What Managed IT Support Costs in Centurion in 2026

If you run a business in Centurion with somewhere between 5 and 50 staff, you have probably asked an IT company for a quote and received a number with very little explanation attached. This article sets out what managed IT support actually costs in Centurion in 2026, what pushes the price up or down, what is normally billed on top, and how to compare two quotes without being misled. The rates below are the published Code Masters prices, so you can check every figure against the pricing page.

What "Managed" Means, And What It Doesn't

Break-fix is the old model. Something stops working, you phone, a technician fixes it, and you get an invoice. With Code Masters that is R750 per hour plus a R650 callout for a site visit. Nobody is monitoring anything between calls, nobody is patching machines, and nobody is responsible for your backups until the day you need one.

Managed IT flips the arrangement. You pay a fixed fee per user per month and the IT company takes on the running of your systems: monitoring, updates, helpdesk, backups, and a set amount of on-site time. Because the fee is fixed, the provider earns the same whether you phone ten times a month or never, so it is in their interest to stop things breaking in the first place. That change in incentive is the whole point. We cover the trade-offs in more depth in managed IT vs break-fix.

What Actually Drives The Price

Almost every managed IT quote in South Africa is built on the same handful of inputs. If you know them, you can predict the number before it arrives.

• Number of users — the main unit of pricing. A user is a person with a login and a mailbox, not a device. Ask how shared mailboxes, part-timers and directors who only use a phone are counted.
• Servers — an on-premises server needs patching, monitoring and a tested backup. Some providers price it inside the per-user fee, others add a per-server charge. Ask which.
• Sites — a second office means a second network, a second firewall and a second place to visit. Two sites will cost more than one site with the same headcount.
• Compliance — POPIA applies to every business that holds personal information. If you also have industry rules on access control, audit trails or retention, expect extra documentation and extra work.
• After-hours cover — the standard is a weekday helpdesk (07:00 to 18:00 at Code Masters) with emergencies handled 24/7. If your business runs shifts or a warehouse until late, ask what evening cover costs.
• On-site time — remote-only support is cheaper than a weekly visit. Distance matters here: Centurion clients are 5 to 15 minutes from the Code Masters office at 257 Jean Avenue, which is why on-site hours can be included in the monthly fee rather than billed as a callout.

The Published Tiers

These are the Code Masters rates for IT support in Centurion in 2026. Every figure is per user per month unless stated otherwise.

• Pay-as-you-go — R750 per hour, R650 callout per site visit. No monthly fee, no monitoring.
• Core Business IT — R750 per user per month. The entry-level managed plan.
• Fully Managed IT — R950 per user per month. Includes a weekly 2-hour on-site visit, cloud backup, and a senior engineer assigned to your business.
• Enterprise IT Partner — R1,299 per user per month. Four on-site hours a week, plus network and security specialists.

On every managed tier the helpdesk runs 07:00 to 18:00 on weekdays, emergencies are handled 24/7, and a critical issue gets a response within 2 hours. That response time is put in writing, which matters when you compare quotes later.

Worked Examples For Centurion Businesses

The arithmetic is simple: per-user rate multiplied by headcount. Here it is for three typical sizes, monthly and per year, so you can see what a tier actually commits you to.

A 5-User Business

• Core Business IT: 5 × R750 = R3,750 a month, or R45,000 a year
• Fully Managed IT: 5 × R950 = R4,750 a month, or R57,000 a year
• Enterprise IT Partner: 5 × R1,299 = R6,495 a month, or R77,940 a year

Compare that with break-fix. Two site visits a month of two hours each works out to 2 × (R650 + 2 × R750) = R4,300, which is more than Core Business IT and buys no monitoring, no backup and no one responsible between visits. At five users the sensible choice is usually Core or Fully Managed; Enterprise only makes sense if the five of you run something unusually critical.

A 15-User Business

• Core Business IT: 15 × R750 = R11,250 a month, or R135,000 a year
• Fully Managed IT: 15 × R950 = R14,250 a month, or R171,000 a year
• Enterprise IT Partner: 15 × R1,299 = R19,485 a month, or R233,820 a year

The step from Core to Fully Managed costs R3,000 a month at this size. For that you get roughly eight to nine on-site hours a month, cloud backup and a senior engineer. Bought on pay-as-you-go, eight on-site hours across four visits would be 8 × R750 + 4 × R650 = R8,600, before any backup. That is why most 15-user businesses land on Fully Managed.

A 40-User Business

• Core Business IT: 40 × R750 = R30,000 a month, or R360,000 a year
• Fully Managed IT: 40 × R950 = R38,000 a month, or R456,000 a year
• Enterprise IT Partner: 40 × R1,299 = R51,960 a month, or R623,520 a year

At forty users you almost certainly have a server or two, a proper firewall, and possibly a second site, which is where the network and security specialists in the Enterprise tier start to earn their keep. The honest comparison at this size is against employing your own technician: salary, leave, training, and who covers when that one person is off sick. You know that number better than any IT company does. Put it next to the annual figures above.

What Is Not Included

No managed IT fee covers everything, and the exclusions are where quotes quietly diverge. These are usually billed separately, by Code Masters and by everyone else:

• Hardware — laptops, desktops, servers, switches, firewalls, access points and UPS units. The fee covers looking after them, not buying them.
• Licences — Microsoft 365 is a separate per-user licence and it is the biggest one. Ask whether security software and backup storage are inside the monthly fee or on top of it.
• Projects — a server migration, an office move, a new phone system or a move to Microsoft 365 is scoped and quoted as a project, not absorbed into the monthly fee.
• Cabling — new network points, fibre installation and Wi-Fi installation are quoted separately and often done by a cabling contractor.
• Planned after-hours work — emergencies are covered 24/7, but a scheduled weekend cutover may be quoted on its own. Ask.

The Hidden Cost Of Break-Fix

The invoice for a break-fix visit is the small part. The large part is the work your staff could not do while they waited. The formula is:

staff affected × cost per staff hour × hours down

Take a 15-person office where the server goes down for four hours. If each person costs the business R200 an hour in salary and overheads (use your own figure), the lost work is 15 × R200 × 4 = R12,000. Add the break-fix invoice of R650 + 4 × R750 = R3,650 and the incident costs R15,650. One incident, and it has already cost more than a full month of Fully Managed IT for the same 15 people (R14,250).

Break-fix also hides slower losses: machines that were never patched, a failing disk that nobody was watching, and a backup that was never tested until the morning it was needed. None of those appear on an invoice until they become an emergency.

A Note On Load Shedding In Centurion Office Parks

Many Centurion office parks have a generator, and many tenants assume that settles the matter. It does not. The switchover from grid to generator still drops power for a few seconds, and a few seconds is enough to hard-reboot a server, a switch and a firewall. A UPS bridges that gap and gives a server time to shut down cleanly if the generator fails to start.

A UPS is extra hardware and is not part of any monthly fee. Sizing depends on what you plug into it and how long you need it to run, which is a short calculation but one that has to be done for your equipment, not guessed. A managed provider will size it, install it and monitor it. A break-fix provider will sell you one after the first corrupted database.

Questions To Ask Before You Sign

1. What exactly counts as a user, and how are shared mailboxes and part-timers billed?
2. What is the response time for a critical issue, and will you put it in writing?
3. Are servers, firewalls and printers covered, or only the PCs?
4. How much on-site time is included, and what does an extra visit cost?
5. Who checks the backups, and when was a restore last tested?
6. What is the contract term and the notice period?
7. What gets billed as a project rather than covered by the fee?
8. Who holds the admin passwords, the domain registration and the Microsoft 365 tenant? The answer should be you.
9. What happens after 18:00 and on weekends?
10. Where is your office, and how long does it take you to reach mine?

How To Compare Quotes Like-For-Like

Two quotes with different totals are rarely quoting the same thing. To compare them properly, put both on one page and rebuild each into the same lines:

• Per-user fee × your actual headcount
• Any per-server or per-site charge
• Backup and security software, if billed separately
• On-site hours included, and the rate for extra hours
• Licences, listed separately so they do not distort the support fee
• The written response time for a critical issue

Multiply by twelve and compare the annual figures. If the cheaper quote leaves out backup, on-site time or servers, ask them to add those lines and re-quote. Only then are you comparing like with like. Our overview of monthly IT support packages explains what each package tier normally contains, and the IT support page shows how these services fit together across Pretoria and Centurion. Code Masters covers the wider area too; see locations for what that means for travel time and on-site visits.