In short
- Our prices are published: $1,900 a month for 5 to 15 people, $3,400 for 10 to 40, $8,900 for 30 to 150. A full department is quoted after the free audit.
- Any quote becomes comparable once you divide the monthly fee by the people it covers. Every figure here is worked out in front of you.
- Seven things move the number, and the largest three are your headcount, your locations, and whether you run your own server.
Owners ask this question first, and most websites answer it with "it depends" and a form. That is the wrong way round. You cannot plan a budget around a form.
So here is our own price list, the arithmetic that turns it into a per-person number, and a plain description of what makes the number move. Where a figure would help and we cannot stand behind it, you get the mechanism instead, so you can work out your own number from your own invoices.
The three shapes a quote arrives in
Per person, per month. The most common shape in this market. A rate is quoted for each person who uses a computer. The monthly bill moves every time you hire or somebody leaves, which makes budgeting harder than it looks and makes a summer student an item on the invoice.
Per hour. You pay for the time somebody spends. The rate is easy to compare and the yearly total is impossible to predict, because it depends on how much breaks. There is usually a second, higher rate for evenings and weekends, and it is worth asking where the line falls.
One fee for the whole business. A single monthly number covering an agreed list of work, whatever your headcount. That is how we sell, and it is the shape we recommend asking every provider to quote, because it is the only one where the invoice in March is the same as the invoice in November.
What we charge
These are the figures published on our pricing page. They are Canadian dollars, per month, for the whole business.
- Small Office Support — $1,900 a month, for offices of 5 to 15 people. Computers, email, files and the daily backup.
- Essential Support — $3,400 a month, for 10 to 40 people. Support on business days, every machine watched and kept current, tested backups, your domain, email and website, two-step logins and a password vault, and a review every three months.
- Growth Operations — $8,900 a month, for 30 to 150 people. Everything in Essential, plus your customer list, the repeated office steps handled automatically, enquiry routing, your marketing pages and reporting, and extended coverage hours written into the agreement.
- Full Digital Department — priced after the free audit, for 100 to 300 people or several locations. We put a number on this once we have seen what you actually run.
The same prices, per person
The fee covers the whole business, so the per-person figure changes with your headcount. This is the arithmetic, shown so you can redo it with your own number.
- $1,900 ÷ 5 people = $380 each a month. $1,900 ÷ 15 people = about $127 each.
- $3,400 ÷ 10 people = $340 each a month. $3,400 ÷ 40 people = $85 each.
- $8,900 ÷ 30 people = about $297 each a month. $8,900 ÷ 150 people = about $59 each.
The assumptions behind those lines, stated plainly: the fee is the same anywhere inside the range, so hiring inside your range does not move your bill. Hardware and software licences are billed at what they cost us, with nothing added. Money you spend on advertising goes to Google or Meta, and we bill for the work only. Large one-off projects are quoted before they start. Those four things sit outside every monthly figure on this page.
Turning somebody else's quote into the same number
Say a provider quotes $150 per person a month and you have 22 people.
- 22 × $150 = $3,300 a month
- $3,300 × 12 = $39,600 a year
Now hire three people. 25 × $150 = $3,750 a month, and your yearly figure moves to $45,000 without anyone renegotiating anything. That is the part per-person pricing hides.
An hourly quote takes one more step, and you need your own history to do it honestly. Take your last twelve months of IT invoices, add them up, and divide by twelve. That is your real monthly cost today, and it is a firmer number than any estimate anybody can give you, including us.
If you have no invoices to add up, because the work was done by a person who has now left, the honest answer is that nobody can price your situation from a phone call. That is what the free audit is for.
Seven things that change the price
How many people. More people means more machines, more logins, more questions on a Monday morning. Every pricing shape in the market moves with headcount somewhere.
How many locations. A second site adds its own network, its own equipment and its own set of visits. Bringing several sites onto one standard is its own piece of work, and we cover the order to do it in in the multi-location guide.
Whether you run your own server. A business with everything in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is cheaper to look after than one with a file server, a phone system and a rack in a closet. The server has to be watched, patched, backed up and eventually replaced.
The hours you need covered. Business days cost less than extended hours. Evening and weekend cover costs more because somebody has to be awake. Ask for your hours in writing, and ask what happens to a call that arrives outside them.
The kind of records you hold. A dental or medical practice in Ontario carries duties under PHIPA that a print shop does not: logged access to records, encryption, written breach steps, agreements with anyone who touches patient data. Meeting those takes real work every month, and it belongs in the price. Quebec's Law 25 has the same effect for businesses operating there.
The state of what you already own. Machines still running an operating system that stopped getting security fixes, a backup nobody has ever restored from, forty logins in a spreadsheet. None of that stops us taking you on, and all of it means more work in the first ninety days. A provider who quotes you a number without asking about it is guessing.
How much you keep in-house. If you employ someone who handles the daily questions, an outside provider sits behind them and costs less. If nobody in the building can reset a password, the provider carries all of it.
Paying twelve months at once
We take 10 percent off for twelve months paid up front. The arithmetic:
- $1,900 × 12 = $22,800. Less 10 percent = $20,520, which is $1,710 a month.
- $3,400 × 12 = $40,800. Less 10 percent = $36,720, which is $3,060 a month.
- $8,900 × 12 = $106,800. Less 10 percent = $96,120, which is $8,010 a month.
The agreement still runs month to month either way. Thirty days written notice ends it.
How to compare three quotes without building a spreadsheet
Write four things on one sheet of paper before you call anybody: how many people, how many locations, whether you have a server, and the hours you need someone reachable.
Give all three providers that same sheet, and ask each of them for one monthly number that covers the same list of work. Then divide each number by your headcount. Now you are comparing three things of the same shape.
The short version of this whole page lives at how much does IT support cost, and the comparison with hourly work is at managed IT against paying by the hour.
Two questions finish the job. What is billed on top of this figure? And what is the rate when the work falls outside it? A low monthly number with a long list of exclusions costs more across a year than a higher number with a short one. Our guide to paying monthly against paying by the call works that comparison through, and the twelve questions in what to ask before you sign are the ones that pull the exclusions into daylight.
Why the smallest monthly figure can cost the most
Three mechanisms do it, and all three are visible before you sign if you ask.
Exclusions. New user setup above a monthly allowance, project work above a size, calling your other suppliers on your behalf, after-hours work above a volume. Each one is reasonable. Together they can be most of what you actually need.
Per-ticket charges. A monthly fee that covers monitoring, with support billed per incident, is an hourly agreement wearing a monthly coat.
Nobody doing the quiet work. Watching, patching, testing a restore and reviewing who has access are invisible in a good month. A price low enough to exclude them buys you a supplier who arrives after the damage, which is the expensive moment.
What this looks like where you are
Prices do not change by city in our pricing, and the work does. A downtown Toronto office with two floors and a server room is a different job from a single-floor clinic in Mississauga. We publish what we cover in Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver, including which of those get on-site visits. How quickly somebody can be in the building is answered in how fast can someone be here.
Get your own number
Leave your name and number on the contact page and a person calls you back the same business day, usually within an hour. They ask about a dozen questions and tell you which plan fits, including the smallest one when that is the honest answer.
If you would rather see the evidence first, the free infrastructure audit walks your systems and ends in a written report in plain English, with the gaps in priority order. It costs nothing and there is nothing to sign.
itopsi is a managed IT provider working with Canadian businesses from a Toronto base. Coverage, terms and monthly pricing are published on the site.
