IT support for small businesses: what it costs and what must be included

Why ongoing support is cheaper than firefighting

An outage of the server or the email system quickly costs a company with ten employees several thousand euros per day, plus data loss, annoyed customers and the stress of finding some technician in an emergency. Most of these outages announce themselves: full disks, failed backups, outdated software, expiring certificates. Anyone who checks regularly sees them in time.

Ongoing support replaces expensive emergencies with predictable maintenance: fixed appointments, monitoring, updates, a helpdesk and a contact person who knows your environment, whether you pay a monthly flat rate or based on effort. That is the real value: nobody has to familiarise themselves first when things go wrong.

What good IT support must include

Offers on the market differ greatly. These points belong in every serious maintenance contract:

• Helpdesk with a defined response time (typically four hours on business days, faster for outages)
• Monthly maintenance: operating system and application updates, checks of disk space, antivirus and certificates
• Monitoring of servers, services and backups with alerts to the provider, not only to you
• Backup checks including regular restore tests, not just "it runs"
• User management: setting up new employees, cleanly disabling leavers, reviewing permissions
• Documentation: devices, access, licences, contracts, network plan, accessible to you at any time
• A short monthly report of what was done and what is coming up

Pricing models and realistic costs

Per workstation: the most common model for small businesses. Typical are €30 to €60 net per workstation and month, servers are often billed separately at €80 to €150 per month. Included are helpdesk, maintenance and monitoring, projects are extra. The advantage: costs grow with the company and are predictable.

Per hour: for companies with little demand or an internal IT contact. Hourly rates for system administration in German-speaking countries are €80 to €120 net, user support somewhat lower. The disadvantage: without a contract there is no guaranteed response time and no proactive maintenance.

Monthly flat rate: a fixed amount for a defined environment, usually from about €150 to €250 per month for five workstations and one server, including an hour budget. The disadvantage: you also pay in quiet months. I myself deliberately work without a monthly fee, based on effort or with hour bundles valid for twelve months, and with fixed maintenance appointments so that predictability is still given.

What to look for in the contract

• Response time and availability in writing, including rules for emergencies outside business hours
• Access belongs to you: all passwords, licences and domains are registered to the company, not to the provider
• Documentation is part of the service and is handed over completely at the end of the contract
• Notice period of at most three months, no automatic renewal for years
• Clear distinction between what the flat rate includes and what is quoted separately as a project
• Vendor neutrality: a provider who earns from hardware or licences rarely recommends the cheapest option

Conclusion

For a company with five to twenty workstations, good IT support costs €200 to €900 net per month, or around 10 to 30 hours per quarter when billed based on effort. That is less than a single unplanned day of downtime. What matters is not the lowest price but whether maintenance, monitoring, backup tests and documentation are really included.

Frequently asked questions