How Much Should Managed IT Actually Cost for a 25-75 Person Company?

Most companies in the 25 to 75 employee range get their first managed IT quote and have no idea whether the number is reasonable. One provider quotes $80 a seat, another quotes $220, and the proposals describe roughly the same set of services in different words. Without a reference point, it is easy to either overpay for coverage you don't need or underbuy on something that leaves your environment exposed. The price range is wide because the services behind it aren't actually the same, and the difference is usually invisible until something goes wrong.

What "Managed IT" Actually Covers

Managed IT is a bundle, not a single service, and the bundle varies by provider. At minimum, it typically includes device and endpoint monitoring, help desk support for end users, patch management, and basic administration of whatever platform runs your core productivity tools, usually Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Beyond that baseline, providers start splitting on coverage hours, the depth of security tooling included, backup and disaster recovery, and how much proactive planning is part of the service versus billed separately as project work.

That variation is the entire reason two quotes for "managed IT" can differ by more than double for a company the same size. A $90-a-seat quote and a $220-a-seat quote are rarely pricing the same list of deliverables. The lower number often excludes endpoint detection and response, caps help desk hours, or treats anything beyond ticket resolution as a paid project.

The Price Range, and What Actually Drives It

Published pricing across the managed services market commonly lands in the $100 to $250 per user, per month range for small and mid-sized companies, with the specific number driven by a handful of factors rather than company size alone:

Factor	Pushes Price Down	Pushes Price Up
Coverage hours	Business hours only	24/7 monitoring and response
Security depth	Basic patch oversight	Endpoint detection and response, SIEM
Compliance needs	None	HIPAA, SOC 2, CMMC documentation
Device mix	Standardized, company-issued	Mixed BYOD, legacy hardware
Onboarding condition	Clean, documented environment	Undocumented, years of drift

A company with a clean, standardized device fleet and no regulatory obligations will land at the low end of that range almost regardless of headcount. A company in the same size band with a mix of aging hardware, a HIPAA obligation, and no prior documentation of its environment will land at the high end, and the gap between those two companies can be larger than the gap between a 25-person company and a 75-person company on the same tier.

What a Realistic Monthly Number Looks Like

Applying that per-user range across the 25 to 75 employee band gives a usable planning table, split by tier rather than by a single blended number:

Company Size	Entry Tier (~$120/user)	Mid Tier (~$175/user)	Premium Tier (~$225/user)
25 employees	$3,000/mo	$4,375/mo	$5,625/mo
50 employees	$6,000/mo	$8,750/mo	$11,250/mo
75 employees	$9,000/mo	$13,125/mo	$16,875/mo

Gartner's IT spending benchmarks put this in a broader context: companies with 20 to 99 employees spend an average of roughly $7,200 per employee, per year on IT overall, which includes hardware, software licensing, and infrastructure alongside managed services. A managed IT contract in the mid-tier range above, at $2,100 per employee annually, is one piece of that larger number, not the whole IT budget. Anyone comparing a managed IT quote against total IT spend benchmarks should account for that difference, or the comparison will look more expensive than it actually is.

What Should Be Included at Each Tier

Not every line in a proposal earns its place at every tier. A useful way to sort what you're actually paying for:

Entry tier should include device and endpoint monitoring, business-hours help desk, patch management, and core platform administration. If a quote at this price point excludes patch management or caps monthly ticket volume, that's worth questioning directly rather than assuming it's implied.

Mid tier adds extended or after-hours coverage, endpoint detection and response rather than antivirus alone, and a standing cadence of check-ins on the environment, not just reactive ticket handling. This is where most companies in the 25 to 75 employee range land once they've moved past the bare minimum.

Premium tier adds 24/7 monitoring and response, compliance documentation support for frameworks like HIPAA or SOC 2, and typically a named point of contact who reviews the environment on a scheduled basis rather than only responding when asked. Elevaire's own Foundation IT service sits in this range, and includes a quarterly Technology Health Review as a standing part of the engagement rather than an add-on.

The In-House Comparison, Briefly

The alternative to managed IT is building the capability internally, and the honest math rarely favors doing that at this size. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the May 2025 median annual wage for computer user support specialists at $61,860, and for computer network support specialists at $76,220. A single generalist hire covering both roles at a 50-person company typically costs $70,000 to $90,000 in base salary. Using the standard 1.25x to 1.4x fully loaded cost multiplier commonly cited for total employment cost, that hire actually costs the business $87,500 to $126,000 a year, before counting the monitoring, ticketing, and security tooling that person needs to do the job, none of which is included in a salary figure. A mid-tier managed IT contract at 50 employees, per the table above, runs $8,750 a month, or $105,000 a year, for a team rather than one person, with tooling bundled in. The numbers land close enough that the deciding factor usually isn't cost. It's whether the company wants one person's coverage or a team's.

Where Companies Overpay, and Where They Underbuy

Overpaying usually looks like a premium-tier contract for an environment with no compliance obligation, no after-hours risk, and a stable device fleet, where a mid-tier plan would cover the actual exposure. Underbuying usually looks the opposite way: a company handling client health records or payment data on an entry-tier plan with no endpoint detection and response, because the quote looked reasonable and nobody mapped the price against what the company was actually required to protect.

The fix in both directions is the same. Price should follow risk, not the other way around. A company that maps its actual exposure, what data it holds, what would happen if a device was compromised, whether a client or regulator expects a specific control, before shopping for a tier, ends up at the right price far more often than a company that starts from a target monthly budget and works backward.

A Practical Framework for Choosing a Tier

Inventory what you're actually protecting. Client data, payment information, protected health information, and intellectual property each carry different real-world consequences if exposed.
Check for a compliance floor. HIPAA, PCI DSS, or a client's security questionnaire can set a minimum tier requirement directly, regardless of company size or budget preference.
Map your actual coverage-hour risk. A company that closes at 6 p.m. and stays closed overnight has a different after-hours exposure than one running customer-facing systems around the clock.
Get itemized quotes, not blended numbers. Ask each provider to break out what's included at their quoted price, specifically, so a $120 quote and a $220 quote can be compared line by line instead of by sticker price alone.
Revisit the tier annually. A company that added a compliance obligation, doubled its device count, or started handling more sensitive client data in the past year may have outgrown the tier it started on.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much should managed IT cost for a 50-person company?

At the mid tier, which fits most companies in this size range, expect roughly $8,000 to $9,000 a month, or $95,000 to $105,000 a year, covering extended-hours help desk, endpoint detection and response, patch management, and platform administration. Entry-tier plans can run closer to $6,000 a month, but typically exclude after-hours coverage and deeper security tooling.

Does the price go up in a straight line as we add employees?

Roughly, yes, since most managed IT pricing is per-user or per-device. What changes the total more than headcount alone is tier: a 75-person company on an entry-tier plan often costs less than a 25-person company on a premium tier with heavy compliance requirements. Headcount sets the multiplier; risk and coverage requirements set the tier.

How does managed IT work alongside our existing IT provider or internal team?

Many companies run managed IT alongside an existing internal hire rather than replacing one, with the internal person handling on-site or specialized needs while the managed provider covers monitoring, help desk overflow, and security baseline enforcement. Foundation IT is built to plug into that structure directly, rather than requiring an all-or-nothing switch from whatever's currently in place.

What's the biggest hidden cost that isn't in the per-user price?

Onboarding. A quote is usually priced assuming a documented, reasonably current environment. A company with years of undocumented device sprawl, unclear license ownership, or no existing asset inventory often faces a separate onboarding project cost to get the environment to a baseline the ongoing monthly price assumes.

How do we get started figuring out the right tier for us?

Start with an inventory of what data your systems actually hold and any compliance obligations tied to your industry or client contracts, then get itemized quotes from providers that break out exactly what's included at each price point. A provider like Elevaire typically starts with an assessment of the current environment before recommending a tier, rather than quoting a number before seeing what's actually there.