How Much Should IT Managed Services Cost in the UK in 2026 - What Should Be Included?
When we built our service catalogue for CyberPrae, this was one of the most difficult areas to get right, we have all spent a lot of time in our careers working in the MSP and Cyber Security space, and the market has shifted a huge amount, even over the past 5 years.
We thought it would be a good idea to explain why we built our pricing models in the way that we have done.
1. Flexibility
Although you can often find common ground in the underlying technologies used today, more so than in the earlier days of the MSP, no two organisations are the same.
Whilst we firmly believe that our per person, per month model should include everything that the supported individual needs, alongside our 15-minute response SLA – the nature of the wider business itself may demand a variety of additional services that are not just ‘IT Support and Managed Services’.
For this reason, we know our clients will need additional services such as data backup, patch management, and endpoint security software amongst other things. Because of this need for flexibility we keep our per person, support and managed services charge as low as possible. At just £30-40 per head for a typical UK based organisation and this would include on-site support as required at no extra cost.
2. Evolution of Cyber Security Services
The advent of the AI powered Security Operations Centre has completely changed the way that the Modern MSP aggregates and manages alerting from the various client estates it protects.
When we built our first 24 x 7 x 365 SOC, we had rows of analysts all managing multiple systems and putting in a lot of manual effort to ensure that our clients were kept safe.
Modern technology greatly reduces both alert fatigue for these analysts as well as the time to respond, and it does so at a lower cost. A comprehensive MXDR solution, that even includes elements of Cyber Threat Intelligence can now be provided around the clock for less than £20 per head.
3. IT Operations and Managed Services
For many years, an IT managed services provider in the UK has had to be a lot more than a home for reactive work on support tickets. This is the ‘managed’ part of being a technology services provider.
Proactively looking at patching, data backup reliability, device health, networking performance and forward planning for known events and projects is what separates a Managed Services Provider from an IT Support provider.
At CyberPrae we can provide very clear, granular costs for all these services so that there is no ambiguity about what our clients are paying for and the service they should expect for their money.
Every CyberPrae client will have a technology roadmap that is built and reviewed collaboratively, and this is done at no extra cost. The idea being that both parties should have as clear a view of the future as is possible. Costs can be predicted and resources can be made available for future projects.
4. Security Operations as a seamless part of the package
Having IT Operations and Security Operations operate from distinctive playbooks or from within teams that are not entirely integrated is a risk.
From the work that CyberPrae do in the recovery and rebuilding of organisations that have been impacted by Cyber crime it is almost always poor housekeeping, gaps in the network design or a lack of proper identity management that has led to the incursion taking place.
Often these gaps sit right in the middle of the respective roles that the Security Team and the Ops teams are responsible for. Your Security Team may have eyes on the various security alerting platforms in use, but what if the real risk in the underlying platform design has yet to be discovered. How do your alerts from the security team translate into upstream improvements into the core technology architecture?
Your technology provider needs to be able to seamlessly join IT Operations, Estate Visibility and Management into a single ecosystem. Your platform itself must be secure by design.
5. Governance Risk and Compliance
Whilst more technically oriented members of the leadership team are concerned about the real risk of Cyber Crime, other members of the board may be more concerned with the ever-increasing requirement to be on the right side of Governance.
The clear design, build and creation of an effective set of IT and Cyber Security policies is now a requirement from many insurance companies and are frequently requested by many larger B2B organizations.
CyberPrae offer clearly priced consultancy services to help our clients from basic policy creation right through to full IMS builds to help organisations achieve standards such as ISO27001, 9001 and 42001.
We are also seeing a lot of demand now from businesses looking to ensure they have a clear set of policies and guardrails in place for the safe use of AI within their workplaces.
CyberPrae’s approach to these projects is always fixed cost and fixed outcome, so that our clients do not get caught in a spiralling ‘day-rate’ or time and materials project.
6. Transparent Licensing Costs with no margin added
CyberPrae took the decision to pass all Microsoft Cloud Licensing to our clients at cost as we did not want to build a business that is based on reselling licenses.
We see the management, optimisation and provision of Microsoft 365 and Azure licensing as a critical part of the proactive managed service we provide to our clients. In many cases we have saved our customers money every month by rationalising and simply tidying up their Microsoft 365 estates.
CyberPrae will never add margin to any of the Microsoft Cloud Licensing that we provide to our clients, and we will manage the tenancy on their behalf so that we continue to provide a fully managed service.
Not sure whether your current IT support represents good value? CyberPrae can provide a straightforward review of your existing service, costs, and technology estate—with no obligation to change provider. – Get in touch today here.
