A realistic look at IT budgets for a 5-25 person business in our region — what to expect, where the money actually goes, and how to spot when you're being over-sold.
For a typical small business in Northwestern Ontario with 5-25 employees, expect to spend roughly $150-$300 per user per month on the full picture of IT — covering managed support, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace licensing, cybersecurity tools, backups, internet, phones, and a reserve for hardware replacement.
For a 10-person business, that's around $20,000-$36,000 a year total. It feels like a lot until you compare it to the cost of one full-time IT person ($60,000+ all-in), or to the cost of one ransomware incident that takes the business offline for a week.
For a 10-person business, a realistic monthly breakdown looks something like this:
Managed IT support: $1,000-$1,500/month. Helpdesk, monitoring, security patching, user onboarding/offboarding, and on-site visits.
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace licensing: $150-$300/month. Business Standard or Premium plans for everyone, with security tools.
Cybersecurity tools: $100-$300/month. Endpoint protection, email filtering, security awareness training subscription.
Cloud backup: $50-$200/month. Microsoft 365 backup plus server/file backup if you have on-premises data.
Internet: $150-$400/month depending on what's available — Bell business fibre where you can get it, Starlink Business for remote locations.
VoIP phones: $200-$400/month for a 10-person business with auto-attendant.
Hardware replacement reserve: $300-$600/month set aside. Laptops last 4-5 years; you want roughly 20% of your fleet replaced every year.
Total: roughly $2,000-$3,700/month, or $200-$370 per user. Many businesses are at the lower end if their needs are simpler; some at the higher end if they have specialized requirements.
You have an "IT contract" that includes things you don't use. Some MSPs sell expensive packages with monitoring tools, compliance reporting, or premium support tiers that a 10-person plumbing company will never touch. If the line items don't make sense, ask for them in plain English. If the explanation still doesn't make sense, you don't need it.
You're paying enterprise prices for small-business needs. Some big-name MSPs charge $250-$400 per user per month for managed IT that's no better than what a competent local shop provides for $80-$120. Pay for skill and responsiveness, not for the office tower the MSP rents in Toronto.
You're being upsold hardware constantly. Business laptops last 4-5 years. If you're being told everything needs replacing every 2-3 years, get a second opinion — that's a sales target, not an IT recommendation.
You're paying for the same protection twice. Some businesses end up paying for antivirus, then again for endpoint protection, then again for security software bundled inside Microsoft 365 — all doing the same job. An audit usually finds at least one redundant subscription.
No backup. If a ransomware attack or a hardware failure tomorrow would cost you weeks of recovery, you're under-spent. Backup is the cheapest insurance against the most expensive incident.
No MFA. If your email accounts don't require multi-factor authentication, you're one phishing email away from a compromise that costs $20,000+ to clean up.
"IT" is one of your staff doing it after-hours. Asking your office manager or "the computer-savvy one" to handle IT in their spare time costs more than you think — it eats their attention, it doesn't get proactive work done, and it falls apart the moment that person leaves.
You haven't replaced computers in 6+ years. The productivity hit from slow, failing computers usually costs more than just replacing them.
Most small businesses in our region underspend on IT until something goes wrong, then overspend on a panicked vendor pitch after the incident. Steady, modest IT investment is dramatically cheaper than crisis IT response.
Cloud services have made small-business IT cheaper than it used to be. You don't need an on-premises server for most things anymore — Microsoft 365 covers email and files, cloud backup covers the rest. If your IT spending is dominated by maintaining old on-premises infrastructure, there's almost certainly a cheaper modern path.
Per-user pricing is the simplest way to budget. If you know what you pay per user, you know what adding a person costs. That makes hiring and growth decisions much easier than billing structures that bundle everything together.
Tell us your team size and what you have now. We'll give you a clear per-user monthly number with no surprises.