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The short answer is most small businesses in the Pittsburgh area pay between $100 and $250 per user per month for fully managed IT services. Where your firm lands in that range depends on a few specific factors I will walk through below.
The longer answer, and the one that actually matters when you are making a decision is that the number is only half the question. The other half is what you are getting for it and what it costs you when something goes wrong with the cheaper option.
When MSPs quote per-user pricing, what is included in that number varies more than most buyers realize. At the low end of the range, you are typically looking at reactive support, meaning someone answers a ticket when something breaks. At the middle and upper end, you are looking at proactive monitoring, cybersecurity tools, backup management, and a team that is actively watching your environment rather than waiting for your call.
At Midnight Blue, our fully managed services pricing includes end-to-end coverage: on-site and remote support, cybersecurity monitoring, cloud and backup management, voice, and a dedicated support team with documented response tiers. No hidden fees. The price is the price.
| Typical range: | $100–$250 per user per month |
| Pricing model: | Per user (most common for 20–100 user firms) |
| What’s included at the high end: | proactive monitoring, cybersecurity tools, backup management, dedicated support team, no hidden fees |
| Midnight Blue position: | Mid-market — not the cheapest, not the most expensive |
Several things affect where your firm falls in the pricing window:
I will say the quiet part out loud here, because it is the thing clients tell me after the fact.
You can have cheap, fast, or good quality. Pick two. That is not just an industry saying. I have watched it play out with enough clients over 20 years to say it without hesitation.
The cheapest managed IT providers are cheap because they are handling more clients than they can properly support, cutting corners on proactive monitoring, or paying their engineers less. Any of those things show up when something serious goes wrong. The response is slower. The resolution takes longer. The downtime costs you more than the difference in monthly rate would have over several years.
The most expensive providers are not always the best either. There are MSPs charging premium rates who deliver a commoditized experience. The point is not to pay more, it is to understand what you are actually comparing.
I am not going to publish a specific price here, because the honest number depends on your specific situation. What I can tell you is that we sit in the middle of the Pittsburgh market. We are not trying to be the cheapest, and we are not trying to be the most expensive. We are trying to drive real value for firms that want a technology partner rather than a ticket-taker.
Every engagement includes our Three-Phase Onboarding process, which is roughly 60 days to get your environment to baseline, train your team, and establish the client experience. It also includes at least one formal Strategic Business Review (SBR) per year, a structured conversation about where your technology is going, not just whether your backups are running.
Our 2024 customer satisfaction score was 97.1 across more than 1,600 reviews. Our client retention rate is over 97 percent. Those are the numbers I am most proud of, because they are the ones that tell you what the experience actually looks like after you sign.
If you are comparing quotes and one provider is significantly cheaper, here are the questions to ask before you assume it is a better deal:
A provider who cannot answer those questions specifically is telling you something important.
If your company is rolling out an AI implementation and you’re wondering how to move forward, and build a business case for leadership, this article gives you the actual numbers to understand what Copilot costs are at each layer: licensing, implementation, and ongoing optimization.
What Does Strategic AI Implementation Actually Cost? (And What Does It Save?)
It also shows what it costs when organizations try to do it themselves, a conservative ROI model you can apply to your own firm, and what a low-risk phased approach looks like. We also uncover the situations where this investment genuinely does not make sense.
It is the most common model for small businesses, and it is what we use at Midnight Blue. Per-user pricing makes sense because your support costs scale with your headcount, not your device count. Some providers price per device, which can cost more as you add servers, printers, or other endpoints. We will walk through the difference in a follow-up article, but for most 20 to 100 user firms, per-user is simpler and usually less expensive.
We evaluate everything in place during the discovery process. Some existing tools are worth keeping. Others are not compatible with how we manage environments, and we will tell you that upfront. We do not pad the contract with tools you do not need, and we do not discount for tools we include that go unused. Everything in our stack is there for a reason.
Do you want to know where your business stands and want to have a reasonable estimate for a firm your size and location?
We offer a Complimentary AI Readiness Assessment to review your current setup, identify security gaps, and outline a realistic path forward. Just an honest and direct conversation about your firm’s specific needs.