IT support

What does business IT support actually cost in Ohio?

Ongoing IT support is normally a fixed monthly fee tied to how many people you have, how many devices they use, and what sits in your stack. There is no honest single number for it. A 30-person accounting firm and a 30-person machine shop are not the same job, and the drivers below are what separate them.

How the fee is usually structured

Four pricing models cover almost every agreement you will be handed in this market. They are not equally good, and the one a firm uses tells you something about how it expects to make money.

Common IT support pricing models

Model	How it is billed	Where it bites
Per user	One rate for each person, covering their laptop, phone, and any second machine	Clean and easy to forecast. Watch for shared or kiosk machines that belong to nobody and get billed to everybody
Per device	One rate per endpoint, with servers and network gear priced separately	Punishes the operations business where four people share eight machines, and quietly rewards leaving old hardware in service
Tiered bundles	Bronze / silver / gold packages at a fixed rate per user	The security controls you actually need are often in the top tier only, so the comparison you make on price is not a comparison of the same work
Block hours	You prepay a bank of hours and draw it down	Nobody is paid to prevent the problem. Monitoring, patching, and backup verification are the first things to fall out of a block-hour relationship

What actually moves the number

When we quote after discovery, these are the inputs that change the figure. They are also the questions worth asking any firm that gives you a price in the first meeting.

Headcount, and how many of those people are field or shift workers sharing equipment rather than sitting at an assigned desk.
Device count and device age. A fleet where a third of the laptops are past warranty generates a different volume of work than one on a refresh cycle.
Servers and anything still on-premises. One aging application server that cannot be moved will shape the whole agreement.
Compliance scope. HIPAA, FERPA, CMMC, or a cyber-insurance questionnaire adds controls, documentation, and evidence collection that someone has to maintain.
On-site expectations. Scheduled visits are cheap to plan for. An unstated assumption that somebody appears within the hour is not.
After-hours and weekend coverage, especially where a production line or a booked schedule cannot wait for Monday.
Whether projects are inside the fee or quoted separately. Migrations, office moves, and new-site builds are usually separate, and it should say so in writing.

What belongs in the monthly fee before you compare anything

Two quotes are only comparable when the same work is inside both. In practice the gap between a low number and a fair one is usually a set of line items that were moved out of the recurring fee and into the hourly rate.

24/7 monitoring and alerting on endpoints, servers, and network gear, with someone responsible for acting on the alert.
Patching on a stated cadence, with reporting you can look at.
Backup, plus a restore test on a schedule. An untested backup is a line item, not a protection.
Endpoint protection and the response process when it fires.
Identity and access work: onboarding, offboarding, multi-factor enforcement, and privilege review.
Help desk with a stated response target and a named owner on the account.
Documentation of your environment that you own and can take with you.

Why the lowest quote often costs more

A low monthly figure is usually built by taking work out of it. The savings show up on the first invoice cycle where something goes wrong, because everything that was carved out is billed at an hourly rate at exactly the moment you cannot negotiate.

The other pattern is a low rate on a long term with an aggressive renewal. Read the term, the notice period, and the escalation clause before the rate.

Ask what happens to the fee when you add fifteen people, when an office moves, and when your insurer sends a questionnaire. Those three answers tell you more about the next three years than the headline rate does.

Getting a real number for your business

We do not publish a rate card, because a number written without seeing your environment is a guess dressed up as a quote. What we do is look first. An IT assessment is a time-boxed review of systems, identity, backup, vendors, and open risks, and it ends in a written summary and a recommended first engagement.

From there, ongoing work is Managed IT at a predictable monthly fee. If you already have an IT person and the gap is coverage rather than capability, Co-managed IT is usually the cheaper and better answer.

Questions we hear first

Is managed IT cheaper than hiring someone?

It depends on the size of the environment and what you need covered. One internal person costs salary plus benefits plus tooling, works one shift, and takes vacations. Below roughly 60 or 70 users, an external team usually costs less and covers more hours. Above that, the honest answer is often both, which is what Co-managed IT is for.

Why will nobody give me a price over the phone?

Any figure produced before someone has looked at your device count, your server situation, and your compliance scope is either padded to cover the unknown or low enough that the difference gets billed later. We quote after discovery, and the assessment that produces the quote is a defined piece of work with a written result.

Do projects cost extra?

Usually, yes, and it should be explicit in the agreement. Migrations, office buildouts, hardware refreshes, and new-site work are quoted as projects. Day-to-day support, monitoring, patching, backup, and identity work sit in the monthly fee.

What is a fair price per user?

The range in this market is wide enough that the number alone tells you very little, because two firms quoting the same figure can be selling substantially different scopes. Compare what is inside the fee first, using the list above, then compare rates. See IT Support for what our engagement covers.

Can we start smaller and grow into it?

Often. A common path is an assessment, then a first engagement scoped to the two or three things that are actually causing pain, then a full agreement once the environment is stable. Start at Become a Client or call (513) 657-1800.