Client PortalWhat does managing your own IT actually cost?
Comparing a monthly fee against zero makes self-managing look free. It is not free, it is just paid in staff time instead of invoices. This works out the difference using your numbers.
Before you start
The fee is only part of the cost
Every business that manages its own IT is paying for it. The cost just sits in someone's week rather than on an invoice, which makes it easy to miss.
This calculator asks how much time that actually takes, splits it into the two kinds of work, and prices it at a rate you choose. Nothing here is based on industry averages or our own assumptions about your business.
If self-managing comes out ahead on cash, the numbers will say so, along with what that figure leaves out.
The calculator
Your numbers
All figures are per month, ex GST. Microsoft 365 licences are billed separately in every option, so they are left out of the comparison.
A user is any person who uses your IT and has their own email address, including part-time staff and contractors.
Laptops, printers, software that will not open, someone locked out, setting up a new machine. The visible layer.
Tenant settings, licences, new starters and leavers, access and permissions, security configuration, checking alerts, backups.
This depends entirely on who actually does the work, so pick the one that matches your business. In a lot of small businesses it is the owner, which is the most expensive hour in the building.
Managing it yourself still means paying for endpoint protection, email security and Microsoft 365 backup, which our plans include. Set this to what those tools cost you per user, or leave our estimate.
Manage it all yourself
No provider. Nobody managing the platform or security, and nobody to call when it goes wrong.
AgileASSURE
$75 per user. We manage Microsoft 365 with protection built in, you keep the day-to-day.
AgileCORE
$129 per user with the recommended AgileSECURE. Fully managed, delivered remotely.
AgileCOMPLETE
$174 per user with the recommended AgileSECURE. Adds onsite, servers and quarterly reviews.
What this comparison does not count
This is a labour and fee comparison only. It prices the hours going into IT and the fee for handing them over, and nothing else. It does not put a number on reduced downtime, cyber risk carried by the business, insurance and compliance obligations, how quickly problems get resolved, or strategic planning. Those are usually the reasons a business changes how it buys IT, and they do not show up in this table.
It also means AgileCOMPLETE will always look more expensive than AgileCORE here. The two tiers remove the same day-to-day burden, so on labour alone the cheaper one wins every time. AgileCOMPLETE costs more because it covers more: onsite attendance, server and on-premises infrastructure management, and scheduled strategic reviews. If you run servers or multiple sites, AgileCORE is not really the comparison, and the gap between the two is scope rather than wasted money. Compare the tiers properly.
Indicative only. Service fees are from-prices confirmed in a discovery conversation, and uplift work to bring an environment to a security baseline is scoped separately. Internal time is costed at the rate you entered, over 4.33 weeks per month.
Reading the result
What the numbers do and do not tell you
What is counted
Service fees, the internal time each option leaves with you, and the security and backup tools you would otherwise buy yourself. AgileASSURE removes the platform and security hours but keeps the day-to-day, because it deliberately has no helpdesk. AgileCORE and AgileCOMPLETE remove both, and all three include the tooling.
What is not counted
Risk. An account compromise, a restore that fails, downtime, or a breach you have to notify are not in these figures, because they cannot be estimated honestly from four inputs. That gap sits mostly against the self-managed column, where nobody is watching the platform.
If the self-managed column comes out lowest, read that figure as the cost of a good month: it holds only while nothing goes wrong, and when something does, the cost and the time land on you. What self-managed IT means sets out exactly what that model leaves uncovered. If the gap is smaller than you expected, that is usually the hours doing the talking, and a conversation with us will tell you where your business really sits.
Common questions