Managed IT services from Braintek cost $150 to $250 per device per month, plus $15 to $35 per Microsoft 365 mailbox per month, with Microsoft licensing billed separately. Shared mailboxes are free. That is the whole pricing model: no hourly billing for covered services, no per ticket fees, one flat monthly number your CFO can budget around.
Most IT providers in Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth will not tell you that much until you sit through a sales call. We publish it because pricing surprises are the number one complaint businesses have about their current IT company, and because the math is not complicated once someone shows it to you. Here is how the number is built.
What determines where you land in the $150 to $250 range?
Your per device rate is set by how much protection and support each device actually needs, and four factors move it:
- Security and compliance requirements. A medical practice handling HIPAA data or a CPA firm under the FTC Safeguards Rule needs more controls, more documentation, and more evidence for auditors and insurers than a company without regulatory exposure. More controls per device means a higher rate per device.
- Servers and infrastructure. Servers count as devices, and an environment with on premises servers, backup targets, and line of business applications takes more monitoring and maintenance than one that runs entirely on hosted platforms.
- How your people work. Field crews, multiple offices, and heavy travel add complexity. About 85% of the issues we handle are resolved remotely, but a business that regularly needs hands on a machine across a wide metro area sits differently in the range than a single office where everything is one hallway away.
- What your industry demands. Cyber insurance questionnaires, client security audits, and vendor coordination with specialized software all take real hours. Industries where those are routine price toward the top of the range.
What does not change the rate: how often you call. Covered support is covered, so a bad month costs the same as a quiet one. That is the point of the model, and it is why flat fee providers are motivated to prevent problems rather than bill for them.
What does a typical company actually pay?
Take a 25 person professional services office in Houston: 25 workstations, one on premises server, and 25 mailboxes.
| Line item | Count | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Workstations | 25 | $3,750 to $6,250 |
| Server | 1 | $150 to $250 |
| Mailboxes (shared mailboxes are free) | 25 | $375 to $875 |
| Estimated monthly total | $4,275 to $7,375 |
Scale the same arithmetic to your own counts and you have your budget number before ever talking to a salesperson. A 10 person office with no server might land near $2,000 per month. A 50 person company with three servers and compliance obligations might land near $12,000. For a fuller budgeting framework by company size, see our guide to IT budgets for 25, 50, and 100 employee companies.
What should the monthly fee include?
Two quotes at the same rate can cover very different things, and this is where comparisons go wrong. Before you weigh anyone’s number against anyone else’s, get the inclusion list in writing. A managed rate should cover at minimum:
- Help desk support by phone and email, with calls answered by a person, not a queue. Ours are answered in about 60 seconds.
- Around the clock automated monitoring and patching on every covered device
- Endpoint protection and email security on every device and mailbox
- MFA, encryption, and access controls, implemented and documented
- Tested backups, verified with actual restore tests rather than green checkmarks
- The security documentation clients, auditors, and cyber insurers ask for
- Vendor management for your ISP, software, and hardware vendors
- IT strategy and budget planning, a year ahead rather than a ticket at a time
If a lower quote is missing lines from that list, it is not a lower price. It is a smaller service with the gap billed to you later, usually at the worst possible moment.
What are the warning signs in a cheap quote?
A per device rate meaningfully below $150 usually means one of three things. Support is hourly on top of the base fee, so the real monthly cost floats. Security is a bolt on, quoted separately after an incident scares you into it. Or the provider is understaffed, which you discover through response times, not through the contract. Ask any provider what their average time to a live technician was last month; a real answer takes them seconds to pull. Then ask whether their guarantee is published in writing. Ours is: 100% money back, any reason, plus a risk free exit in the first 90 days of a new agreement.
How does outsourcing IT compare to hiring internally?
For most businesses under about 50 employees, the structural math favors outsourcing. An internal hire is a fixed cost that buys one person’s hours and one person’s skill set, with the security, monitoring, and backup tooling they need licensed separately on top, and it leaves you exposed every vacation, sick day, and resignation. The managed model is a variable cost that tracks the devices you actually run, includes the tooling, and spreads a full team across your business, with specialists in security, networking, and cloud rather than one person expected to know everything.
Past roughly 50 employees, the answer often shifts to co-managed IT: your internal person handles daily requests while an MSP covers monitoring, security tooling, escalations, and projects. The per device rate adjusts because the workload splits. If you are weighing that path, our page on managed IT services in Houston covers how the co-managed split works.
What do managed IT services cost in your industry?
The rate structure is the same across industries, but device patterns, compliance loads, and the math worked out for realistic company shapes differ. We have published a worked cost breakdown for each of the industries we serve most:
- Managed IT cost for a law firm, where attorneys typically run two devices each
- Managed IT cost for a CPA or accounting firm, including FTC Safeguards obligations
- Managed IT cost for a medical practice, with HIPAA controls priced in
- Managed IT cost for a manufacturing company, covering shop floor and office device mixes
- Managed IT cost for a construction company, including jobsite and field device realities
Each one works the same $150 to $250 per device arithmetic against two realistic company sizes in that industry, so you can find the shape closest to yours and see a full monthly total.
Does pricing differ between Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth?
No. Braintek serves both metros at the same published rates, from our headquarters at 26519 Oak Ridge Drive in Spring and our DFW presence. We have supported Texas businesses since 2002, and the model has stayed consistent the whole time: flat monthly pricing, no hourly billing for covered services, and a guarantee in writing.
If you are earlier in the decision and still weighing whether managed IT is worth it at all, start with our guide to the benefits of managed IT services, which covers what you actually get for the money. When you are ready for your exact number, a short discovery call is all it takes: we scope your device count, mailbox count, and environment, and you leave with a flat monthly figure in writing.