There are two basic ways to pay for IT. You can pay by the hour when you need help, often called break-fix. Or you can pay a flat monthly fee and have your IT fully handled, usually called managed IT.
Which one costs less depends on how much help you actually need. So instead of a sales pitch, here's the math for a typical 10-person office, using our own published prices so you can check it.
The office we're pricing
- 10 people
- 10 computers
- Microsoft 365 for email and files
- No in-house IT person
Option 1: Pay as you go
With our pay-as-you-go plan, every computer needs our security package at $55 per device, per month. That covers 24/7 security monitoring, email protection and spam filtering, device protection, remote monitoring, and updates and patching. For 10 computers, that's $550 a month.
Support time is extra: $145 an hour in 15-minute increments, or less with a prepaid block. An 8-hour block is $880 a month, which works out to $110 an hour.
Option 2: Inventive Prime
Inventive Prime is $145 per user, per month. For 10 people, that's $1,450 a month, and it doesn't change based on how many times your team calls.
That includes unlimited remote support, on-site visits, 2 project hours a month for your company, the same security package as above, plus data-loss prevention, staff security training, and firewall and network security. After-hours work is included at no extra charge.
Three months, side by side
| Month | Pay as you go | Inventive Prime |
|---|---|---|
| Quiet month: 3 hours of help | $435 + $550 security = $985 | $1,450 |
| Typical month: 8 hours of help, on an 8-hour block | $880 + $550 security = $1,430 | $1,450 |
| Rough month: 20 hours of help, billed hourly | $2,900 + $550 security = $3,450 | $1,450 |
A few things stand out.
In a quiet month, pay as you go is cheaper. If your office rarely needs help, you'll spend less.
In a typical month, they're about the same. The break-even point is roughly six to eight hours of support a month, depending on whether you use a prepaid block.
In a rough month, the gap gets big. A failed server, a new hire week, an office move or a security incident can easily eat 20 hours or more. On pay as you go, that time adds up. If any of it happens at night or on a weekend, after-hours rates make it higher still. On Prime, the price stays the same.
The costs that don't show up on the invoice
Downtime. When IT is billed by the hour, people tend to wait before calling, because every call costs money. Small problems turn into bigger ones, and your team loses time in the meantime.
Incentives. On an hourly model, your IT company earns more when things break. On a flat fee, it earns more when things don't. That changes how much effort goes into prevention.
What's missing. Prime includes staff training, firewall management and data-loss prevention. On pay as you go, those either come out of your hours or aren't covered.
Planning. A managed plan usually includes help planning and budgeting for equipment, so replacements are scheduled instead of emergencies.
So which one costs less?
Here's an honest rule of thumb:
Pay as you go usually makes sense if you have a very small office, your systems are stable, and you need a few hours of help a month at most.
Managed IT usually makes sense if your team relies on technology all day, you average more than six to eight hours of support a month, you need predictable costs, or you answer to auditors, examiners or insurers.
Either way, security shouldn't be optional. That's why both of our plans include it.
If you want to see where your office lands, our pricing page has a quick cost estimator. Or request a free assessment and we'll look at how much help your team actually uses.