Pricing guide
How much does IT support cost in Brisbane?
Most providers will not answer this before a meeting. Here is the answer, the reasoning behind it, and the four line items that make two quotes look further apart than they really are.
The short answer
Small-business IT support in Brisbane is usually sold one of two ways: a fixed monthly fee per user that covers support, monitoring, patching and backup, or an hourly callout rate with a minimum charge per visit. A plan costs more in a quiet month and far less in a bad one. The break-even for most offices sits at around four to five callouts a year.
The two pricing models
Per-user monthly plans are the norm for offices of about three to thirty people. You pay the same amount whether the month was quiet or awful, and the provider carries the risk of it being awful — which is the point, because it aligns their incentive with keeping your systems boring.
Hourly callout work suits businesses where nothing is truly business-critical: a two-person operation, a site where losing a day costs very little, or an office that already has a competent person in-house. You pay only for what you use, and you wear the downtime.
What actually moves the number
- How many users, and how many devices each. A ten-person office where everyone has a laptop, a desktop and a phone is not a ten-device business.
- Whether there is a server. An on-premises server adds monitoring, patching, backup and a physical failure risk that cloud-only offices do not carry.
- Age of the fleet. Machines past five years generate several times the support tickets of machines under three. Old hardware is not a saving; it is deferred cost with interest.
- Compliance requirements. Health records, legal matter files and financial records carry retention rules that change what backup has to do.
- How far away you are. On-site time in the core bayside and Gold Coast zones is cheaper to deliver than a same-day visit to Browns Plains, and honest pricing reflects that.
The four things to check on any quote
Line these up and most quotes in this market land much closer together than the headline figures suggest.
- Is backup included, or billed per gigabyte? This is the single biggest source of apparent price difference.
- Are Microsoft 365 licences inside the fee? If they are, the fee is higher and comparison gets harder. We pass them through at cost.
- Are on-site visits included, discounted, or full rate? "Remote support included" can quietly mean every visit is chargeable.
- Is there a markup on hardware? A markup buried in a monthly fee is the hardest cost to see and the easiest to overpay.
What it costs not to have it
One day of downtime for a six-person office is roughly $3,400 in lost productive or billable time. Ransomware recovery for a small Australian business is commonly quoted in the tens of thousands once downtime, specialist help and lost work are counted. A dead server with no working backup costs weeks, and some of it never comes back. Those numbers are why the plan-versus-callout question is rarely close for a business that actually depends on its systems.
Our published pricing
We publish per-user pricing rather than hiding it behind a discovery call. See the plans and what each one covers, or read the plan-versus-callout comparison if you are still weighing the two models.
Common questions about IT support pricing
How much does IT support cost per user per month in Brisbane?
For a small business in South East Queensland, managed IT is typically quoted per user per month, and the figure covers support, monitoring, patching, managed antivirus and backup. Where a quote sits in the range depends mostly on whether backup and Microsoft 365 management are included and how much on-site time is bundled rather than billed.
What does a one-off callout cost?
Hourly callout work is normally billed with a minimum charge covering travel and the first hour, then in smaller increments after that. A single visit is cheap compared to a monthly plan; four or five visits a year usually is not.
Is IT support cheaper if we only need help occasionally?
Sometimes, and we will say so. Below about three users, or in an office where nothing is business-critical, a discounted callout arrangement is often better value than a plan. Above that, the maths turns fairly quickly once you count downtime rather than just invoices.
Why do quotes from different providers vary so much?
Because they are rarely covering the same things. Check four items on any quote: whether backup is included or extra, whether Microsoft 365 licences are inside the fee or billed separately, whether on-site visits are included or discounted, and whether hardware carries a markup. Two quotes that look 40 per cent apart are often within 10 per cent once those are lined up.
Are Microsoft 365 licences included in the monthly fee?
Not in ours. Licences are a third-party subscription and we pass them through at cost so you can see exactly what you are paying Microsoft. Some providers bundle them, which makes the headline figure higher and the comparison harder.
What should a small office budget for IT overall?
A useful rule of thumb is to plan for the monthly support fee, plus licences, plus a hardware replacement cycle of roughly four to five years per machine. The hardware line is the one most small businesses forget, and it is why a bad year feels like a shock rather than a scheduled cost.
Want a real number for your office? The audit produces one, and it is not a sales meeting.
Book a callout