It's the first question everyone asks and the one nobody answers straight. Search it and you get pages that talk around it for a thousand words before suggesting you get in touch.
I'm not going to publish a rate card either — but I'll explain why, and then give you enough to judge any quote you're handed, including mine.
Why there's no useful average
Two businesses ask for the same thing and need different amounts of work.
"Get the office network sorted" at a five-person office with modern wiring is an afternoon. The same sentence at a converted house with plaster walls, a landlord who won't allow new cabling, and a system that has to keep running while you switch is a different job entirely. An average across those two describes neither.
Anyone who does quote a flat number up front is doing one of two things. Either they've padded it to cover the bad case — and you pay for that padding whether or not your situation needs it — or they'll revise it once they've seen the site, which means the number was never real.
So the useful thing isn't an average. It's knowing how the pricing works.
The pricing models you'll run into
Most IT work is sold one of six ways. Which is right depends less on the work and more on how often you need it.
| Model | Suits you when | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Problems are rare | No incentive to be quick |
| Block hours | Small steady needs | Hours that expire unused |
| Per device | You have many machines | Paying for idle devices |
| Per user | People outnumber devices | Contractors counted as staff |
| Monthly retainer | You want it handled | What's excluded |
| Fixed project | The outcome is defined | Scope changes billed separately |
Hourly is honest for occasional work and badly aligned for anything ongoing — the meter rewards slowness, even when nobody intends it to.
Per device and per user are how most managed providers price. They're predictable, which is the appeal, but read what counts as a device. Printers, phones, and the machine in the back nobody uses can all end up on the bill.
Fixed project is what I use for defined work — a build, an install, a migration. You know the number before it starts and it doesn't move unless you change what you asked for. The trade is that it takes a conversation first, because I can't quote what I haven't seen.
What actually moves the number
Roughly in order of impact:
How much has to keep running while it changes. Replacing something nobody depends on is simple. Cutting over the system your business runs on today, with no downtime and no lost data, is a different job — and it's usually the single biggest factor.
How much history has to come with you, and what condition it's in. Fifteen years of records in a spreadsheet with inconsistent formatting is real work regardless of how simple the new system is.
How many things have to talk to each other. One tool is straightforward. Three that must stay in sync is where the hours go.
Whether someone has to be in the building, and how often. Remote work is cheaper. Some things genuinely can't be done remotely.
How much you want to own afterwards. A documented handover another person could pick up takes longer than something only the original builder understands. It's worth paying for, and it's the first thing quietly dropped when someone is bidding low.
The costs that aren't on any invoice
These are usually larger than the quote, and almost nobody counts them.
The workaround hours. Someone exports a report and retypes it into a second system. A spreadsheet lives beside the app because the app can't track the thing you care about. Three hours a week is most of a working month every year — that's the number to compare a quote against, not zero.
The day it stops. Not the repair bill: the revenue you don't take while the system is down, and the customers who go elsewhere. Businesses that have had this happen price backups very differently from businesses that haven't.
What you're already paying for and not using. Per-seat subscriptions for tools where you use a fraction of the features, or that overlap with something else you also pay for. Worth adding up before spending anything new — sometimes the answer is cancelling, not buying.
How to compare two quotes
Cheaper is a fair reason to pick someone. Just make sure you're comparing the same thing. Ask both:
- What's explicitly not included? The gap between two quotes is usually here, not in the rate.
- What happens when something breaks after handover — is that billable, and how fast do you respond?
- Do I own the work? Code, configuration, documentation, credentials. If the answer is vague, you're renting your own systems.
- Who actually does it? With a firm, the person you're talking to is often not the person who shows up.
- What would make this cost more than quoted, and who decides that?
A provider who answers those plainly is worth more than one who's ten percent cheaper and vague. If the answers make somebody defensive, that's your answer.
How I price it
Fixed numbers, agreed before work starts, after I've seen what's actually there. One-time for projects with a defined end, recurring for hosting, backups, and support you can call on. Nothing is priced per seat, so hiring your tenth employee doesn't change what you pay.
I've laid out every service and how each is billed on the pricing page. If you're weighing custom software specifically, when it beats off-the-shelf covers where that line sits.
The first conversation costs nothing. A fair share of the time it ends with me saying the setup you have is fine, or that a cheaper fix will do — I'd rather tell you that than sell you a project you didn't need. Get in touch and I'll give you a straight number.