The headline number

If you run a 20-staff professional services, trades or consulting business in Canberra — typical office work, Microsoft 365, some cloud apps, no specialist line-of-business systems — you should expect total IT spend in 2026 to land somewhere between $3,500 and $6,500 per month all in. That's everything: licences, support, cybersecurity, backup, connectivity, hardware amortised over its useful life. Roughly $175 to $325 per seat per month.

That's a wide range because what's "right" depends on three things: how regulated your industry is, how much remote work you do, and whether you're in growth mode or coasting. Here's how it breaks down.

1. Managed IT support — $1,500 to $3,000/mo

This is the line item most people quote on. For a 20-staff business, expect a Canberra MSP to come back with somewhere between $75 and $150 per seat per month for fully-managed support. That should include unlimited remote support, monitoring, patching, M365 admin, endpoint protection, and a real backup.

Below $75/seat, somebody is either greener than they're letting on or has stripped real value out of the offer (no after-hours, no monitoring, no included project hours). Above $150/seat for a generic SMB is either a vendor padding for inefficiency or one that's bundling enterprise tools you don't need.

What we tell prospects in this range: anyone offering "unlimited everything for $50/seat" is going to either burn out or quietly downgrade your service in six months. The good ones cost what they cost because they pay good engineers.

2. Microsoft 365 licensing — $600 to $1,000/mo

Twenty Microsoft 365 Business Standard licences at AU pricing is around $22 per user per month direct from Microsoft — call it $450–$500/mo. For most Canberra businesses, though, the right tier is Business Premium at roughly $33/user/month, because that's the one with Intune, Entra ID P1 and Defender for Business included. Business Premium for 20 users is around $650/mo.

The honest pitch: if you're paying for Business Premium but not using Intune or Conditional Access, you're throwing $200/month in the bin. A good MSP makes sure the licences you're paying for are actually doing work.

Add a couple of seats of Visio, Project, or Copilot and you'll easily land at $800–$1,000/mo total for 365.

3. Cybersecurity beyond M365 — $300 to $700/mo

Defender for Business (included in Business Premium) covers a lot. What it doesn't cover — and what most Canberra SMBs underbuy on — is everything around the endpoint:

  • Phishing simulation & training (KnowBe4 or similar) — about $5–$8 per user per month. Genuinely changes user behaviour over 6–12 months.
  • Email gateway if you're high-risk (legal, financial, gov-adjacent) — another $4–$6/user/mo for something like Avanan or MailGuard.
  • Backup with proper retention — for M365 data specifically, expect $3–$6/user/mo (Veeam, Acronis, Datto, Synology). The thing that bites businesses isn't ransomware on a server — it's a user deleting a SharePoint library four months ago and only just noticing.
  • Password manager — 1Password or Bitwarden Business at about $5/user/mo. Single biggest cybersecurity ROI you can buy.

Roughly $20–$30 per seat per month if you do it properly. For 20 staff, $400–$600/mo. Tempting to skip — until your insurer asks you to attest to it.

4. Hardware — $400 to $800/mo (amortised)

People forget hardware because it's a capex line, not an opex one. Spread over its useful life, though, it's real money. A reasonable model:

  • Laptops on a 3-year refresh — call it $2,400 per device including dock, headset and setup. Twenty staff = $1,600/mo equivalent.
  • Networking gear (UniFi or Sophos firewall, switches, APs) on a 5–7 year refresh — call it $80–$150/mo equivalent.
  • Phones / VoIP handsets if you use them — $50–$100/mo amortised.

Some businesses lease laptops via a Device-as-a-Service offer instead — that converts capex to opex and bundles support, typically $70–$120/seat/mo. For Canberra SMBs without strong cashflow management, DaaS is genuinely worth considering.

5. Connectivity — $250 to $500/mo

One business-grade NBN connection in Canberra (250/100 enterprise-ethernet or symmetrical fibre) runs roughly $200–$400/mo depending on contention and SLA. Add a 4G/5G failover device for $50–$100/mo if you can't afford to be offline — and most professional services firms can't.

If you have multiple sites or a remote-first team, factor in a VPN concentrator or SD-WAN service (often included in the firewall licensing).

6. The line items most people forget

Three categories that always come up after the budget's signed off:

  • Line-of-business software — your CRM, accounting (Xero, MYOB), project tool, design tool. Not "IT spend" in the strict sense but very much part of the tech budget. Easily $1,000–$3,000/mo for a 20-staff business.
  • Domain, DNS, certificates, email signature tool — $50–$150/mo, easily overlooked.
  • Project work and one-offs — office moves, M365 migrations, server retirements, security uplifts. Budget 1–2 weeks of consulting per year, roughly $8,000–$15,000/year for a 20-staff business, even if it's spread across small jobs.

Putting it together — a realistic 2026 budget for a 20-staff Canberra business

Reasonable middle-of-the-road numbers, monthly:

  • Managed IT support — $2,200
  • Microsoft 365 (Business Premium ×20 + extras) — $800
  • Cybersecurity add-ons (training, password manager, backup) — $500
  • Hardware (amortised, refresh cycles) — $700
  • Connectivity (NBN + failover) — $350
  • Other (DNS, signatures, small SaaS) — $150
  • Project work, prorated — $1,000

Total: ~$5,700/mo, or ~$285 per seat per month. Add Copilot for everyone and you're at $310/seat. Take out the cybersecurity training and the failover NBN and you're at $250/seat.

Where to spend more (and where to spend less)

Spend more on:

  • Decent laptops. The cost difference between $1,500 and $2,500 per machine pays itself back in productivity and morale inside a year.
  • Backup that's tested. Anybody can sell you a backup. Pay for one that someone runs a restore test on at least quarterly.
  • An MSP that actually answers the phone. The hidden cost of "cheap" IT is the time your team loses sitting in a ticket queue.

Spend less on:

  • Premium SaaS tiers you don't use. Audit your subscriptions every six months — most SMBs are paying for at least three things nobody uses anymore.
  • "AI security" tools that duplicate what Defender for Business already does. Most are repackaged endpoint protection at 3× the price.
  • Long contracts. Twelve months is plenty. If a provider won't go month-to-month after the initial term, they don't trust their own service.

What this looks like compared to government and enterprise

For context — APS departments and large enterprise typically run at $400–$700 per seat per month all-in, sometimes higher in regulated areas. They have additional layers (SIEM, dedicated security ops, identity governance, compliance tooling) that genuinely add up. The lesson for SMBs isn't to copy them — it's to understand why they spend that, and only adopt the parts that match your real risk.

Getting a real number for your business

The numbers above are benchmarks, not quotes. Your actual spend depends on your industry, your existing setup, your appetite for risk, and how much of the work your team can absorb internally. If you'd like a properly-costed view of what your 2026 IT should look like — based on what you actually have today — that's exactly what a Starboard free 1-hour consult is for. You'll leave with written recommendations and honest numbers, no pitch required.