TEC Communications
Nobody publishes their pricing. You call four providers, you get four proposals structured four different ways, and two of them won't give you a number until the third meeting.
So here are the numbers.
In the Grand Rapids market right now, most managed IT agreements land between $125 and $225 per user per month. A 30-person manufacturer in Wyoming or Kentwood is typically writing a check somewhere around $4,500–$6,000 a month. A 12-person professional services firm downtown is usually in the $1,800–$2,700 range.
That's a wide band, and the spread is where all the confusion lives. Here's what actually moves the number.
Per-user vs. per-device. Per-user is now the default, and it's the right model — your controller with a laptop, a desktop, a phone, and a tablet counts as one user, not four devices. If a provider quotes per-device, ask them to re-quote per-user and see whether the number moves. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it moves a lot.
Servers still on premises. Every physical server you're maintaining adds roughly $200–$400/month to the agreement. Plenty of West Michigan shops are still running an aging file server in a closet because moving it was never urgent. It's a real line item.
Compliance load. A firm handling PHI, or a Tier 2 supplier that just got a CMMC clause in their contract, is not buying the same service as a marketing agency. Compliance work — documentation, evidence collection, policy maintenance, annual assessments — realistically adds 15–30% on top of base managed services.
After-hours coverage. Second and third shift changes the math. If your plant runs until 11pm, "business hours support" means half your operation is uncovered. Most providers charge for true 24/7 either as an uplift or as an hourly overage you'll discover on invoice #4.
Security stack depth. This is where quotes diverge the most and where buyers get burned. Antivirus and a firewall is not a security stack in 2026. EDR with a human SOC watching it, email filtering, MFA enforcement, dark web monitoring, and immutable backups — that bundle costs money and it's the difference between an incident and a shutdown.
Read the exclusions page. It's usually around page 6 or 7 and it's almost always where the margin is.
Commonly carved out of a flat monthly rate:
None of that is scammy. It's normal. It's only a problem when you didn't budget for it.
Comparing monthly rates alone is how companies pick the wrong provider. Build a 36-month total for each quote:
Monthly rate × 36, plus onboarding, plus licensing, plus a realistic project allowance (one server refresh, one office reconfiguration, one M365 tenant cleanup), plus whatever hourly overage the exclusions imply.
Do that, and the cheapest monthly number frequently ends up second or third.
If a proposal comes in at $85/user, something is missing. Usually it's one of three things: the security stack is thin, the support is entirely reactive with no proactive maintenance, or the help desk is offshore with a response SLA measured in business days.
There's a real cost to under-buying here. Downtime in a manufacturing environment isn't a productivity annoyance, it's a stopped line. If a $6,000/month plant loses four hours, the "savings" from a cheaper contract evaporated years ago.
Question 6 is the one most providers stumble on.
Grand Rapids has a genuinely competitive IT services market — you've got national rollups that acquired local shops, a handful of long-standing independents, and a stream of one-person operations. Pricing is more compressed here than in Detroit or Chicago, which is good for buyers. What varies more than price is depth of bench. Do the techs actually know how to support the systems they setup for you?
(If you're on the lakeshore rather than in Kent County, the dynamics shift a little — fewer providers, more windshield time, and response-time promises worth verifying.)
Let's talk through your numbers. TEC has supported businesses for 40+ years. We'll give you a real quote with the exclusions page on top, not buried. See our Grand Rapids managed IT services →