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Published on:
8 September 2026
Author:
TechPath
Price is often the last thing a business asks about and the first thing it wants to know. We understand why. Technology spending is difficult to benchmark, quotes are rarely comparable, and nobody enjoys the feeling of not knowing whether they are paying a fair rate for something they cannot easily assess.
We have always taken the view that this is unnecessarily opaque. We publish our own pricing openly, which is still relatively unusual in our industry, and we would rather a business worked out roughly what we cost before picking up the phone than discover it three meetings in.
This guide steps back from our own rates to look at the market as a whole. It covers what Australian businesses are genuinely paying in 2027, what ought to be included at each level, the costs that sit outside the monthly fee, and how to compare two quotes that appear to be for the same thing but are not. It is written for organisations with 15 to 150 users, because that is where we work and where the economics shift most noticeably.
Across the Australian market, fully managed IT services generally sit between $120 and $250 per user per month, excluding GST. Monitoring-only arrangements, where you are buying tooling rather than a team, start closer to $50 to $100. At the other end, security-led agreements built for regulated industries commonly reach $250 to $350. Break-fix support, charged by the hour, tends to run between $130 and $250 per hour.
Our own Managed IT agreements fall between $99 and $199 per user per month, which places us at the more competitive end of that market range. Managed Infrastructure, covering servers, firewalls, switches and wireless equipment, is priced separately from $10 per device for something simple through to $299 for a major server.
Those figures are a useful orientation, but they are also the least informative part of any proposal. Two agreements at an identical per-user rate can represent quite different services, and the work of comparing them properly happens well below the headline number.
The most common reason quotes diverge is that the environments behind them are not equivalent, and the second is that the scope is not equivalent either.
Complexity is the largest single driver. A business running entirely in the cloud on modern equipment with straightforward applications is considerably less work to support than one carrying legacy servers, specialist industry software and multiple sites. This is why our own pricing spans a hundred dollars per user rather than sitting at a single figure.
Two examples from our own client base illustrate the point better than any explanation. A mining services organisation with 158 users across a modern multi-site cloud environment pays around $92 per user per month, because their applications are easy to support and the day-to-day overhead is low. An engineering firm with 79 users pays approximately $175 per user per month, because specialist engineering software and support-heavy applications create genuinely more work. Both are well-run businesses receiving an appropriate service. The difference is entirely in the environment.
Alongside complexity, the factors that move pricing most are the number of locations, whether the workforce is office-based or spread across sites, the security and compliance obligations of the industry, the required response times, and whether there is any internal IT capability to share the load.
At the lower end, around $50 to $100 per user, you are buying monitoring, patching and alerting. Someone will let you know when something has broken, and the repair is usually billed separately. For an organisation with a capable internal IT person who needs better tooling and broader coverage, this can be a sensible arrangement. It is worth being clear that it is not the same thing as IT support.
A standard managed agreement, broadly $120 to $180 per user, is the realistic starting point for a business without internal IT. At this level you should expect unlimited remote help desk during business hours, proactive monitoring and maintenance, endpoint protection, email security, backup monitoring with restores that are actually tested rather than assumed, Microsoft 365 administration, staff onboarding and offboarding, network oversight and documentation, and a named contact who knows your business. If a proposal at this price is missing backup verification or offboarding, it is worth asking why, because those two omissions cause a disproportionate share of the problems we are called in to fix.
Above roughly $180 per user, agreements begin to include a genuine security layer: managed detection and response, conditional access and identity protection, security awareness training with phishing simulation, vulnerability management, and measurable progress against a framework such as the ACSC’s Essential Eight. This tier has grown quickly over the past two years, and not because providers wanted to sell more. Cyber insurers now require controls that were previously optional, client contracts increasingly specify them, and recent Privacy Act reforms have turned “reasonable steps” into a legal test rather than a recommendation. For any organisation holding client data, this has quietly become the baseline rather than the premium option.
Beyond $250 per user, you are generally in regulated territory — compliance evidence and reporting, formal incident response arrangements, and controls documented well enough to survive an external audit.
This is the section we wish more providers wrote, because it is where two quotes stop being comparable.
Software licensing almost always sits on top. As of July 2026, Microsoft 365 Business Premium is around $34.55 per user per month excluding GST on an annual commitment, and Business Standard is approximately $22.05 following the July increase. Business Premium held its price in that round while Standard rose, which has narrowed the gap between them considerably. For any business handling personal information, Premium has become close to an automatic choice, since it brings Defender for Business, Intune and Entra ID P1 with it. If an all-in figure looks unusually low, it is always worth checking whether licensing has been included, excluded, or simply assumed.
Hardware is a capital purchase rather than a service. Some providers mark it up and others pass it through at cost while charging for the configuration work, and both approaches are reasonable, but you should know which you are dealing with.
Projects sit outside as well. Migrations, office relocations, server replacements and network rebuilds are the work of changing an environment, whereas managed services cover the work of running it. A proposal that folds a substantial project into the monthly fee has either priced that project into your rate for the next several years or intends to raise it later.
Onboarding is genuine work. Discovery, documentation, deploying agents, remediating whatever the discovery turns up, and tidying the tenant. Most providers charge for it, and a provider offering it free is recovering the cost somewhere else.
Finally, it is worth understanding precisely what after-hours coverage means in any agreement you are considering. Twenty-four-hour monitoring frequently means automated alerting overnight with human response resuming the following morning. That is a perfectly legitimate service, and it suits a great many businesses, but it is not the same as twenty-four-hour support, and the distinction matters a great deal at two in the morning. Ask what actually happens when a critical alert fires overnight, and who answers the phone.
Comparing Proposals Properly
The most useful exercise we can suggest is also the least glamorous. Ask each provider for a written scope of work, then build a single spreadsheet with one row for every inclusion and one column for each provider. Not a summary, but the actual line items. In our experience most of the apparent price difference between three proposals disappears the moment the scope is normalised, and what remains is a genuine comparison.
It is also worth asking every provider the same five questions, because a well-run business will answer all of them comfortably. What is your guaranteed response time for a critical issue, and what happens if you miss it? Is your help desk based in Australia, and is it your own team? What security certifications do you hold, and who assessed them? What are the exit arrangements, and who owns our documentation, licences and tenant if we part ways? And, most revealing of all, what is not included in this rate?
A reputable provider should be entirely clear about what your fees cover. Your service level agreement ought to set out inclusions, exclusions, response times and guaranteed outcomes plainly enough that you can verify what you are getting before you sign anything.
One question from that list deserves expanding, because it is easy to answer vaguely. We hold ISO 27001 certification, which means our information security practices have been independently assessed against an international standard rather than described well in a brochure. Comparatively few providers of our size in South East Queensland hold it. When we describe how we protect a client environment, an external auditor has verified that description.
It is not the only marker of a capable provider, and we would not suggest a business choose on that basis alone. It does, however, give you something checkable, which is more than most claims in our industry offer.
We would rather be straightforward about this, because it saves everyone a good deal of time.
Our products, services and support plans are designed to work at their best for businesses with more than 15 computer users, and we specialise in organisations between 15 and 150 users. Below that threshold the economics of a full managed service rarely stack up, and you would be paying for capability you are unlikely to use.
If you have fewer than 15 users and you are looking for a new provider, we are still happy to help. We maintain a network of trusted smaller-business IT providers and would far rather make a good introduction than sell you something ill-suited. The exception is rapid growth. If you are sitting at twelve users and hiring steadily, it is worth a conversation now rather than in six months.
How much do managed IT services cost per user in Australia? Most Australian businesses pay between $120 and $250 per user per month for fully managed IT. Monitoring-only plans run from $50 to $100, and security-led agreements for regulated industries reach $250 to $350. TechPath’s Managed IT agreements sit between $99 and $199 per user per month. All figures exclude GST and software licensing.
Is Microsoft 365 included in managed IT pricing? Generally, not. Licensing is normally billed separately at CSP rates. As at July 2026, Microsoft 365 Business Premium is approximately $34.55 per user per month excluding GST on an annual commitment. Always confirm whether a quote includes licensing before comparing it with another.
What is the difference between break-fix and managed IT? Break-fix support is reactive. You pay by the hour when something goes wrong, typically $130 to $250 per hour. Managed IT is a fixed monthly fee covering proactive monitoring, maintenance, security and support. Break-fix can suit very small teams, but above roughly 15 users the unpredictability and the absence of preventative work usually cost more than the monthly fee would have.
Why do two quotes for the same business differ so much? Because scope and environment complexity vary enormously. Security depth is the largest variable, followed by after-hours coverage, backup and recovery arrangements, and which applications sit inside or outside the support boundary.
Do per-user costs reduce as a business grows? Usually, yes. Larger user counts generally attract a lower per-user rate for the same tier of service, which is why one of our multi-site clients with 158 users pays substantially less per person than a smaller organisation running more complex applications.
Working Out What It Would Cost for You
Benchmarks are helpful for orientation, but they are no substitute for someone taking a proper look at your environment. Every business has different operational, technical and security requirements, and pricing follows from those rather than from a table.
That is why we start with TechAlign. Our IT assessment process looks at your current technology environment, identifies risks and gaps, documents what needs attention, and gives us a clear picture of what your business actually needs from its IT partner. It means we can recommend the right level of support based on your environment, rather than simply putting you into a standard package.
It also gives you something useful before you commit to an ongoing Managed IT relationship: a clearer understanding of where your technology stands, what needs to be addressed, and what should happen next.
Our pricing page sets out what TechPath charges in more detail, including real examples from clients across construction, manufacturing, accounting, engineering and the not-for-profit sector. If you would like a figure for your own business, we are happy to scope it and tell you plainly, including telling you if we are not the right fit.
