How much should IT support cost - and how do you choose the right provider?

Ask most IT providers what their support costs and you'll get "it depends" and a request for a call.
That's not always evasive, pricing genuinely varies by business size and setup - but it's also a convenient way to get you on the phone before you've got anything to compare it against.

This isn't that.
Below are realistic UK market ranges, what tends to be hidden inside them, and what actually separates a good provider from a good sales pitch. We'll tell you what we charge too, further down, but the point of this post is to be useful even if you never work with us.

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How is managed IT support typically priced?

Most providers price per user - one fee per person, regardless of how many devices that person has.
It sounds simple, but it can work against you: someone with a laptop, a desktop, and a phone all needing support costs the same as someone with a single laptop, even though the workload is different.

Per device pricing, by contrast, charges for what's actually being managed and secured. This tends to be the fairer model once your team has more than one device each.

Beyond the per-user/per-device split, there are broadly three pricing structures:

• Monthly retainer — a fixed fee covering ongoing support and monitoring, with everything included

• Break-fix — no retainer, you pay by the hour or by the incident, only when something goes wrong

• Hybrid — a lower base retainer with extra charges on top for anything beyond a set scope

Contract length matters too.
Many providers lock you into 36-month terms - standard in the industry, and often the trade-off for lower monthly pricing.
It is worth knowing what you're signing up for, and what it costs to exit early, before you commit.

What should managed IT support actually cost for a UK SME?

Realistic ranges, based on the current UK market:

• Break-fix / ad-hoc support: £75–£150 per hour, unpredictable by nature

• Basic managed support: £15–£25 per user, per month — but check carefully what's excluded

• Full managed support with security included: £30–£60 per user, per month

For reference, Refyn Lite and Refyn Complete are priced at £12 and £38 per device, per month.

Cheaper isn't automatically worse, and more expensive isn't automatically better.
What matters is what's actually inside the number and this is exactly where most comparisons go wrong.

What's included, and what should you watch out for?

The monthly fee is rarely the full picture. Common places costs hide:

• Security bolted on as a premium extra
  Some providers sell a cheap base tier with minimal protection, then charge more to add the security most businesses actually need

• "Monitoring" with no one behind it
  Automated alerts that fire into a dashboard nobody's watching don't help you at 2am on a Saturday

• Onboarding or setup fees
  Buried in the small print, on top of the advertised monthly rate

• Per-incident charges
  Layered on top of a retainer you thought was all-inclusive

• Long minimum terms with unclear exit costs
  Discovered only once you want to leave

None of these make a provider dishonest, but they make the headline price meaningless on its own.
Always ask what's excluded, not just what's included.

Five things to look for when choosing an IT support provider

1. Do they publish their pricing?
   If a provider won't put a number on their website, that's usually because the real price depends on upselling you once you're already a client.

2. Is security included as standard, or an add-on?
   Find out whether every client gets the same protection, or whether it's something you have to pay more to unlock.

3. What's the actual SLA, and how is it enforced?
   A response-time promise means little without a clear definition of what happens if it's missed.

4. Do they properly document your environment?
   A provider who doesn't know what's on your network can't secure or support it efficiently — ask how they track devices, licences, and access.

5. Can you speak to existing clients?
   Reference calls are one of the few ways to find out what a provider's actually like to work with, rather than what their marketing says.

What RefynIT charges (and why we publish it)

Refyn Lite is £12 per device, per month.
Refyn Complete is £38 per device, per month, adding 24/7 SOC monitoring and response on top of the same security baseline.
Both tiers run on identical detection and protection.

There's no cut-down version of security waiting behind a higher price point.

We publish it because we think "it depends, call us" shouldn't be the standard answer to a straightforward question. If you want the full breakdown, including add-ons, it's all on our pricing page, no form to fill in first.

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Where that leaves you

If you take one thing from this: the headline number matters far less than what's actually inside it.
A cheap plan with security missing isn't cheap once something goes wrong, and an expensive plan isn't automatically better value just because it costs more.

Compare providers on what's included, not just what's advertised, and if you want to see exactly what that looks like with us, our pricing is public, and we're happy to talk through it.

Get in touch and we'll tell you exactly where you stand.