What managed IT really costs a small Dallas office, and what moves the number

The short answer on price

Managed IT for a small office is priced per user or per device each month, and the number depends mostly on headcount, how many devices each person uses, whether there is a server on site, and how much security and compliance work your field requires. As market context, our own website cites a range commonly quoted around Dallas of roughly $100 to $175 per user per month for a complete plan; that is a market figure, not our price list. If you only need help a few times a year, hourly support is usually cheaper, and at Cross River Tech that is $100 an hour remote and $150 an hour on site during business hours, with no contract.

I am Anthony Omini, and I own Cross River Tech. We support offices of one to fifty people, mostly law firms, dental and medical practices, insurance agencies and design firms. I quote managed IT every week, and the same few questions decide almost every number. This guide walks through them so you can sanity-check any quote, including one from us.

Seven things that push a quote up or down

Two offices with the same headcount can get very different quotes, and it is rarely because one provider is greedy. The work behind the fee is different. These are the drivers I look at during the first conversation.

• Devices per person: one laptop each is simpler to support than a desktop, a laptop and a tablet per person.
• Servers: a cloud-only office is cheaper to support, because every on-site server adds patching, monitoring and backup work.
• Compliance: HIPAA for a dental or medical practice, client confidentiality for a law firm, or carrier requirements for an insurance agency add security controls and documentation.
• On-site needs: an office that wants someone in the building every week costs more than one that is happy with remote first.
• Equipment age: machines that fail often cost more to keep running, and that cost shows up somewhere.
• Coverage hours: support promised for evenings, weekends and holidays raises the price.
• Line-of-business software: practice management, dental imaging, agency management or CAD software adds complexity and vendor calls.

Per user or per device: comparing quotes in the same unit

One provider quotes per user, another per device, and the numbers look miles apart. Usually they are not. Our website works through an example: $120 per user for a ten-person office and $60 per device cost exactly the same if every person has two devices. Neither unit is better on its own. What matters is converting both quotes to a monthly total using your real headcount and your real device count.

We quote whichever unit comes out cheaper for the office. Before you compare, ask each provider what counts as a user. Shared mailboxes, part-time staff, a front-desk login used by three people and a conference-room computer can all be counted differently, and that is where two similar-looking quotes drift apart.

What to gather before you ask anyone for a number

The fastest way to get comparable quotes is to give every provider the same facts. Most owners do not have these in one place, and the act of collecting them often reveals the first problems, such as a license nobody uses or a laptop nobody can account for. Fifteen minutes with your office manager is usually enough.

Send the same short list to everyone you are considering. If a provider quotes without asking about most of these, the number is a guess, and guesses tend to grow once the work starts.

• Number of staff, including part-time people and anyone who works remotely
• Number and type of computers, plus tablets or phones that touch company email
• Whether there is a server in the office, and what runs on it
• Where email and files live today: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, a server or a mix
• The practice, case, agency or design software the office cannot work without
• Any compliance or insurance requirements you already know about
• What has gone wrong in the last six months, and how long it took to fix

When paying by the hour is the cheaper choice

Hourly break-fix support makes sense for a very small or very simple office. Our published rates are $100 an hour remote and $150 an hour on site from Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM Central, and $150 remote or $225 on site after hours, on weekends and on holidays. There is a one-hour minimum per job and no agreement to sign. A four-person office that calls twice a year should stay hourly.

The math changes as the office grows, and headcount is not really the deciding factor. What decides it is whether the preventive work gets done. Hourly support bills only for problems somebody noticed. The expensive problems tend to be the ones nobody noticed: a backup that has been failing for weeks, updates that stopped installing, a former employee's account still active. On a monthly plan that routine work is part of the fee. On an hourly arrangement it happens only if you pay someone to check.

Our website estimates that a ten-person office doing that work properly would bill somewhere around 9 to 17 hours a month at hourly rates, which lands in the same range as a typical managed plan. Under about eight people, or in an office where little is shared, hourly usually wins. Once you need help most weeks, or you hold data you cannot afford to lose, a flat monthly fee is usually cheaper and much easier to budget.

What the monthly fee should cover

A managed plan should cover the everyday running of the office. Ours includes the following, and I would expect any serious quote to cover most of it.

• Unlimited remote support, with on-site visits at no extra charge when remote cannot fix it
• Operating system and application updates for computers and servers
• Antivirus, endpoint protection and email security with spam and phishing filtering
• Daily managed backups with tested restores and a written recovery plan
• Management of the internet service, router, firewall, switches and Wi-Fi
• Printer, scanner and desk phone support, plus user onboarding and offboarding
• Vendor coordination and plain-English documentation that you own

The extras that rarely appear on page one

Hardware, software licenses such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and projects like migrations or cabling are quoted separately almost everywhere. Scheduled after-hours work is usually billed at after-hours rates. Internet circuits and phone lines are billed by the carrier, even when your IT provider orders and manages them for you.

Licenses are worth a separate look. We source them through a distributor and pass them through at the published subscription price, and because we see every invoice we can right-size it. The four overpayments I find most often are everyone on the top license tier, shared mailboxes using paid seats, departed staff still licensed, and desktop Office paid for on accounts that only ever use webmail. Ask any provider to show licenses as their own line, so you can compare the service fee on its own.

Setup fees, contract length and the cost of leaving

Some providers charge an onboarding fee, and a fair way to compare it is to spread it across twelve months and add it to the monthly number. For a normal-sized office we do not charge a separate onboarding fee; anything unusual is explained and priced in the written quote.

Contract length matters more than most owners think. A three-year agreement with automatic renewal and an early-termination charge can look cheaper per month and still cost more if the service slips in year two. Our managed plans are month to month and can be canceled anytime, which limits the risk of trying us to one month. Whoever you hire, read the exit terms before you sign, and see my list of questions to ask an IT company before hiring for the rest of the checklist.

Projects that are priced on their own

Some work does not belong in a monthly fee because it happens once. We quote these as fixed projects after a walkthrough or a look at your plans: Cat6 cabling and IT room setup for a build-out, an office move, a company-wide move to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, or a new server. Fractional CTO consulting is billed hourly for defined questions or on a monthly retainer for ongoing leadership.

If a move or a new office is coming, budget for it separately and early. The cost depends on desks, cabling, servers and phones, and the IT timeline for an office move shows where the money and the lead time go.

Getting a real number for your office

A brochure price cannot tell you what your office will cost, because it does not know about your server, your practice software or the three laptops in the closet. A short conversation can. When you call, I ask about headcount, devices, software and what is going wrong, which takes about twenty minutes, and you usually have a written per-user or per-device quote the same business day.

If you are not ready for a plan, we can start hourly and fix the urgent problem first. Either way, you get a plain-English invoice of what was done. If your current provider is the reason you are pricing alternatives, my guide on what a small firm actually needs when the IT ticket sits for days covers how to judge the service, not just the price. We serve offices across Dallas–Fort Worth on site and the rest of Texas remotely.

Questions people ask me