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Pricing & Engagement

Honest pricing starts with honest scoping.

We don't publish fixed-tier price cards because they don't survive contact with real engagements. Instead, here's how we structure pricing, what the practical floor is for each service line, and what factors actually move the number up or down.

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Why we don't publish fixed tiers.

Most MSP websites have three pricing tiers: Bronze, Silver, Gold (or some clever rebrand of the same thing). Most of those tiers are fiction. Real engagements never fit cleanly into a tier — there's always specific tooling that needs to come over, a legacy system that needs care, a compliance framework that adds work, or a team size that breaks the per-user math. So MSPs either scope-creep their bronze clients into unprofitable engagements, or charge gold-tier prices for bronze-tier delivery.

We took the tiered pricing page off the site. Instead, here's how we actually price — by service, by engagement type, and with honest floors so you can self-qualify whether the conversation is worth having.

Three engagement models.

Every Slyder engagement falls into one of three buckets. Most clients use a combination.

Model 1

Ongoing Retainer

For services you need continuously — managed IT, security operations, vCIO advisory, SEO management. Predictable monthly billing, 90-day auto-renew terms.

  • Per-user pricing (managed IT, vCIO)
  • Per-device add-ons where relevant
  • Fixed monthly fee (SEO, vCIO retainer)
  • No multi-year lock-in
Typical clients on this model: ongoing managed IT, security monitoring, monthly SEO programs, vCIO relationships.
Model 2

Fixed-Fee Project

For work with a clear scope and end-state — a cloud migration, website build, security audit with remediation plan, AI workflow build.

  • One fixed price for defined scope
  • Milestone-based billing
  • Change orders for scope changes
  • Documented deliverables
Typical projects: M365 migrations, web design builds, Azure/AWS environment standup, AI agent development, security maturity assessments.
Model 3

Time & Materials

For genuinely discovery-driven work — incident response, complex remediations, "we don't know what we'll find" engagements. Capped by an upfront budget you approve.

  • Hourly rate by role
  • Pre-approved budget caps
  • Weekly burn-down updates
  • Convert to fixed-fee once scope is clear
Typical use: incident investigation, M365 tenant audits before remediation, "figure out why the legacy system breaks every Tuesday."

Practical starting ranges by service.

These are the practical floors we've seen across real engagements — the bottom edge of what makes a service viable to deliver well. Actual pricing is determined per engagement based on size, complexity, and specific scope.

Service Starting At Common Range Engagement Model
Managed IT (per user) $125/user/mo $175–$275/user/mo Retainer
Cybersecurity & Compliance $45/user/mo $65–$150/user/mo Retainer or bundled
Cloud Support (M365/Azure/AWS) $2,500/mo $4K–$15K/mo Retainer or project
vCIO / vCTO advisory $3,500/mo $5K–$12K/mo Retainer
Web Design build $8,500 $15K–$60K Fixed-fee project
SEO services $1,800/mo $2,800–$6K/mo Retainer (6-month minimum)
AI & Automation (workflows) $3,500/wf $5K–$25K/wf Fixed-fee per workflow
Discovery / scoping audit $2,500 $2.5K–$8K Fixed-fee, credited to engagement

Bundled engagements are meaningfully less. Clients who engage Slyder as a full technology partner (multiple service lines under one engagement) see pricing that's 15–25% lower than the sum of those services individually. This reflects real efficiency — one team coordinating across security, IT, cloud, and AI automation is less expensive to operate than four vendors trying to interoperate.

What moves the number up or down.

If you're trying to sanity-check whether your situation lands at the floor or higher, here are the factors that consistently move pricing:

Things that move pricing up

  • Compliance frameworks. HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, CMMC, FedRAMP — each adds documentation, controls, and audit overhead that real engagements need to absorb.
  • Legacy systems. On-prem servers, line-of-business apps the vendor no longer supports, custom integrations from a previous developer. More moving parts means more variability.
  • Multiple physical locations. Network complexity, on-site dispatch availability, and travel time all add up across locations.
  • 24/7 critical-incident response. True 24/7 SLA requires staffing investment we can't compress.
  • Heavy regulatory or audit requirements. Quarterly access reviews, monthly reporting, annual third-party assessments.

Things that move pricing down

  • Modern, cloud-native environments. M365 + Azure or AWS with proper IAM — much less work than legacy hybrids.
  • Strong existing security posture. MFA enforced everywhere, conditional access in place, EDR deployed — less remediation work needed.
  • Engagement bundling. Multiple service lines with one team beats four vendors.
  • Multi-year terms. Available on request, with mutual termination rights. We trade a small discount for predictability.
  • Smaller user count with simpler infrastructure. Self-explanatory — less surface area to manage.

Common questions

Because honest pricing depends on what you actually need. A 12-person firm with mature security and a clean M365 tenant prices very differently than a 12-person firm with a 5-year-old on-prem environment, no MFA, and three legacy line-of-business apps. Listing "starting at $X" numbers without context creates one of two bad outcomes: we either over-promise and scope-creep into unprofitability, or we under-deliver to hit a number that didn't reflect the work. Honest pricing comes after a 20-minute scoping conversation.

Both. Discrete projects (cloud migrations, web design builds, security audits, AI workflow builds) are typically fixed-fee where scope is clear, time-and-materials where scope is genuinely discovery-driven. Ongoing services (managed IT, security operations, vCIO advisory) are monthly retainers. Many engagements combine both: a fixed-fee remediation project followed by an ongoing managed services retainer.

For managed IT engagements, yes — onboarding involves real work: documenting your environment, deploying agents, configuring monitoring, transferring credentials and admin access, baseline security assessment, and remediation of urgent gaps. The fee varies by environment size and complexity. We disclose it explicitly in the proposal — no surprise charges on the first invoice.

Our managed IT engagements use 90-day auto-renew terms — not 3-year contracts that lock you in past the point where the relationship is working. Project work has no minimum. We earn renewal through delivered value, not contractual handcuffs. If we're not the right fit, you can leave and we'll help with a clean handoff to a successor.

Yes. Clients who engage us for managed IT + security + cloud + AI automation as a combined engagement (the "full technology partner" model) get integrated pricing that's meaningfully lower than the sum of those services individually. The reason is real: when one team handles everything, there's less coordination overhead, less duplicate work, and tighter integration between services.

We expect them to. Businesses grow, shrink, acquire, spin off, change tools, change priorities. We re-scope and re-price at quarterly business reviews (or sooner if a change is material). No retroactive surprises — if something is going to cost more, you'll know before the work starts.

Limited pro-bono availability for 501(c)(3) organizations on a case-by-case basis — usually for technical work that has outsized social impact relative to the hours invested. Standard nonprofit discounts of 15–20% on managed services are available for organizations under $5M in revenue. Reach out to talk through what makes sense.

Let's talk through your situation.

Twenty minutes is usually enough to scope whether Slyder is the right fit and what an engagement would look like. No high-pressure sales — just an honest conversation about your environment and what you need.

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