Free tool
IT Support Cost Calculator
The numbers first. The calculator second.
IT support in Canada is bought one of three ways, and this page prices all three. An in-house technician costs about $65,458 a year in base salary at the national median wage. Microsoft 365 licensing runs $9.50 to $43.40 per user per month at list price. Outsourced managed IT commonly runs $100 to $250 per user per month.
Every figure on this page comes from a named source, listed at the bottom. The whole cost model is published below as a table you can read without touching anything, the calculator underneath it just does the multiplication for your headcount.
The cost model
Three costs, and only one of them is optional.
Every organization pays for software and for somebody to look after it. The only genuine decision is whether that somebody is an employee, an outside team, or both.
1. Hiring someone in-house
The Government of Canada's Job Bank publishes wages for a user support technician: the role most small organizations actually hire, filed under NOC 22221 (the National Occupational Classification, Canada's standard job-coding system). Across Canada the hourly wages are $20.50 at the low end, $31.47 at the median and $49.00 at the high end, from the Labour Force Survey reference period 2023–2024.
At a 2,080-hour full-time year that is $42,640 to $101,920 in base salary, with the median at $65,458. That is arithmetic on the published hourly figure, not a separate survey.
Base salary is not the whole cost of an employee. Employer payroll contributions, benefits, a workstation, recruitment and certification training all sit on top of it, and so does the software the person needs to do the job.
The part that rarely reaches the spreadsheet is coverage. One person is one business day, one skill set and one set of holidays. They cannot be patching servers on Sunday night, answering a login problem on Tuesday morning and specialising in cloud security, and any plan that assumes they can is a plan with a single point of failure in it.
2. The software stack
Microsoft publishes its Canadian list prices, so this part needs no estimating at all. Per user, per month, on an annual subscription:
| Plan | Per user, per month | Per year, for 40 people |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $9.50 | $4,560 |
| Microsoft 365 Apps for business | $14.20 | $6,816 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot | $31.90 | $15,312 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot | $43.40 | $20,832 |
Licensing is only part of a stack, though. A supported organization normally also carries RMM (remote monitoring and management, the agent that reports whether a machine is patched and healthy), EDR (endpoint detection and response, software that watches for suspicious behaviour rather than only matching known bad files), a backup product, email filtering, a password manager and security awareness training.
3. Outsourcing it
Canadian managed service providers, an MSP is a managed service provider, a company that runs your IT for a fixed monthly fee, price in three common ways:
- Per user: $100 to $250 per user, per month.
- Per device: $50 to $150 per device, per month.
- Flat rate: $1,500 to $5,000 a month for the whole organization.
Those are market ranges from happier IT's own guide to managed IT pricing in Canada, which also breaks the ranges down by province.
Two things almost always sit outside a monthly fee, whoever you buy from: software licensing, billed through separately at list, and project work such as a migration or an office move, quoted on its own. When two quotes look far apart, that boundary is usually the reason.
Side by side
The same 40-person organization, three ways.
One worked example, using the published figures above and nothing else. The arithmetic is shown so you can redo it with your own numbers.
| Approach | The arithmetic | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| One in-house technician, base salary | $31.47/hour × 2,080 hours | $5,455 | $65,458 |
| Outsourced managed IT, market range | 40 users × $100–$250 | $4,000–$10,000 | $48,000–$120,000 |
| Microsoft 365 licensing (Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot) | 40 users × $43.40 | $1,736 | $20,832 |
| Employer overhead on the in-house salary | |||
| Security and management stack, if you buy it yourself | |||
Read across rather than down. On base salary alone, one technician works out at about $136.37 per user, per month across 40 people: inside the outsourced range, not below it, and that is before employer overhead or a single piece of software.
So the decision is rarely won on price. It is won on what each option actually covers. One employee covers one business day, knows your systems intimately, and is unavailable for four weeks a year. An outside team covers more hours and more specialisms and knows your systems less well on day one. Plenty of organizations eventually run both, which is what co-managed IT is.
As a final sanity check: total IT operations spending commonly falls between 3% and 7% of annual revenue, with the higher end for organizations carrying heavy cloud or compliance requirements. If your total lands far outside that, it is worth understanding why before it is worth changing.
What this comparison leaves out
Hardware, which is bought as capital rather than as a service. Project work, quoted separately. And the cost of the hours your team currently spends on IT problems themselves, which is real and which nobody measures.
No number here is ours
Every figure above comes from Job Bank, Microsoft or our own published pricing guide, all three linked at the bottom of this page. Where happier IT has not published a number, you will see an amber placeholder rather than an invented one.
Do the arithmetic
Put your own headcount in.
This multiplies the published figures above by your numbers. It runs entirely in your browser, sends nothing anywhere, and asks for no email address.
The calculator needs JavaScript, and it is the only thing on this page that does. If you have it switched off you are not missing any figures, the table above holds all of them, and the arithmetic is headcount × rate × 12.
Sources
Where every number on this page came from.
Three sources, all public, all linked. If a figure on this page is not traceable to one of them, it is an amber placeholder instead.
- Government of Canada Job Bank. User support technician (NOC 22221), wages in Canada Labour Force Survey, Statistics Canada, reference period 2023–2024. Wage data updated 19 November 2025.
- Microsoft. Microsoft 365 plans and pricing, Canada Published Canadian list prices, per user per month, paid yearly. Retrieved 8 September 2026.
- happier IT. What managed IT costs in Canada: pricing models and typical ranges happier IT’s own published survey of Canadian managed-IT pricing models.
Next
- Managed IT services What the monthly fee buys.
- Co-managed IT When you want both, not either.
- Cyber maturity model What moving up a level involves.
- Free IT assessment A written plan you keep.
Questions
What people ask about IT costs.
What does IT support cost per user in Canada?
Outsourced managed IT in Canada is commonly priced between $100 and $250 per user, per month, with flat-rate agreements typically landing between $1,500 and $5,000 a month, figures from happier IT's guide to managed IT pricing in Canada. What moves a quote inside that range is how much security is included, whether coverage extends beyond office hours, how many sites you have, and whether you still run your own servers.
Is it cheaper to hire an IT person or outsource?
On base salary alone they are closer than most people expect, and the honest comparison is not about price. One in-house technician at the Canadian median wage of $31.47 an hour costs roughly $65,458 a year in salary before any employer overhead, about $136.37 per user per month across a 40-person organization. An outsourced agreement for the same team at market rates runs $4,000 to $10,000 a month. The real difference is coverage: one person covers one business day and one skill set, and takes holidays.
What is not included in a managed IT price?
Usually three things: Microsoft or Google licensing, which is normally billed through separately at list price; hardware, which is bought as capital; and project work such as a migration or an office move, which is quoted on its own. Ask any provider to write down what sits inside the monthly fee and what does not, before you compare two quotes, that boundary is where two apparently similar numbers stop being comparable.
How much should we budget for IT overall?
Between 3% and 7% of annual revenue for IT operations, covering security, licensing and support, with the higher end for organizations carrying heavy cloud or compliance requirements, from happier IT's pricing guide. That is a starting sanity check rather than a target: a 30-person professional services firm and a 30-person manufacturer with machines on the network have genuinely different needs.
Do these figures include Microsoft 365 licences?
No, and they usually do not in a real quote either. Microsoft's published Canadian list prices are $9.50 per user per month for Business Basic and $43.40 for Business Premium with Copilot, both paid yearly, so for a 40-person team that is $1,736 a month on the Premium plan, on top of whoever supports you. The table on this page keeps licensing in its own row for that reason.
Why does this page not just tell me happier IT’s price?
Because a number without a scope behind it is not useful, and we would rather publish the range with the scope attached than a headline figure you would have to unpick. If you want the real number for your situation, a 30-minute call gets it.
Does the calculator send my answers anywhere?
No. The arithmetic runs in your browser, nothing is transmitted, there is no form to fill in and no email address is asked for. If you have JavaScript switched off, the calculator does not appear at all, and you lose nothing, because every figure it uses is published in the table above it.
Want the real number rather than a range?
Tell us the headcount, the number of sites and whether you still run servers. That is enough for a figure we will put in writing.