Most providers make you sit through a sales call to hear a number. Here's the number first: what Vancouver businesses actually pay, what moves the price, and how to tell a fair quote from a padded one.
For a Vancouver small business of 10–100 people, fully managed IT typically runs $110–$185 CAD per user per month. That range covers what a complete plan should include: unlimited help desk, 24/7 monitoring and patching, endpoint security, MFA, email protection, backup management, and someone accountable when things break.
Quotes outside that band aren't automatically wrong — but they mean something. Below ~$100/user, look for what's been stripped out: security sold separately, on-site visits billed hourly, "business hours only" support. Above ~$200/user, you're usually paying for compliance work (healthcare, finance, government suppliers), dedicated on-site days, or servers that belong in the cloud.
The honest complication: providers price in different shapes, and the shapes are hard to compare. That's the next section.
Covers each person's laptop, phone, and cloud accounts under one flat fee. Simplest to budget and hardest to pad. This is how most modern Vancouver MSPs price, and how we price. The thing to verify: does "per user" include security, or is that a second line item?
$35–$85 per workstation, more for servers. Looks cheaper per line — until you count every laptop, desktop, and server. Sensible for shared-workstation shops (clinics, shops floors); for everyone else it usually totals higher than per-user once phones and second machines are counted.
The classic menu. The trap is that the tier priced in the proposal is rarely the tier you need: security, backups, or after-hours support often start at "Gold." Compare the tier that actually includes what you need — not the one on the front page.
$120–$200/hour in Vancouver, paid only when something's on fire. Feels cheap in a good month. But nobody's patching, monitoring, or backing up between fires — so the fires get bigger, and the incentive is backwards: the provider earns more when your IT is worse.
The base multiplier. 10 users is a different price per user than 80 — most providers discount as you grow, so ask where the volume breaks are.
The single biggest spread between quotes. EDR, MFA, email security, and security awareness training either live in the base fee or arrive later as a 20–40% surprise. Ask directly: "What security is in the base price?"
PIPA applies to every BC business, but healthcare, finance, legal, and government suppliers carry heavier requirements — documented controls, audit support, security questionnaires. That work is real and priced in.
On-premise servers cost more to manage than cloud workloads — patching, backups, hardware risk. If a quote is high, ask how much of it is babysitting a server that a cloud migration would retire.
Most issues resolve remotely in minutes. If you want scheduled on-site days, that's a legitimate cost — but paying for weekly visits "just in case" is the most common padding in Vancouver quotes.
The alternative to a provider isn't free: it's a salary. A Vancouver IT manager runs $95,000–$120,000 CAD plus benefits, tooling, and training — call it $130,000+ fully loaded. One person, working business hours, who takes vacations and eventually resigns with everything in their head.
At typical managed rates, that same budget covers a 70-person company — with a whole team behind it, 24/7 monitoring, and documented systems that don't walk out the door. This is why the crossover point where in-house starts to make sense is around 75–100 staff, and even then it's usually a hybrid: one internal coordinator, with an MSP behind them.
For a 10-person Vancouver business, the math is stark: $1,100–$1,850/month managed, versus $10,000+/month for a hire covering a fraction of the hours.
Add every add-on the cheap quote needs to match the complete one — security, backups, after-hours, onboarding fees. The gap usually closes or reverses.
"Fast support" is marketing; "15-minute response target" is a commitment. Ask what the guaranteed response time is and what happens when it's missed.
Three-year lock-ins protect the provider, not you. Month-to-month means the provider has to earn the renewal every month. Ask why a lock-in is necessary — and listen carefully to the answer.
A provider brilliant with 200-seat companies may be a poor fit at 15 seats. Ask for two references from businesses your size, in or near your industry.
Tell us your headcount and what you run. We'll give you a flat, all-inclusive, month-to-month price — security included, in writing, no lock-in.
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