Headline finding · measured 2026-09-04
At the published medians, managed IT for 25 users runs $24,000 in year one.
The seat rate is not the bill. This is every unit US providers actually publish — recurring, hourly and one-time — priced separately and never averaged together.
25 users, first year, at the median published entry rate plus the median setup fee
n = 889 of 39,372 in-scope US providers publish a price of any kind. Of those, 367 publish a per-user, per-month rate, 276 a flat monthly fee, 145 an hourly rate, 131 a one-time setup fee, 95 a per-device rate and 43 a per-server rate. Each unit is quoted on its own and none is converted into another. as of 2026-09-04.
- Monthly
- $1,875
- Setup, once
- $1,500
- Year one
- $24,000
- Monthly
- $812.50
- Setup, once
- $1,500
- Year one
- $11,250
base 39,372
What managed IT actually costs for 25 users
At the median published entry rate of $75 per user per month, 25 users cost $1,875 a month, or $22,500 a year. Add the median one-time setup fee of $1,500 and the first year is $24,000. At the median of all 714 published tiers, $99 a seat, the same 25 users cost $2,475 a month and $29,700 a year.
Those are advertised rates, not contracts. They are also the only prices a buyer can compare before a sales call: 889 of 39,372 US providers publish a price of any kind, which is 2.3% of the market. The other 97.7% quote on a call.
The per-seat rate is the narrowest of those figures. 367 firms publish one — fewer than 1% of the directory — and between them they show 714 separate tiers.
Six units, and you cannot add them together
US providers publish prices in six units with enough firms behind each to quote a median. Per user per month: $75 at the median entry tier, across 367 firms. Flat monthly: $812.50 across 276 firms. Hourly: $150 across 145 firms. Per device per month: $65 across 95 firms. Per server per month: $149 across 43 firms. One-time setup or onboarding: $1,500 across 131 firms.
None of those six can be averaged with another. A $150 hourly rate and a $75 seat rate are not two versions of the same price; they are two different products. normalized_user_month is deliberately left null wherever a rate cannot be honestly converted to a per-seat figure.
340 of the 889 firms that publish anything publish in more than one unit — most often a seat rate plus a setup fee, or a monthly fee plus an hourly rate for work outside it. 549 publish in exactly one, which is the case where a quote is easiest to misread.
Where the flat fee beats the seat rate
The median flat monthly fee is $812.50 and the median entry seat rate is $75. Those two cross at about eleven users: below eleven seats the median flat fee costs more per head, above it costs less.
That compares two different populations rather than one provider's two options — 276 firms publish the flat fee and 367 publish the seat rate, and only some publish both. It is still the right sanity check to run on a quote. A flat fee that works out above $75 a seat for your headcount is a premium you should be able to name.
The same arithmetic runs the other way. A per-user rate with a fifteen-seat minimum is a flat fee wearing a per-user label, and at ten users it prices like one.
What the published price does not include
One-time fees are common and large. 131 providers publish a setup, onboarding or migration fee; the median is $1,500 and the top quarter start at $4,997. A quote without one is not the same quote as a quote with one.
Project work is priced separately again: 14 providers publish a per-project rate, median $5,000. That sample is too small to lean on and is quoted here only to show the fee exists.
Hardware, third-party licenses, after-hours response and anything outside the agreed scope sit outside every one of these numbers. Ask what falls outside the rate before comparing two of them.
What this number can't tell you
- ·This card was measured on 2026-09-04 at a base of 39,372 in-scope US providers. The rest of this edition is frozen at 39,351 from 2026-09-03; a routine intake of 21 firms moved the base by 0.05% between snapshots. Every figure on this card is quoted against 39,372, and no existing card was rebased.
- ·Every number here is an advertised rate, not a contract value. Providers who quote only on a call are invisible in this data, and they are not a random sample.
- ·Each unit is filtered to a plausible range and rates outside it are dropped as extraction errors: per-user $10 to $500, flat monthly $100 to $20,000, hourly $40 to $500, per-device $5 to $500, per-server $10 to $1,000, one-time $100 to $50,000.
- ·Two units are shown on thin samples and should not be leaned on: per-endpoint monthly rests on 19 firms and per-project on 14. Both are named in the text where they appear.
- ·The eleven-user crossover compares the median of 276 firms publishing a flat fee against the median of 367 firms publishing a seat rate. It is not one provider's own break-even.
- ·The $24,000 first year is arithmetic on two medians — $75 a seat for 25 seats over twelve months, plus a $1,500 setup fee. No provider quoted that number; it is what the middle of the published market implies.
- ·Prices are read off crawled pages, and pages have been read on 32,252 of 39,372 firms. A firm whose site we have not read counts as publishing nothing, so 2.3% is a floor.
What to do about it
- ▸Buying: convert every quote into the same unit for your actual headcount before comparing, and ask for the one-time fee in writing. At 25 users the middle of the published market is $1,875 a month plus $1,500 once.
- ▸Selling: 97.7% of US providers publish no price at all. A starting rate and a named setup fee put you in the small group a buyer can shortlist before the call.
Where does your firm sit on this?
Claim your MSP with a magic link from your company email to see your own certifications, reviews, web footprint and local rank measured against every provider we track.
Claim your MSP ▸More findings
- 76%76% of MSPs that sell cybersecurity hold no security certification at all.
- 77%77% of MSPs marketing to healthcare don't list HIPAA.
- 15,35615,356 US places have no MSP within 25 miles — 24% of the country's populated places.
- 0.01★It makes no measurable difference. Isolated MSPs average 4.67★ across 20 reviews; MSPs in dense markets average 4.69★ across 21.