You need IT help. You go to Google. You find five managed service providers in your area. You click through their websites looking for one simple thing: how much does this cost?

And you find nothing. Every single one has a "Contact Us for a Quote" button where the pricing should be.

So you fill out a form. Maybe two. Then you wait for the call.

The Discovery Call Dance

The call comes. But they don't give you a number. Instead, they want to schedule a "discovery call" or a "technology assessment." They need to "understand your environment" before they can quote anything.

Sounds reasonable. Except it takes an hour. Then you get a proposal a week later. Then a follow-up call to "walk you through" the proposal because apparently you can't read.

Multiply that by three vendors and you've burned a full workday just trying to answer a basic question: what does IT support actually cost?

This is not an accident. It's a strategy.

Why They Hide Pricing

I spent years working at MSPs. I've been the guy on the other end of that discovery call. I know the playbook because I used to run it.

Hidden pricing exists because it works. Not for you, but for them.

It controls the sales process. If you don't know the price, you can't compare on price. You're stuck evaluating "value" and "fit" and other squishy concepts that favor whoever has the best sales pitch.

It Creates sunk cost.

After you've spent two hours on calls and shared your network documentation, you're invested. Walking away feels like wasting all that effort. They're counting on that.

It enables price discrimination. Different clients get different rates based on what the salesperson thinks they'll pay. That law firm downtown? They're getting quoted higher than the nonprofit with the exact same setup.

It hides complexity. The base rate sounds fine until you see the invoice. "Out of scope" charges. Per-incident fees. After-hours premiums that weren't in the proposal. By the time you notice, you've already signed a three-year contract.

What Business Owners Actually Experience

Talk to anyone who's hired an MSP and you'll hear the same stories.

The monthly bill that started at 2,000 and crept to 3,400 by year two. Nobody can explain what changed.

The "unlimited support" plan that somehow doesn't cover printer issues, phone system questions, or anything involving a vendor. Those are "projects."

The three-year contract with auto-renewal buried in paragraph 47. Miss the 60-day cancellation window? You're locked in for another year.

The account manager who was your best friend during sales and vanished after you signed. Now you talk to a different technician every time, and you spend the first ten minutes of every call explaining your setup.

These aren't outliers. This is the standard MSP playbook. I'm not guessing. I've sat in the meetings where these tactics were taught as best practices.

Why We Publish Our Rates

We publish pricing because we've heard enough of these stories. Small businesses deserve to know what something costs before they commit time to evaluating it.

Starting point is $100 per user per month. That's our Core tier. Plus starts at $140. Complete with compliance support and after-hours coverage starts at $185. All plans have a $1,000 monthly minimum.

There. Now you know.

Also, we're engineers. We'd rather be solving problems than sitting through sales calls. The whole song and dance of proposals and follow-ups and 'just checking in' emails makes us want to close our laptops and go outside. You don't want to haggle. We don't want to haggle. Let's skip it.

If that doesn't fit your budget, we just saved you a discovery call. If it does, we can have a real conversation about what you need instead of playing pricing games.

What If Your Situation Is Unusual?

Then we talk. The published rates cover straightforward office environments. But business isn't always straightforward.

Seasonal operation? We can adjust for that. Only open three days a week? Different support model. Shared workstations instead of assigned users? We'll figure out something that makes sense. Legacy system that requires specialized knowledge? Let's discuss.

The point of publishing baseline pricing isn't to force everyone into a rigid package. It's to give you a starting point so you're not walking into conversations blind.

No Contracts Designed to Trap You

We use one-year service agreements. Simple language, no surprises.

No auto-renewal that triggers unless you send a certified letter 90 days in advance. No early termination penalties designed to make leaving more expensive than staying. No three-year commitments that assume your business won't change.

After the first year, go month-to-month or renew annually. Your choice.

If we're not delivering value, you shouldn't need to hire a lawyer to leave.

The Actual Strategy

Some MSPs spend money on salespeople, marketing agencies, and elaborate proposal templates. They need high margins to cover that overhead, and they need hidden pricing to protect those margins.

We build everything ourselves. Website, marketing, automation, internal systems. No outside agencies, no consultants. That means lower overhead, which means we can publish competitive rates without playing games.

Clients stay when the work speaks for itself. That's the whole strategy.

What Happens Next

If you're shopping for managed IT in Seattle or Tacoma, now you have one data point. Starting at $100-185 per user per month depending on what you need. $1,000 minimum.

You can compare that against the mystery quotes you'll eventually get from other providers. Or you can just call us and skip the runaround.

See our full service plans | Request a quote

RainCity Techworks provides managed IT services for businesses in Seattle, Tacoma, and the Puget Sound region. We publish our pricing because we think you deserve to know what things cost. And we really-really hate the sales process.