Most IT providers will not tell you what outsourced IT support costs until you sit through a sales call. ETTE publishes its rates: fully managed IT starts at $150 per user per month, remote-only at $125, with nonprofit pricing on both. This page explains what sits behind numbers like those, what should be included, and how to spot a quote that leaves the expensive parts out.
What does outsourced IT support cost?
Under a per-user model, your monthly cost is the rate multiplied by your active user count. A 5-person team on ETTE's Fully Managed plan starts at 5 × $150 = $750 per month. A 25-person organization starts at $3,750. A 10-person team on Remote-Only starts at $1,250. Volume discounts apply as headcount grows, and the number adjusts automatically when people join or leave.
List pricing at ETTE covers organizations of roughly 10 to 75 people. That is the size range where paying per user costs less than staffing the same coverage internally. Larger teams get scoped as a custom quote, and co-managed partnerships, where a provider works alongside your internal IT staff, are priced by the responsibilities the provider takes on rather than by a list rate.
A user means a person who signs into your email, computers, or business apps. Not a device. If a quote counts devices, a person with a laptop, a desktop, and a phone costs you three times, which is one reason two quotes for the same organization can look wildly different.
What pricing models will you see?
Four, and the model matters more than the rate.
- Per user, flat monthly. One rate covers each person's devices and support. Predictable, and it gives the provider an incentive to fix things fast and keep them fixed, because rework costs them rather than you.
- Per device. Looks cheaper per line item and often totals higher, since most people now carry more than one device.
- Hourly, also called break-fix. You pay when something breaks. This is the model that punishes you for calling, so problems get reported late and small issues become outages. For any organization that depends on its systems daily, it is the most expensive option dressed as the cheapest.
- Project-based. Right for one-time work like a migration or an office move. Insist on a fixed price for projects; hourly billing on a migration puts your interests and your provider's in opposition.
What should be included at that price?
A fully managed plan should cover the whole operating picture, not a ticket queue. ETTE's plans include a staffed help desk Monday through Friday, 7 AM to 7 PM ET, on-site technician dispatch in the DC metro area on the Fully Managed plan, proactive monitoring and patching, endpoint detection and response, cloud backups for files and email, and a structured 30-day onboarding that documents your environment before anything changes.
Response commitments belong in writing, not in a sales conversation. ETTE works to published objectives: urgent issues in 20 minutes, high priority in 60, normal in 90, change requests in 8 hours. If a provider will not put numbers like these in the agreement, the price is not comparable to one from a provider who will.
What drives the price up or down?
On-site needs are the biggest lever. Remote-only support costs less because nobody drives to you; it fits distributed teams and organizations comfortable with hands-on work handled through guided local support. Compliance obligations raise cost, because evidence, reporting, and stricter controls take real hours. Security add-ons beyond a baseline, advanced email protection or a fractional security officer, are scoped to your risk rather than bundled invisibly.
Nonprofit status lowers it. ETTE offers reduced per-user rates on every plan and helps nonprofits capture donated and discounted licensing through programs like TechSoup, which often offsets a meaningful share of total technology cost.
Is outsourced IT cheaper than hiring internally?
For organizations under about 75 people, usually yes, and the reason is coverage rather than salary math. One internal administrator is a single person: one skill set, one set of working hours, one point of failure who takes vacations and eventually resigns with the passwords in their head. A managed plan buys a team with a help desk, an engineer bench, security tooling, and documentation that survives any one person leaving.
The honest counterpoint: an internal person knows your organization in a way no provider fully will, and above a certain size you want one. That is what co-managed IT is for. Your staff keeps strategy and the work they are best at, and the provider supplies capacity, after-hours coverage, and specialists.
What questions expose a weak quote?
- What are your response time objectives, and are they in the agreement?
- Do you test that backups restore, or only that backup jobs run?
- Who owns the documentation of my environment if we part ways?
- What are the exit terms? A provider confident in its service does not need punitive termination clauses.
- What exactly is not included? Projects, after-hours work, and on-site visits are where surprise invoices live.
Any provider who answers those five plainly belongs on your shortlist. Any who dodges them has told you what the relationship will be like after you sign.
Where to see real numbers
ETTE's pricing page lists what each plan includes at the published rates, and the managed IT services and support page covers how delivery works day to day. If you are comparing providers in the DC market, our comparison of seven providers nonprofits shortlist names competitors and what each is good at, including where ETTE is not the right fit.