Pricing
What this actually costs.
Most providers in this industry will not publish a number. We think that wastes everyone's time and sets up an uncomfortable conversation later. So here is the real range, the real onboarding fee, and three real deals with their actual figures.
We are not the cheapest option in Arizona and we are not trying to be. If price is the deciding factor, the numbers below will save you a phone call, and that is a good outcome for both of us.
Step one
Sentry Inspect Assessment
Thirty days examining your people, processes, and technology across nine areas. Technical scans, interviews with your staff, and a review of how you actually operate, ending in a written report and a briefing to your leadership.
$1,500 for 10 users or fewer
$150 per user above 10
A “user” is anyone who touches company systems, employees, contractors, volunteers, part-timers. It is routinely more people than the payroll count. One client with twenty employees turned out to have twenty-eight.
What is in the assessmentStep two, if it makes sense
Sentry Protect
Managed IT and cybersecurity delivered as your technology department. Unlimited support and consulting, 24/7 security monitoring and response, and the full protection stack.
$250–$400 per device / month, as a guide
Plus one-time onboarding. The setup work itself runs roughly one month of the service fee, and any computers that are too old to secure are replaced on top of that. On two of the three real examples below, hardware was the larger half.
We do not actually bill per device. Every agreement is built around what your business genuinely needs, so the real number depends on the backup systems that fit your data, how many applications we take responsibility for supporting, whether your network equipment is included or you keep managing it, how many servers there are, and what your regulatory obligations require.
The per-device figure is a budgeting tool, and we publish it because it is the most reliable one we know. Divide three of our real agreements by the devices under management and you get $250, $261 and $268, a seven percent spread across three very different businesses. The same three divided by headcount give $208, $261 and $298. Devices are simply the closest proxy for the work, which makes them the best thing to budget against before anyone has looked at your systems.
So: count every computer and server you would want us looking after, multiply, and treat the answer as a planning figure rather than a quote. Longer agreements and larger environments land lower. Regulated data, heavy application support, and server-heavy setups land higher.
Estimate yoursEstimator
Work out roughly what you would pay.
This runs the same model we build quotes from. It is an estimate rather than a quote, because your actual agreement is priced on what you genuinely need rather than on a per-device rate. The assessment always finds things that move the number, and a real quote should still land inside the range this gives you.
Cost per device barely moves, whatever your size
This is why we budget per device. Apart from the very smallest businesses, where a handful of fixed costs spread across few machines, the per-device figure is close to flat from twenty devices to two hundred and fifty. The small steps are real: each additional server adds protection and backup. Note the left of the curve: below roughly ten devices the fixed costs stop spreading, which is why a very small business often finds the budget harder to justify even though we can serve it.
The shaded band is where a real quote should land. It is generated by the same model as the estimator below, so the two can never disagree.
- Typical upper end
- Typical lower end
- Assumes about 1.15 devices per person and a server per 15 people.
Real deals
Three actual clients and what they pay.
Names removed, numbers untouched.
Onboarding is shown in full, including the hardware, because that one-time number is what surprises people and we would rather you saw it here than in a proposal. Look at the per-device figure rather than the totals when comparing them. These three businesses are wildly different sizes, and they pay $268, $261 and $250 per device. Per user the same three deals are $298, $261 and $208, which is why comparing providers on a per-user number tells you very little.
Manufacturer, 3 buildings
$10,734/mo
$268 per device · $298 per user
- Users
- 36
- Computers
- 40
- Servers
- 4
- Term
- 60 months
- Onboarding, one time
- $9,800
Included two replacement computers
Forty computers, four physical servers, several VMs, three buildings, plus remote users. Quoted on 36 months; they chose 60.
Construction firm
$7,300/mo
$261 per device · $261 per user
- Users
- 28
- Computers
- 28
- Servers
- 3
- Term
- 36 months
- Onboarding, one time
- $13,600
Several computers had to be replaced on day one
Twenty people on the payroll. The assessment found twenty-eight actual users once contractors, office staff, and family members with company email were counted, on twenty-eight computers. Onboarding ran high because a number of machines were too old to secure and had to be replaced before anything else could be done.
Credit union
$2,500/mo
$250 per device · $208 per user
- Users
- 12
- Computers
- 10
- Servers
- 0
- Term
- 36 months
- Onboarding, one time
- $6,000
Several computers had to be replaced on day one
Twelve people sharing ten computers and no servers, which is the least expensive shape a client can be. They came from a break-fix provider paying a couple of hundred a month with no backups and no endpoint protection, and spend rose to close examiner-facing gaps. Onboarding included replacing machines that could not be secured as they were.
The variables
What actually moves your price.
None of this is negotiable mystery. These are the five things that decide where in the range you land, and you can work out most of them yourself before we ever speak.
- How many devices per person
- Protection is licensed per machine, not per human. An office where everyone has a desktop and a laptop costs meaningfully more per person than one where everyone has a single laptop. This is the most common reason a per-user comparison between two providers is misleading.
- Servers
- Each server carries its own protection, monitoring, and backup. Going from one server to four is a larger jump than going from twenty people to thirty.
- Regulated data
- HIPAA and similar obligations require compliance tooling, formal documentation, and evidence you can hand an auditor. For a twenty-person organization this typically adds a few hundred dollars a month.
- Agreement length
- Twelve months costs about 10% more per month than thirty-six. Forty-eight is about 5% less, sixty about 10% less. Implementation is front-loaded, so a longer term genuinely costs us less to deliver.
- Condition of what you already have
- This is the one nobody warns you about. If your environment has been neglected for years, the onboarding project is larger. It does not change the monthly fee much, but it can move the one-time number substantially.
The awkward questions
Answered plainly.
So I am paying just to get a quote?
No. You are paying for a documented assessment of your risk across nine areas, delivered as a written report and a presentation to your leadership. It is yours to keep. If you hire someone else, hand it to them. If you hire nobody, work the list yourself. We will not quote managed services without it, because any number we gave you first would be a guess and you would have no way to judge whether it was fair.
We are a small business. Do we really need all of this?
Some of it, not all of it. That is the honest answer, and it is a large part of what the assessment is for. What we can tell you is that the size of your company is not what determines whether you are targeted. Criminals scan for weaknesses, not for revenue. What size does change is how much you can absorb when something goes wrong. A ten-person firm that loses access to its files for three weeks is usually in more trouble than a five-hundred-person one.
Why are you more expensive than the other quotes we have?
Usually because we are quoting a different thing. Most quotes at half our price cover monitoring, antivirus, patching, and a help desk. That is legitimate work and for some businesses it is enough. It is not cybersecurity, and it is increasingly not what insurers and regulators mean when they ask what you have in place. Compare the line items rather than the totals. If the cheaper quote genuinely covers the same ground, take it.
Do you require a long contract?
We prefer three years and price down from there. Forty-eight months is about 5% less per month, 60 months about 10% less. Twelve and twenty-four month agreements are available and cost more per month, because the implementation work is front-loaded and has to be recovered over the term. Two of our clients have chosen to renew at five years.
Do you charge per device?
No. Every agreement is built around what your business actually needs, so the real number depends on the backup systems your data requires, how many applications we take responsibility for supporting, whether network equipment is included or you keep managing it, how many servers there are, and what any regulator expects of you. We publish a per-device figure because it is the most reliable way to budget before anyone has looked at your systems. Divide three of our real agreements by devices under management and you get $250, $261 and $268, a seven percent spread. Treat it as a planning number, not a rate card.
What is not included?
Hardware you buy is yours and billed separately, though we will manage the procurement. Major projects outside normal operations, an office move, a new location, a line-of-business application migration, are scoped separately. Network equipment and phone service are add-ons. Everything else, including unlimited support and consulting, is in the monthly fee.
Can we start smaller and add things later?
Rarely, and we will tell you honestly why. Most of the layers only work as a set, endpoint protection without identity controls, or backups without monitoring, produces a false sense of coverage that is arguably worse than knowing you are exposed. Where a genuine phased approach makes sense, the assessment will say so and lay out the sequence.
Still here?
Then price probably is not your only question.
Book fifteen minutes. We will tell you honestly whether an assessment makes sense for you right now, and if it does not, what we would do in your position instead.
If we are not a fit, we will say so on the first call rather than the fourth.