Guide · 8 min · For Owners

What break-fix actually costs

The hourly rate is the obvious cost. The hidden costs: the four-day delay before the technician can come out, the productivity loss while you wait, the project work that never gets done because every visit is reactive, and the year-end surprise when the antivirus expired in March and nobody noticed.

What managed actually costs

A flat monthly number — per device, per mailbox, per location. Add-ons priced as line items for the things outside the base scope. The number on the contract is the number on the bill. Predictable to the dollar, billed on the same day each month.

The 24-month math

For a typical 10-person business, break-fix often runs $14,000–$22,000 over 24 months once you add in emergency calls, project work, and one major incident. A managed plan over the same period runs in the same range — and includes the prevention, the documentation, and the help desk that break-fix never bills for.

The decision is rarely the price

Most owners who switch to managed don't do it because it's cheaper. They do it because they want one phone number, predictable monthly costs, and a partner who shows up before the fire starts — not after.

Frequently asked questions

Is break-fix or managed IT cheaper?
Break-fix is cheaper on paper in any month nothing breaks. Over a typical 24 months for a small business, the unbilled outages, the unpatched-CVE exposure, and the unscheduled hardware emergencies usually flip the math toward managed. The variability is the cost most owners underestimate.
When does break-fix actually make sense?
Very small environments (1–3 endpoints), one-off projects with a defined start and end, or as a backstop for a business with internal IT capacity that needs occasional escalation. Almost never as the primary model for a small business with 10+ users and any regulated or revenue-critical data.
Will switching from break-fix to managed cost more in the first year?
Usually slightly more in year one (because the managed plan funds the security stack and the patching cadence that were not happening before), and meaningfully less in years two and three (because the incident rate drops once the baseline is healthy). The real win is variance — monthly cost becomes predictable.
What's a fair per-unit price to expect for managed IT in 2026?
For a small business, expect roughly $79/device, $20/mailbox, and $149+/location/month for a complete managed plan including the security stack. Total cost typically lands between $100 and $200 per user per month all-in. See what does IT support actually cost in 2026? for line-by-line worked examples.

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