Do you need help & advice with Business Continuity or Productivity Tech?
If you run a business with a team, budget about £125 a month for each member of staff for IT support in 2027, with the Microsoft 365 licence included. That pays for help with everyday problems, cyber security including training your team to spot scams, help using AI well, and someone planning ahead with you. New laptops and other equipment come on top, and they need a line of their own.
Most budgets we see are missing at least one of those things, usually the ones that only show up when something goes wrong: a fake invoice that gets paid, a laptop that dies the week of a big tender, three computers that all need replacing in the same month.
About £125 per person per month before VAT, Microsoft 365 Business Premium included. For a team of 10 that is about £1,250 a month, or £15,000 a year. Computers, phones and broadband are extra.
What does £125 per person a month pay for?
Four things a business of five to fifty people needs every month, whether or not anything has gone wrong that month.
The figure is per person, not per computer, because most of what IT costs is really spent on the people using it. Dave has made the point since his first budgeting video:
Most of that spending is for the person, so if you can save them a little bit of time… it’s well worth it.
Dave Lane, GoodChoice IT
Our own monthly prices, and what each plan includes, are on our IT support pricing page.
Why does the cheapest IT support usually cost more?
Because a low price usually means someone waits for things to break and charges you to fix them. Updates get missed, the antivirus quietly stops working, and nobody notices until a computer is locked by criminals or a member of staff can’t work for a day. Dave sums up the pay-when-it-breaks way of buying IT in five words:
It’s like a drug, you need your fix.
Dave Lane, GoodChoice IT
With proper managed support you pay a fixed monthly amount and it’s in your provider’s interest that things don’t break. Some providers charge so little per person that it wouldn’t cover the tools needed to look after a computer properly, so something else gives: usually the security, the response, or both.
Up to about four or five people, paying when it breaks can work. Beyond that, it costs more than it saves.
What do most IT budgets miss?
Five things come up again and again when we look at a new client’s spending. Each one is cheap to plan for and expensive to ignore.
Computers are getting more expensive
Laptops and desktops cost noticeably more than they did a year ago, because the memory chips inside them have shot up in price. In October 2026 the research firm Gartner reported that higher memory and storage costs are “now fully reflected in PC pricing”, with memory costing five times what it did a year earlier. So price next year’s replacements at today’s prices plus a margin, and don’t hold off waiting for a bargain that may not come.
Cyber security gets whatever is left over
In the government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025, 43% of UK businesses said they had a breach or attack in the previous 12 months. Many small firms still treat security as part of the general IT spend, so it gets squeezed. Dave’s rule is to give it its own line and spend about as much on keeping the business safe as on looking after the IT itself; the £125 figure is built that way.
You need to be spending substantially more to keep your business safe from cyber threats.
Dave Lane, GoodChoice IT
Nobody has given the team AI tools
Plenty of staff are already using free AI tools on their own, with no say over where your information goes. The better route is to pay for a business tool, but only for the people who’ll actually use it.
Microsoft lists its AI assistant for small businesses, Copilot Business, as an add-on at £16.10 a person a month before VAT, or £13.80 on an offer that runs to the end of 2026 (Microsoft’s UK price list). Budget it per person, then check after a few months whether it’s earning its keep.
If you give everybody in your organisation a Copilot licence and they don’t use it, how is that benefiting the business?
Dave Lane, GoodChoice IT
Staff aren’t taught to spot scams
Scam emails and fake invoices are still the most common way criminals get in, yet the same government survey found only around a fifth of businesses (19%) had given staff any cyber security training in the past year. Regular short training and practice scam emails are part of the monthly figure. If you want to start today, the National Cyber Security Centre’s free Top Tips for Staff course takes under half an hour.
There’s no money set aside to replace equipment
Computers usually last three to five years, then start failing in quick succession. If nothing has been put aside, the replacements land as one big bill, or old machines are kept going while staff wait for them. Work out what your equipment is worth, divide it by the number of years it should last, and put that amount aside every year.
The other company just kept things going when they break. Guess which company was more profitable?
Dave Lane, GoodChoice IT
Our guide to planning your IT budget over three years walks through that sum with a spreadsheet you can fill in.
What makes your figure higher or lower?
£125 a person is a sensible starting point for a typical office or construction business. Your own figure moves with the way your team works.
What isn’t in the £125
New or replacement computers and other equipment, phones and broadband, and one-off projects such as moving office or changing email systems. Moving to a new provider also usually has a one-off setup cost, for checking everything and bringing it up to a safe standard. Put each of these in its own line so the monthly figure stays honest.
Want a budget for your own team?
Tell us how many people you have and how they work, and we’ll help you put a realistic figure on 2027, equipment included. Get in touch and we’ll talk it through.
How much should IT support cost for a business with 20 employees?
Budget about £2,500 a month, or £30,000 a year, at £125 per person with Microsoft 365 included. For 30 people it is about £3,750 a month. Add computers and other equipment on top, and count people who only use email or log in occasionally separately, because they cost far less.
Is IT support usually charged per user or per device?
Most UK providers now charge per person per month, which covers that person’s laptop, phone and any other devices they use. Some still charge per device. Per person is easier to budget for, because it moves only when your headcount does. Our guide to how IT support is priced compares the main ways.
Does the monthly figure include new laptops?
No. Computers and other equipment are bought or leased separately, and they need their own line in the budget. Set aside a share of their value every year so replacements every three to five years don’t arrive as one big bill.
How much of an IT budget should go on cyber security?
Roughly as much as you spend on looking after the IT itself, kept as its own line so it doesn’t get squeezed. That covers keeping every computer up to date, backups, email filtering, and training staff to spot scams.
What if I don't know what my business needs yet?
Start with the per-person figure and adjust it once someone has looked at how you work. Our short guide on budgeting when you don’t know what you need splits the spend into everyday IT, projects and cyber security.
