I’ve written this the way I wish more providers wrote their pricing pages: actual numbers, not a “request a quote” form.

How much does managed IT actually cost per user in New Zealand?

Here’s our own grid, at five fixed seat counts. These are real list prices, ex GST, not averages or ranges dressed up to look precise.

A few worked examples, since a table is easy to skim past: a 30-person business on Essentials pays $125 per seat, or $3,750 a month. A 50-person business on Complete pays $146 per seat, or $7,300 a month. A 150-person business on Premium pays $164 per seat, or $24,600 a month.

If your headcount sits between two of those anchors – say you’re a 40-seat business – read the 30-user and 50-user figures either side and you’ll see roughly where you land. We haven’t published a formula to interpolate exactly, because the rate doesn’t move in a straight line between seat counts, and pretending it does would be more precise than the pricing actually is.

Why does the price ease as you add more people?

A chunk of what it costs to run any account is fixed – onboarding, documentation, a baseline of tooling, some vCIO time – and that cost gets spread across however many seats you’ve got. More seats, same fixed cost, lower rate per seat. It’s not a volume discount in the retail sense, it’s just arithmetic.

Why do quotes for “the same thing” vary so much between providers?

This is worth answering directly rather than dodging, because it’s the honest objection to publishing a page like this at all.

One well-known Auckland-market competitor publishes a figure of “$75 to $180 per user per month” as what most New Zealand businesses pay – their claim, not an independent benchmark, and one you should weigh alongside ours rather than instead of it. Another has argued publicly that “a one-size-fits-all number quoted on a website isn’t honest.”

I get where that second one is coming from. A single number can’t account for whether you’ve got on-premises servers needing extra care, how many line-of-business apps you run, or what your security posture already looks like. But the alternative – refusing to publish anything and making everyone ring up for a quote – isn’t more honest, it’s just less useful. Our five-point grid is the closest thing to a straight answer we can give before we’ve actually looked at your environment, and it’s built from real prices, not a marketing range.

None of those show up in a single headline number, which is exactly why it’s worth asking about them before you compare two quotes side by side.

What else do you need to budget for beyond the per-seat fee?

The seat price above covers helpdesk access, device management and our baseline security stack – what’s actually in each plan is a big enough topic that it gets its own article. A few things worth knowing now, because they change what you actually pay:

And the plan fee doesn’t cover everything. Microsoft licences, project work, hardware, after-hours call-outs (unless you hold the add-on), and data migration out are all billed separately, same as most honest providers. If a quote you’re comparing ours to doesn’t mention any of that, ask what happens the first time you need it.

Does your price change if you grow or shrink?

It does, and we’ve built rules around it rather than leaving it to a renewal conversation. Grow by 10% or more in seats and your whole account moves to the better rate straight away, in contract. Shed staff but stay within 20% of where you were, and your per-seat rate holds – so your bill falls in line with your headcount without a repricing fight. Beyond a 20% drop, that’s a real conversation rather than an automatic step, because the fixed cost of running your account doesn’t disappear the moment someone hands in their notice.

Is there a cheaper way in, or a discount for particular businesses?

If you’re not ready for a full monthly plan, Starter T&M is pay-as-you-go – no monthly commitment, billed for what you actually use. Our practical minimum is around 10 seats; below that the fixed cost of running an account properly starts to outweigh what you’re paying for it, and I’d rather say that plainly than take you on and do it badly.

Not-for-profits get a discount of around 20% on most rates (a bit less on vCIO work, and the after-hours call-out fee doesn’t move). Worth asking about if that’s you.

Wrapping up

If there’s one thing worth taking from this, it’s that a real number is more useful than a promise to “tailor a solution for you” – even when the real number comes with a range attached. Ours is $38 to $210 a seat depending on plan and headcount, and now you know roughly where you’d land before you’ve had a single call with us.

If you want an actual quote rather than an estimate, or you just want to compare what you’re paying now against this, email me at andrew@lucidity.co.nz or call us on 09 363-8888. No obligation, and I’d rather tell you if we’re not the right fit than sign you up and find out later.