Small Business IT Support – What to Expect to Pay
Small Business IT Support pricing in Sussex: The predominant IT service models explained
Before you can compare the costs, services, and deliverables of one IT services company to another, understanding the 3 predominant service models most IT companies fit within will help get a good understanding. The 3 predominant service models are:
Time & Materials
The most common phrase used for this is PAYG (Pay As You Go). Essentially you pay an agreed-upon hourly rate, or a project cost, for a technician to fix your problem when something breaks or goes wrong. Under this model, you might be able to negotiate a discount based on buying a block of hours. The scope of work may be simply to resolve a specific problem (like removing a virus), or it may encompass a large project like a computer network upgrade or move that has a specific result and end date clarified.
Fully Managed IT Services
This model is a very popular model within the IT industry as it allows the IT company to take control of your IT infrastructure and become your IT department. Fully managed IT Support tends to include services such as: Monitoring of your IT devices to maintain performance, speed and security, software installs, data back up and a host of other services.
Cloud Based IT Services
Cloud services are growing more popular by the day. With services like Hosted Desktops, Team Communication tools and Cloud Filing System, cloud services are proving to be extremely useful and cost effective for small to medium sized businesses. Giving you the freedom to access your data at anypoint, anywhere on any device.
When looking to outsource your IT Support, the above three models are the most likely payment structures you will face.So let’s dive into how much these services cost.
Managed IT Services Vs Pay as You Go
Regular monitoring and maintenance is crucial for todays IT. The fact of the matter is IT has become so vital to how a business runs its business that it needs ongoing maintenance and monitoring to stay secure. Due to the ever increasing dependency we have on IT systems and the sensative data they hold, this has given the world of cybercrime orginisations one place to gain access to compromise your data.
In most cybercrime cases, the intention is the access financial information or passwords to hack into you, or your clients, bank by creating fake identities. In other cases it could be to send illegal spam, spread viruses, host pirated software and simply because they see it as ‘fun’ to make someones computer inoperable. Cybercrime criminals work around the clock in teams across the globe constantly finding and inventing new ways to get around your antivirus and firewalls.
This doesn’t take into account other common disasters such as rogue employees, lost devices, hardware failures, fire and natural disastersm and a host of other issues that can interrupt or outright destroy your IT infrastructure and the sensative data it holds. Since the data protection act 2018 came into effect, this has made it so all businesses have to be complient when holding data such as credit card details, financial informaiton, medical records, client information and so much more. Breaking one of these compliance issues will result in your business being fines thousands. See our top 10 tips to protect your business.
Preventing the problems above and making sure your systems are kept up and running (which is what managed IT services is all about) is a lot less expensive and damaging to your organisation then having one of these things happen and paying for emergency IT services to restore your systems to wokring order and compliance fines depending on the situations.
Should you just hire a full-time IT manager?
In most cases, it’s not cost effective for SME’s to hire a full-time IT manager. In fact, over a third of businesses are outsourcing their IT due to the savings in cost and the increase in productivity. Along with hiring an in house IT manager you have the hassle of paying tax, contracts and so on.
So what should you expect to pay for Managed IT Services in Sussex?
Please note: These prices are an average and do not represent Arun Tech Supports pricing structure. We work on a one by one bases as we understand not one package fits all.
Hourly Pay As You Go Fees:
Most IT support companies in Sussex are selling Pay-as-you-go services between £50 and £80 per hour with a one-hour minimum. In most cases, they will give you a discount of 5% to as much as 20% on their hourly rates if you purchase and pay for a block of hours in advance. They may also charge you call out and travel fees depending on the location.
If a project is being quoted for, the fees range widely based on the scope of work. Pay-as-you-go IT support is completely reactive and does not include monitoring or updates.
Managed IT Services Fees:
Most managed IT services firms will quote you a month fee based on the number of devices they need to maintain, back up, and support. For IT Support in Sussex, that fee is somewhere in the range of £100 to £350 per server, £10 to £50 per desktop, and approximately £10 per smartphone or mobile device. (Although most IT firms include these free of charge).
To summerise, there are three main IT support fees you would be looking at, all of which have their own benefits. But fully managed IT services and cloud services are the most popular IT services due what what they include.
If you would like to know more information on pricing or want a no obligation quote then please contact us on 01903 357002