Managed services pricing is the recurring fee an MSP charges to run a client's IT, often monthly, counted per user, per device, or per bundle. Calculate yours from two assumptions: 0.8 support hours per user a month at $110 an hour is $88 per user in labor, before tools.
This guide covers managed service provider pricing from the side of the person who sets it. You get the models, public data on IT labor rates, and a calculator for your own numbers.
We build SherpaDesk, a helpdesk and PSA (professional services automation) a small IT team can run alone. No contract. No implementation project. No dedicated admin.
Nothing holding you in: Base Camp is $45 per agent per month ($40 billed annually), published on the site. Two founders who ran their own MSP have built it since 2001.
Key takeaways
In this series · Running an MSP
Managed services pricing is how a managed service provider turns ongoing IT work into a fixed, recurring fee. The client pays on a regular schedule, often monthly, whichever way the fee is counted.
The fee buys a defined service, not a pile of hours. Maintenance, security, monitoring, and reporting are written into a service level agreement (SLA), along with response times. An SLA may be linked to the MSP's pricing formula.
So the price has two halves. The unit decides how the fee grows: per user, per device, or per bundle. The SLA decides what the fee covers, and work outside it is billed separately.
The subscription model gives an MSP monthly recurring revenue, unlike IT projects that tend to be one-time sales. A price set too low on day one keeps losing money every month until you change it.
Break-fix works the other way. The client pays for time and materials when something breaks, billed hourly or at a flat rate per service. A monthly fee helps clients budget, while break-fix can bring unexpectedly high bills during failures.
One r/msp owner described the cost of pricing by feel in June 2025. Their first client, a non-profit with about 31 endpoints across two sites, started at about $1,625 a month.
About three years later it pays $1,800: "I asked for $2150 but that's the most they could do." The thread's fix was data, not a market average: look at the hours, then set the price.
The labor part of a managed IT services price is support hours times your selling rate, with per-seat tools added on top. That rate already carries wages, overhead, and margin, so margin is never added a second time. Two inputs decide the result: hours per user and rate.
The rate has public reference points. GSA's CALC+ database lists "fully burdened, not-to-exceed" hourly ceiling rates awarded on Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contracts for federal work. Task order rates can be negotiated lower.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes median wages for similar jobs, across all industries.
| Labor | What the number is | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Helpdesk (specialist to manager) | MAS hourly ceiling rate, GSA (2,731 rates) | $62.24 | $80.59 | $103.94 |
| Network administrator | MAS hourly ceiling rate, GSA (1,120 rates) | $91.25 | $112.77 | $141.67 |
| Systems administrator | MAS hourly ceiling rate, GSA (2,590 rates) | $92.63 | $115.54 | $143.91 |
| Computer support specialist | Median hourly wage, BLS, May 2025 | — | $30.24 | — |
| Network and computer systems administrator | Median hourly wage, BLS, May 2025 | — | $47.66 | — |
Rates as of October 2026.
Neither row type is an MSP price. The GSA rows are the most a contractor may bill a federal agency for that labor; the BLS rows are what an employee earns.
Use them to sanity-check the rate you type into the Pricing Calculator. Your time entries supply the other number.
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Six of these eight managed service provider pricing models charge a flat fee on a schedule and differ in what it counts; two bill time.
| Model | What the fee counts | Fits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monitoring only | Monitoring and alerting; the client's staff may act on alerts | Clients with in-house IT | Who fixes what after the alert |
| Per device | A flat fee per type of supported device | Device-heavy sites, network gear | Keeping the device count current and rating each device type |
| Per user | A flat fee per user, covering all of that user's devices | Offices where every user has a laptop and a phone | Users with several devices cost more than they pay; shared machines with no user |
| Tiered | Bundles, each tier adding services at a higher price | Selling security or after-hours as an upgrade | Tiers that blur, so every client wants the top tier at the middle price |
| All-you-can-eat | One monthly fee for remote, on-site, and bench work across the client | Stable clients you know well | A scope with no edge |
| À la carte | Discrete services the client picks one by one | Adding one service to an existing client | A long invoice nobody reads |
| Block hours | A prepaid block of support time drawn down as you log time | Small clients not ready for a monthly contract | Unused hours and what happens to them |
| Break-fix | Time and materials per incident, hourly or flat per service | One-off jobs | No recurring revenue, surprise bills for the client |
Per device and per user. A per-device fee is set for each type of supported device, so a server and a desktop can carry different prices. A per-user fee covers every device a user works on. Per user is easier to explain, because the client counts people, not devices.
Block hours and break-fix. A block of hours is support time the client prepays and you draw down as you log time. Break-fix bills time and materials per incident. Both run on hours, so both depend on every hour being logged.
Add-on services. Managed network services pricing can follow the per-device model, with firewalls, switches, and access points as device types. For managed security services pricing, you can give security its own tier or line and reprice it when your tool costs change.
If you sell helpdesk support on its own, price it per user, because users open the tickets.
Your price per user comes from your hours, your rate, and your tool costs. One r/msp reply told an underpriced owner to "do a time study on this client" and find "what you are actually averaging per hour servicing this account."
Total the hours logged against each client, then divide by its number of users and by three months. That gives support hours per user per month for each client.
Common mistake: counting only billable hours. Unbilled fixes on a flat-fee client still cost you a technician's time.
Start from what a technician costs per hour, then add benefits, overhead, unbilled time, and margin. That total is your selling rate. Compare it with the federal ceilings in the Rate Table.
Common mistake: pricing from the wage alone. A $30.24 median wage is not a $30.24 rate.
List every license you carry for the client: RMM, backup, security, email. Divide each by the client's users and add it on top of the labor price.
Multiply the price per user by the client's users to get the monthly fee. Then set a minimum monthly fee for small clients.
List what's included, the response times, and the hourly rate for anything outside scope. The Contract Checklist covers each line.
The calculation at the top used two assumptions: 0.8 support hours per user per month and a $110 selling rate. That makes $88 per user per month in labor. Type your own two numbers below.
Pricing per device? Divide by devices in steps 1 and 3, and the result is per device.
Managed IT services pricing calculator: labor price per user
hours × selling rate. Your numbers stay in the browser.
Run it for each client, not once for the whole book. A price that's right on average still loses money on your busiest client.
A flat fee keeps its margin only when the contract says where the work stops. The SLA should state response times, performance, and security specifications.
Keep two numbers apart. The hours you assume when you set a flat fee are your internal cost estimate, and the client never agreed to them.
Overage applies only when the contract caps included hours or defines out-of-scope work, and names the rate. If a client runs over your estimate without a cap, that's a repricing conversation, not an extra line.
These five mistakes share one cause: a number set without the hours behind it.
Copying a price from someone else's page. Another provider's per-user fee carries its own hours, tools, and location. One r/msp owner said their price would be double the original poster's, and still low "because of where we're located geographically."
Selling all-you-can-eat without an edge. The model puts remote, on-site, and bench work under one fee. Without a written scope, every project starts to look like support.
Not logging time on flat-fee clients. On a fixed fee you don't bill the hour, but you need it to see your margin. One reply suggested reviewing "tickets per seat and hours per seat" monthly to find the clients that cost more than expected.
Pricing by the client's status. Discounts for small or non-profit clients are a choice, so make them on purpose. "Non-profit refers to their business model, not yours," one owner wrote.
Never reviewing the price. Your hours and tool costs move; a fee set three years ago doesn't. A review date in the contract makes the conversation routine.
Break-fix clients pay only when something breaks, so a monthly fee can look like paying for nothing. Start with their own invoices. Total last year's break-fix bills and show them next to the monthly fee for the same coverage.
A monthly fee is easier to budget than break-fix, where a failure can bring an unexpectedly high bill. The service changes too: a managed contract brings ongoing engagement and preventive care that break-fix doesn't.
If the client isn't ready, offer a block of hours first. Log every hour against the block, and after a few months you'll both know what a monthly fee should be.
Whatever model you sell, the invoice has to follow it. A flat fee, prepaid hours, and an hourly overage can all land on one client's invoice, and overage is the easiest line to miss. Our Guide To PSA Software covers how that works ticket by ticket.
How this works in SherpaDesk
It's a helpdesk and PSA a small IT team can run alone, and nothing holds you in. You set each client's rate plan: hourly, fixed rate plus hourly, retainer, blended hourly, or contract-level.
A contract can carry prepaid hours, expenses, and mileage. You get alerts when a prepaid pack nears or passes its included hours, and overage can move into a new prepaid pack. Since August 2026, one contract can combine a retainer fee with hourly billing.
Uninvoiced time and expenses collect in "Ready to Invoice", grouped by contract. Supported accounting packages include QuickBooks Online, Xero, and FreshBooks.
No contract. No implementation project. No dedicated admin.
| Account | Contract | Next billing | Last inv. | Billable | Non-billable | Included | Accum. | Overage | Labor | Travel | Products | Total | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harbor Dental Group | Flat + Hourly | 10-01-2026 | 09-01-2026 | 14.50 | 2.25 | 10 | 0 | 4.50 | $562.50 | $0 | $0 | $562.50 | + | |
| Maple Street Law | Hourly | 10-15-2026 | 09-15-2026 | 9.75 | 1.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | $1,218.75 | $45.00 | $0 | $1,263.75 | + | |
| Brightline Accounting | Block Hours | 10-01-2026 | 09-01-2026 | 12.25 | 0.75 | 0 | 0 | 0 | $1,531.25 | $0 | $129.00 | $1,660.25 | + | |
| Cedar Ridge Veterinary | Retainer | 10-20-2026 | 09-20-2026 | 6.00 | 0.50 | 8 | 2.00 | 0 | $0 | $0 | $389.00 | $389.00 | + | |
| Northgate Property Co. | Blended Hourly | 10-31-2026 | 09-30-2026 | 7.50 | 1.50 | 0 | 0 | 0 | $862.50 | $60.00 | $0 | $922.50 | + | |
| Oak & Pine Bakery | Main | 11-01-2026 | Never | 2.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | $250.00 | $0 | $0 | $250.00 | + |
Base Camp is $45 per agent per month ($40 billed annually), and your first agent is free, forever. A three-technician MSP pays for two agents: $90 a month. 14 days free, no card, no onboarding fee.
Who this isn't for
If you want remote monitoring and patching built into the same product as your billing, this isn't that product.
We don't build RMM. We integrate with yours, and the stack stays yours. The NinjaOne integration needs High Camp, $55 per agent per month.
MSPs charge a recurring fee, often monthly, counted per user, per device, or per bundle. The amount comes from each provider's hours, selling rate, and tools.
At 0.8 support hours per user a month and a $110 rate, the labor part is $88 per user per month, with tools billed on top. Run your own numbers in the Pricing Calculator.
IT managed services cost per user is the support hours a user generates each month times the provider's selling rate, which already holds overhead and margin, plus per-seat tools. At 0.8 hours and $110 an hour, labor is $88 per user per month.
Use the Pricing Calculator with your own numbers.
A managed service provider is a third-party company that remotely manages a customer's IT infrastructure and end-user systems. See What Is An MSP? for the full answer.
Per-user pricing covers every device a user works on, while per-device pricing sets a fee for each type of device. If each person has several devices, per user is simpler to sell.
If you support shared machines or a lot of network gear, per device may fit better. See Pricing Models.
Bring the client's own hours. Show the time logged against their account over the last quarter next to what the current fee pays for.
A yearly review date written into the contract makes the next increase routine. See the Contract Checklist.
Patrick co-founded SherpaDesk and has led it as CEO since 2013. He has worked with IT service providers since 1998, first on network projects for schools and government offices, then on the helpdesk software their technicians use every day.