What Should IT Cost a 10-Person Business?
A practical breakdown of where a small business’s IT budget actually goes — and what “normal” looks like for a 10-person team.
“What should we be spending on IT?” is one of the most common questions we get, and most answers online are uselessly vague. Here’s a grounded breakdown for a typical 10-person business.
The major buckets
- Productivity & email — Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, per user.
- Security — endpoint protection (EDR), email filtering, and MFA.
- Backup — cloud backup for data and Microsoft 365/Workspace.
- Support & management — either hourly break/fix or a flat managed plan.
- Hardware — amortized laptops, networking, and the occasional replacement.
Where businesses overspend
The waste is rarely in the big, visible line items. It’s in duplicate SaaS tools, premium license tiers nobody uses, and reactive emergency calls that prevention would have avoided. We routinely find that consolidating the stack pays for a good chunk of a managed plan on its own.
A reasonable target
Rather than quote a number that’ll be wrong for your situation, the honest answer is: your IT spend should be predictable, mapped to real needs, and trending down as you consolidate — not creeping up with every new subscription. If it isn’t, that’s the signal to audit.
See your number
Our IT cost calculator gives you a quick estimate of current spend versus a right-sized plan, and a free assessment turns that into real figures for your business.