being the right tool the moment a client sends you a security questionnaire, an insurer asks what controls you have, or a single ransomware incident puts the whole thing out of business for a week. That’s the calculation, and it is yours to make rather than ours.
RDI provides Managed IT Services and Managed Cybersecurity to businesses across NYC and Long Island from offices in Midtown Manhattan and Ronkonkoma. We have been doing it since 2008, and our helpdesk answers in about 90 seconds with a four-hour average for on-site response.
Already holding a proposal?
Send it to us and we’ll tell you what’s included, what’s missing, and whether the number is fair. If the answer is that your current provider is giving you a good deal, we’ll say so.
Frequently asked questions
How much does managed IT cost per user per month?
Most RDI managed IT agreements fall between $125 and $185 per user per month, with servers quoted separately. The lower end covers monitoring, full NOC service, a weekday helpdesk and managed endpoint detection and response. The upper end adds premium email threat protection and cloud and identity security, and a round-the-clock helpdesk. Pricing as of Q4 2026.
Do smaller companies pay more per user?
Not with us. The per-user rate is the same for a seven-person office as for a seventy-five-person one, so your monthly figure scales in a straight line as you hire. Some providers do charge smaller accounts a higher rate per seat, so it is worth asking directly when you compare.
Why is one managed IT quote half the price of another?
Usually because they are different services wearing the same name. A remote-support plan with basic monitoring and consumer antivirus genuinely costs less than a managed service with endpoint detection and response, enforced multi-factor authentication, patch management and tested backups. Compare the inclusions line by line before comparing the totals.
Are servers included in the per-user price?
No. Servers are quoted per server because the work is different — proactive monitoring, patching, remediation and after-hours alerting on a system the whole business depends on. An all-cloud office and an office with two on-premise servers will have different totals at the same headcount.
Is there a setup or onboarding fee?
Yes. Onboarding covers discovering and documenting your environment, deploying agents, standardizing endpoints, reviewing administrative access and verifying backups. It appears as a one-time item billed with your first invoice; every invoice after that’s the monthly figure. The amount depends on how many users and systems are involved and what condition the environment is in.
Is 24/7 helpdesk worth paying for?
It depends on how your team works. A weekday helpdesk covering 6am to 8pm suits a business that operates in one time zone and can let an overnight issue wait until morning. Round-the-clock coverage is worth the difference if you run shifts, support clients in other time zones, or can’t afford a weekend outage to sit until Monday. It is one of the larger per-user line items, so decide it deliberately.
Want a Real Number for Your Office?
Ranges aren’t quotes. Tell us your headcount, your servers and how you work, and we’ll put a figure on it — with every line item shown.