The Ultimate Guide to Managed IT for Financial Institutions

Service time is the amount of time dedicated to conversations between you and your MSP with the goal of fixing a problem or concern in your IT infrastructure.   

An MSP provides different kinds of support, and as a business owner, you need to figure out the amount of service time needed for your company. To do that, answer the following questions:  

• How big is your IT network (number of users, workstations, servers)?  
• Do you just need proactive maintenance and support?  
• Do you need to have after-hour and weekend support?  
• Is your business’ IT system running around the clock?  
• Do your usual IT problems take a long time to fix?  
• Do you have recurring IT issues or are they usually a one-time problem?  
  

Price range for service time:   

Service time can be billed hourly or be a recurring cost. If you’ve hired a break-fix company instead of an MSP, you’re most likely on an hourly rate. The price ranges from $150 to $250 per hour but can go up or down depending on the company you’ve hired.   

Managed IT Service Providers will include service time in the plan that you got with them. Plans can range from $50 to $150 per user per month, with other fees depending on what your IT infrastructure needs.  

Make sure you check how much time is allotted for service in your plan and evaluate if that is enough for your needs. 

More users mean more devices to manage, which means a higher price point. To have an idea of the cost, you should do an inventory of how many workstations you want your MSP to manage.   

Price range for each user:   

 The price range for each user depends on what you’ll have managed. Perhaps you want to set up a VoIP (Voice Online Internet Protocol), or you want to upgrade your workstations. You might even want to install business internet instead and have mobile device management.    

You can expect to spend $50 to $400 per user.  You’d also need to coordinate if your fees are one-time payments or if they’ll recur each month.   

The number of servers can dramatically affect the price of support. Just like an increase in the number of users will cause an increase in the price, having more servers will cause the price to go up as well.   

You’ll also have to figure out if you want your MSP to simply manage the server or include other important features for data security, such as different kinds of backups. If you don’t have a server, your MSP will recommend you get one, as having a server is essential for most companies with data.   

Price range for a server:   

You can expect to spend as low as $5000 to over $20000 to set up everything you need for one server. As usual, the cost for a server can go up or down depending on the kind of equipment you choose to invest in.    

MSPs usually provide a much lower upfront price for servers, with the pay-off of having a monthly fee for the time that you use the server.  For example, at ITS, our cloud servers start at $185 per month, while a Backup and Data Recovery (BDR) server will start at $200 per month. Other MSPs will also have price ranges between $200 - $500.  

When looking into the pricing of an MSP, you also need to review how much data you want your MSP to manage and backup. Like users and servers, more data requires more equipment which then requires more management and a higher fee.    

Data needs to be managed because many issues like cybercrimes, faulty equipment or software, or human errors come up that can affect your data’s accessibility. You need to ensure the security of your company’s network, and prepare in case you lose it.    

But while retaining backups sounds great, it can get quite costly to have all the data storage needed for your backups and your regularly used data storage.  

Price range for data storage:   

 You can expect to spend anywhere between $5 per month (for directly bought cloud storage with no maintenance) to $500 (for maintained data storage with backups). Your price will also vary depending on the company you’re coordinating with. 

After taking the previous four factors into consideration, you will also need to review what kind of service you need from your MSP.   

Will you be working with them to improve your network’s security?
Are you going to ask them to set up your entire IT infrastructure? 
Will you need cloud services or VoIP services?  

Once everything is set up, you will need to consider technological upgrades. For example, the world has seen the transition from Windows 7 to Windows 11. Eventually, you will need to replace your computer or server with newer technology to adapt.  

Additionally, you will need to adhere to changes in government regulations like FTC Safeguards Rule and CMMC. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the Safeguards Rule changes for businesses. In the future, you can expect and prepare for several modifications to ensure up-to-date cybersecurity.   

Price range for services & upgrades:     

The price range for services will wildly vary. You can expect to spend anywhere between $50 per month to $1000 per month, depending on the size of your company and the services you need. These costs can, of course, go up if your company has a lot of users or has specific, intensive, service needs.