Comparison
Fixed-fee AI support vs hourly IT support
Plenty of UK small businesses still buy IT by the hour — a local engineer, a friend of the founder, a consultancy with a day rate. It feels efficient: you only pay when something breaks. The problem is what happens in between, because the pricing model quietly changes the behaviour of everyone involved.
The short answer
Hourly support is genuinely cheaper when incidents are rare and you have the internal confidence to triage what is worth a call. Fixed-fee support is cheaper, and considerably less stressful, once you are raising more than a few issues a month — but its real advantage is behavioural, not financial: nobody hesitates to ask. Under hourly billing, the small problems do not get reported, they get worked around, and the workarounds accumulate into the incident that eventually costs a day's trading.
Side by side
| Fixed-fee AI support | Hourly / break-fix IT | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost model | Per user per month, predictable | Per hour, unpredictable |
| Typical UK rate | £4–£15 per user per month | £75–£150 per hour, often with a one-hour minimum |
| Cost of a 10-minute question | Nothing extra | Usually a full billed hour |
| Response time | Immediate | Subject to the engineer's availability |
| Out of hours | Same service | Premium rate, if available at all |
| Incentive alignment | Provider gains from fewer, faster resolutions | Provider revenue rises with time spent |
| Encourages early reporting | Yes | No — users self-censor to avoid cost |
| Budget certainty | Exact | None |
| Suits rare, large projects | No | Yes |
| Commitment | Monthly, cancel anytime | None |
Choose Fixed-fee AI support if
- Staff currently avoid reporting issues because someone mentions the cost
- You raise more than roughly three or four issues a month
- You need a number you can put in a budget
- Problems tend to arrive outside office hours
Choose Hourly / break-fix IT if
- You genuinely have almost no IT incidents
- You have a capable, technical person internally who handles the small things
- Your need is occasional project work rather than ongoing support
- You are below about five users and the fixed minimum is poor value
What it costs
Work out your break-even honestly. At £95 an hour with a one-hour minimum, four calls a month is £380 — more than a 20-person business would pay for a full month of AI support at £4 per user. But the number that actually matters is the unreported problems. The laptop that takes eight minutes to boot, the shared mailbox nobody can access so files get emailed as attachments, the ex-employee's account still active because deactivating it 'needs the IT guy'. None of those appear on an hourly invoice, and all of them cost more than the invoice would have.
Where we're the wrong choice
For a very small business — two or three people, technically confident, one incident a quarter — hourly support is clearly the better economic choice, and a fixed monthly minimum is poor value. We charge a £12 monthly minimum per company, which means a two-person business is effectively paying £6 per user rather than £4. If that is you, and you are comfortable handling the routine yourself, pay someone by the hour when you need them. Come back when the interruptions start costing more than the invoices.
Frequently asked questions
Fixed-fee AI support vs Hourly / break-fix IT — common questions
Is fixed-fee IT support worth it for a 10-person company?
Usually yes, but test it against your own history rather than a rule of thumb: count the hours you paid for over the last year, add the hours your own staff spent solving IT problems instead of doing their jobs, and compare. Most 10-person businesses find the second number is larger than the first and had never counted it.
Does fixed-fee support mean unlimited tickets?
With AlwaysOnIT, yes for anything inside our published scope — there is no per-ticket charge and no fair-use throttle on normal business use. What limits us is scope, not volume: we do not do hardware, on-site work or on-premise infrastructure at any price.
Why do hourly providers resist fixed fees?
Because fixed fees transfer risk to the provider. Under hourly billing a difficult month is a good month for the supplier; under fixed fees it is an expensive one. That transfer is the point — it aligns the provider with resolving things quickly and permanently — but it only works if the provider can control their cost per ticket, which is exactly what automation changes.
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