Managed IT Services Pricing in France (2026)

What the price of managed IT covers

A managed IT monthly fee pays for three things: people's time (support, operations, on-call, governance), tools (monitoring, ticketing, backup, endpoint security, remote access) and sometimes the infrastructure itself (hosting, servers, storage, licences).

That last component is what makes comparisons misleading: some fees include hosting and Microsoft 365 licences, others do not. A support-only package and a contract that hosts and runs your servers do not have the same purpose, even when they carry the same name.

The price depends mainly on five factors:

the number of users, devices and sites;
the number and criticality of servers, applications and network devices;
the coverage hours you need (business days, on-call, round the clock for critical incidents);
the security level required (endpoint protection, logging, access reviews, customer or insurer requirements);
the level of governance expected (reporting, steering meetings, project support).

Pricing models

Model	How it works	Best for	Limitation
Per user	A monthly amount per person, whatever the number of devices	Light, mostly cloud-based estates	Servers and network are often out of scope
Per device	An amount per managed computer	Stable estates, one device per person	A different unit from per user: do not compare directly
Per asset or server	An amount per server, firewall, switch, etc.	Infrastructures with several servers	End-user support must be added
Scope-based fixed fee	A single price for a described scope	Mixed environments, full contracts	Requires a precise inventory upfront
Time and materials / prepaid hours	Engineering time by the hour or day	Projects, occasional extra capacity	No commitment to results, variable budget
Quoted projects	A fixed or capped price per project	Migrations, rollouts, takeovers	Should be scoped in person-days with a cap

In practice, many contracts combine a per-user or per-device price for support with a per-asset price for infrastructure, plus separately quoted projects.

Market price ranges

The figures below are ranges published by French providers in 2025–2026, consulted in October 2026. They are benchmarks, not prices: each grid has its own scope. They are not SKILLSYS prices. Amounts exclude VAT.

Monthly fee per device or per user

Scope level	Published range (€ excl. VAT per device or user per month, depending on the source)	Typical content
Entry offers, partial scope	€15 to €30	First-line support, sometimes automated; endpoint monitoring
Essential scope	€25 to €45	Remote support in business hours, monitoring, basic backup
Standard scope	€45 to €80	L1 and L2 support, monitoring, backup, endpoint protection, Microsoft 365
Enhanced scope	€80 to €150	Critical, multi-site or regulated activity, stronger commitments

Sources: entry offers ^[1] (€15 excl. VAT per user per month for support, €2 per device for monitoring); essential, standard and enhanced tiers ^[2]^[3]. Partial offers at €15–30 are not full managed IT services: they usually cover first-line support only.

Items frequently billed separately

Item	Published range (€ excl. VAT, unit shown)	Note
Server, entry level	€70 to €100 per server per month	Monitoring and maintenance
Critical or business server	€95 to €180 per server per month	ERP, databases, sensitive applications
Server with on-call cover	€150 to €400 per server per month	Depending on response times and hours
Managed firewall	€80 to €250 per month	Rules, VPN, updates
Managed endpoint protection (EDR)	€5 to €12 per device per month	Licence sometimes included
Cloud backup for devices	€5 to €15 per device per month	Retention and restore
Off-site server backup	€30 to €80 per month	Off-site replication, restore tests
24/7 on-call	+20% to 30% of the fee	What on-call covers must be specified
Time and materials	€80 to €110 per hour	Out-of-scope work
Fractional IT director	€1,000 to €2,500 per month	1 to 3 days per month
Initial audit	€800 to €2,500	Sometimes included before signing

Sources: VDI Télécom price grid ^[2] and VDI managed IT page ^[3]; cross-checked with ^[4]^[5]^[8].

Budget examples by company size

These examples are illustrations based on the market ranges above, for a full scope excluding licences and projects. They are not a quote.

Profile	Indicative monthly budget (€ excl. VAT per month, full scope)	What makes it vary
Small business, 1–10 devices, one site	€300 to €900	Backup, endpoint security, whether there is a server
SME, 10–25 devices	€800 to €1,800	Managed endpoint protection, Microsoft 365 management
SME, 20 devices and 2 servers	around €1,500	Server criticality, coverage hours
SME, 50 devices, full scope	€2,750 to €3,500	Number of sites, on-call, security requirements

Source: budget benchmarks by fleet size published by VDI Télécom ^[2], cross-checked with ^[1]^[6]^[7].

The cost per device usually falls as volume grows. Conversely, multiple sites, critical applications or regulatory requirements push it up regardless of the number of users.

Costs to check

Before signing, make sure each of these items is either included or priced:

Takeover of the existing environment: inventory, recovery of access, documentation, onboarding into monitoring. It is often missing from the monthly fee.
Servers and network devices, if they are not in the per-user fee.
Licences: Microsoft 365, antivirus or EDR, backup, monitoring tools.
On-call and out-of-hours work, and what it covers.
On-site visits: included, fixed-price or at cost.
Projects: migrations, device refresh, new sites. They should be scoped in person-days with a cap.
Hosting: storage capacity, growth, off-site backups.
Exit planning: cost and timing of the handover at the end of the contract.
Price changes: indexation, added users, minimum tier, commitment period.

Comparing quotes fairly

Set a reference scope. Send each provider the same inventory (users, devices, servers, sites, critical applications).
Bring each quote to the same unit. Convert per-user, per-device and per-asset prices into a monthly total for your estate.
Add back the options. Anything optional at one provider and included at another must be added to the first before comparing.
Compare commitments, not only price. Response time per priority, coverage hours, restoration target, reporting.
Add onboarding and exit costs over the commitment period. A low monthly fee with an expensive takeover or a paid exit can end up costing more.

Our guide on how to choose a managed IT provider lists the questions to ask about scope and service levels.

Think in total cost, not unit price

The right indicator is not the price per device but what you pay overall for an acceptable level of risk. To estimate it, compare:

the time spent on IT internally today, including by people for whom it is not their job;
the cost to your business of one day of downtime on critical services;
today's scattered spending: multiple providers, one-off interventions, untracked licences;
external requirements to meet: customers, insurers, regulation.

We do not publish generic return-on-investment figures: they depend entirely on your starting point. An assessment establishes these elements for your case.

Common questions about price

Why can two quotes for the same estate differ by a factor of two?

Because they almost never cover the same scope: servers included or not, licences, coverage hours, on-call, takeover of the existing environment, site visits. Once brought to the same scope, the gaps shrink considerably.

Should the takeover be paid for?

A takeover is real work: inventory, recovery of access, documentation, onboarding into monitoring. It is either billed separately or spread across the monthly fee. What matters is that it is priced and visible, so you can compare.

Does a longer commitment lower the price?

Often, but check the exit terms: a three-year discount is only worthwhile if the contract allows you to leave after repeated failures and includes a written exit plan.

Does the price change as the company grows?

Yes, depending on the billing unit. Ask for the price of an extra user, device or server, and any tiers, before signing.

How SKILLSYS builds a quote

SKILLSYS does not publish a price list, because the price depends on your actual scope. Our approach:

Two-hour IT assessment, with no commitment: we scope your environment, constraints and priority risks, then send a written summary.
Scope inventory: users, devices, servers, network, sites, critical applications, required coverage hours.
Proposal: a monthly fee matching the described scope, with the P1 to P4 priority grid and exclusions. The takeover and projects are priced separately, so quotes stay comparable.
Written exit plan from the proposal stage: handover of configurations, documents, inventories and data, with a standard target of 30 calendar days.

When services are hosted with us, they run on our own equipment at the Digital Realty PAR5 data centre in Saint-Denis. See Managed hosting, our service commitments and the managed IT FAQ.

Sources and date

Ranges compiled on 26 October 2026 from public price grids and pricing guides of French managed IT providers. Amounts exclude VAT and licences unless stated, and may have changed since; each source has its own scope and billing unit. Sources are in French.

Managed IT services pricing in France: budgets and pricing models