Question 1

What does Managed IT actually cost for a 10-person SMB

Accepted Answer

1. Add up what is already running: Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace per user, MFA tool, backup, antivirus or EDR, any firewall or VPN subscription. That is the SaaS floor.
2. Include hardware depreciation. Business laptops typically run 3 years on the books, monitors and docks 5 years. Divide the purchase price by the lifespan to get monthly cost per employee.
3. Estimate support hours. For ten people we see on average 2 to 6 hours a month in practice. Multiply by an SMB hourly rate (on request) or ask for a fixed retainer.
4. Add project work separately (migrations, new office, NIS2 work). That does not belong inside a fixed retainer, otherwise it gets buried in the monthly price.
5. Compare the total against an internal IT FTE (salary, employer contributions, training, holidays). Only then does outsourcing math become visible.

When to bring us in: 
An honest quote for your situation takes us about an hour. Send headcount, main systems and office locations via /contact, we will return a line-itemised breakdown.

Question 2

Microsoft 365 Business Standard versus Premium, what is extra

Accepted Answer

1. Pull current pricing from microsoft.com. Standard and Premium are listed per user per month, excluding VAT, annual commitment.
2. Standard gives Office apps, mailbox, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint. Premium adds Intune (device management), Defender for Business (EDR), Entra ID P1 (conditional access), Microsoft Purview Information Protection (formerly AIP) and Exchange archive.
3. Do the math: buying those security blocks separately, an EDR plus MDM plus conditional access stack often costs more than the Premium delta. For security demands from customers or NIS2, Premium wins quickly.
4. When in doubt with hybrid teams: laptops moving in and out of the office, phones with company data, NDA work? Premium is hard to skip. Three people at fixed desks with no regulatory pressure? Standard is enough.
5. Mixing is allowed. Not everyone needs Premium. Directors and people handling sensitive files on Premium, production and interns on Standard works fine.

When to bring us in: 
A short call helps us advise on the per-role mix. Send your current licence count and security requirements via /contact.

Question 3

Microsoft announces another price hike, what do I do

Accepted Answer

1. Check your commitment type: monthly or annual. Under NCE annual is a 12-month lock and monthly is about 20% more expensive than annual.
2. Pull the announced increase from microsoft.com and calculate the delta for your seat count. Note any new SKU names or plan changes too.
3. Inventory: any unused licences? NCE only lets you cancel at renewal, not mid-term. Cleaning up before renewal saves money immediately.
4. Consider downgrading where possible. Not everyone needs Premium. People who only read mail can sit on Business Basic, those who do not host Teams meetings do not need the most expensive SKU.
5. Plan the action 30 to 60 days before renewal. After that the price is locked for a year at the new rate.

When to bring us in: 
For clients we do the licence review yearly. For a one-off check on your tenant, send us a note via /contact.

Question 4

In-house versus outsourced IT, which is cheaper per year

Accepted Answer

1. Cost out a full-time junior IT employee broadly: gross salary plus around 30% employer contributions plus training plus tooling plus a laptop. That is your in-house baseline.
2. Add incident risk: how many hours of production do you lose per year if one person is sick and is your only IT. A week of lost production is a meaningful amount for most SMBs.
3. Now place an external retainer next to it. A fixed monthly fee is not an FTE but buys scale: an engineer pool, monitoring, knowledge base, vendor leverage.
4. Hybrid usually wins. An internal first line (office manager with IT portfolio) plus an external second and third line for architecture, security and projects. No full FTE, no 100% external.
5. Be honest about growth. Below 5 employees full-external is almost always cheaper. Above 50 an internal FTE starts paying back, provided they are well managed.

When to bring us in: 
On request we sketch a per-line breakdown for your exact situation. /contact with headcount and current IT hours.

Question 5

What does a backup solution cost per user per month

Accepted Answer

1. Inventory what is backed up: just mailbox and OneDrive, or SharePoint, Teams, endpoints and on-prem fileservers too. More surfaces, more cost.
2. Set retention. 30 days is cheap, 1 year is normal for SMB, 7 years for accountants or healthcare costs more. After surface, retention is the biggest cost driver.
3. Compare vendors on listed per-user-per-month price: Veeam Cloud Connect, Acronis, Datto, Synology C2 Backup, MSP360. All publish SMB tiers or via partners.
4. Add storage cost separately. Some tools charge per user with unlimited storage, others per user plus gigabyte. The latter explodes on large mailboxes.
5. Budget for a yearly restore test, not just licence cost. A backup never tested is not a cost, it is an illusion.

When to bring us in: 
For the right mix between vendor, retention and recovery targets, /contact. We map the current backup and check whether the RTO is realistic.

Question 6

Cyber insurance, what does it cost and what is actually covered

Accepted Answer

1. Get at least three quotes via a broker specialised in cyber. Hiscox, Chubb, Allianz, AIG, and NN are active in NL. A single quote is not a market.
2. Read what IS covered: ransomware payment (often with sublimit), business interruption, recovery cost, legal aid, breach notification, customer notification. PR crisis management is sometimes separate.
3. Read what is NOT covered: director liability (separate D&O policy), absolute reputational damage, fraud by own staff, outdated systems that were not patched.
4. Check the per-claim deductible and yearly limit. For SMB a yearly limit around a hundred thousand is standard, but that does not cover ransomware at a manufacturer with daily turnover above ten thousand.
5. Read the security requirements the insurer imposes: MFA, EDR, backup, awareness training. Almost every policy now sets these as preconditions. Not meeting them means no payout.

When to bring us in: 
We help clients fill in the insurer security questionnaire and get the required measures in place technically. /contact with the policy proposal.

Question 7

What is a normal day rate for custom development in NL

Accepted Answer

1. Get three quotes for exactly the same scope. Look at hours estimated and approach, not just rate. 80 hours at a lower rate beats 40 hours at a higher rate in cost.
2. Understand the tiers: freelance dev, small agency 5 to 15, mid-tier 30 to 100, large. Rates step up per tier. For SMB work freelance or small agency usually fits better.
3. Ask whether the rate includes project management, code review, and testing. Sometimes yes, sometimes a PM or tester invoices separately. Avoid surprise lines.
4. Budget a 15 to 30% unexpected-cost margin. No project goes exactly to plan. Add that hedge before approving.
5. Choose fixed price vs T&M depending on scope clarity. For "build exactly this button" fixed price works. For "build a tool that might help our workflow" T&M with a budget cap fits.

When to bring us in: 
For an estimate on what your idea would cost, send a one-pager via /contact. We return a range with assumptions, not a wishful number.

Question 8

What does a new laptop for office work cost in NL

Accepted Answer

1. Define the role. "Browser plus Office plus Teams" is a different machine than "Photoshop, video, AutoCAD". In 2026 pure office is fine on a Core i5 or Ryzen 5 with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD.
2. Under roughly 600 euros you get 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, often a poor screen. Works for two years, then stutters. Cheap on paper, expensive per month.
3. Between 800 and 1300 euros sits the business sweet spot for office work. Lenovo ThinkPad L or T-series, Dell Latitude, HP EliteBook, grade A refurbished. Three to five years lifespan is realistic.
4. Above 1500 euros it is usually Apple territory or high-end Dell XPS. Not needed for pure office. Justified for design, video, or macOS-only software.
5. Always include dock, monitor, keyboard, mouse in the purchase. For office-plus-home that adds 200 to 400 euros quickly. Too often forgotten in a quote.

When to bring us in: 
For volume purchasing we help clients with tiered pricing via Lenovo, Dell, or refurbished partners. /contact with quantity and role profile.

Question 9

Hosting plus domain plus business mail, what is the minimum budget

Accepted Answer

1. Domain: a .nl at a reputable registrar (TransIP, Mijndomein, Versio, Hostnet) is around ten euros a year in 2026. Not the place to skimp.
2. Hosting a simple website: shared hosting at a Dutch provider is normally a few tens of euros per month. For a WordPress site this works fine up to a few thousand visitors a day.
3. Business mail: this is where NOT to economise. Microsoft 365 Business Basic or Google Workspace Business Starter both cost around lunch money per user per month. POP/IMAP via your host looks cheaper but causes deliverability and mobile issues.
4. Do not bundle. A hosting package "with mail included" looks attractive but you share IP reputation with other clients and miss anti-phishing and SSO. Mail at M365 or Workspace, hosting separate, domain separate.
5. Budget yearly SSL, DNS maintenance, and updates. At a serious host it is included; otherwise it is hourly work you forget to budget.

When to bring us in: 
For the setup of domain, mail, and hosting at a new venture, /contact. We do it right in a day rather than cleaning up months later.

Question 10

VoIP, what is a fair price per user per month

Accepted Answer

1. Get quotes from at least three NL providers (Voys, Belxs, RoutIT, KPN, Vodafone). Seat price almost always falls in a narrow band. Voys publishes list prices.
2. Separate seat price from call cost. A cheap seat with expensive ticks can come out higher than a more expensive seat with a generous bundle. Run the math on actual call minutes from last quarter.
3. Count handsets separately. A Yealink T31G is cheap, a T54W with screen is different. Or no handset: softphone on laptop and mobile only saves directly.
4. Ask about integrations. Teams Direct Routing, MS Phone System, or a CRM hook often costs extra. For a sales team with HubSpot the markup is worth it, for a five-person office usually not.
5. Check contract length and cancellation. A yearly contract is normal, three years you should not sign. A provider unwilling to confirm pricing for a year is a warning sign.

When to bring us in: 
For the choice between Teams-only telephony and a true VoIP provider, /contact. We sketch scenarios using your actual call volume.

Question 11

MFA, free Microsoft Authenticator versus paid tools

Accepted Answer

1. Microsoft Authenticator on each phone, linked to M365 accounts: free. This fully covers MFA on Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint. No extra licence needed.
2. To enforce MFA on non-Microsoft apps via Single Sign-On (SSO), you need Entra ID P1. That ships in M365 Business Premium or is buyable separately.
3. For password management separate from MFA, 1Password Business or Bitwarden Business are the standards. List pricing is published on their sites, somewhere between lunch and lunch-plus per user per month.
4. Hardware tokens (YubiKey) are pricier per token but phishing-resistant. Worth it for directors and finance. Rarely for the whole company.
5. Avoid SMS MFA where you can. Better than nothing but vulnerable to SIM swapping. For SMB an authenticator app is the standard, a hardware key for risk roles.

When to bring us in: 
For setting up conditional access and SSO on top of MFA, /contact. We assess which licence tier matches the requirement.

Question 12

What does a NIS2 audit or NIS2 readiness assessment cost

Accepted Answer

1. Decide which flavour you need. NIS2 readiness (gap analysis plus action plan) is not the same as ISO 27001 or NEN 7510 certification. For most SMBs in the essential-supplier scope, readiness is enough.
2. Quote at least three parties. Range varies widely with company size and complexity. A 10-person SMB on an M365 stack is cheaper to assess than a 200-person business with legacy systems.
3. Split the budget in two. First the readiness scan itself (one-off consulting), then remediation (technology, policy, training). The second part is usually larger than the first.
4. Count internal hours. An audit costs the organisation 40 to 80 hours in interviews, documentation, and remediation. That time never appears on the auditor quote.
5. Plan yearly follow-up. NIS2 is not a one-off stamp. Reserve a one or two day rerun each year to catch drift.

When to bring us in: 
We run NIS2 readiness for SMB clients as a fixed scope with line items. /contact with sector and headcount, we return a plan.

Question 13

RTO of 1 hour vs 8 hours, what is the cost difference

Accepted Answer

1. Define your real RTO requirement first. Not what you would want, but what business downtime cost dictates. A wholesaler with daily turnover above ten thousand euros has a different RTO need than a four-person design studio.
2. Daily backup plus restore is the cheapest tier. RTO lands at 4 to 24 hours depending on data volume. Per surface very affordable.
3. Continuous replication of VMs or fileservers brings RTO to a few hours. Veeam Cloud Connect, Datto, or Azure Site Recovery sits noticeably above daily backup in cost.
4. Hot failover (near-instant RTO, sub-minute RPO) is enterprise-grade cost. Unnecessary for most SMBs, sometimes justified for manufacturers with logistics.
5. Always count the downtime cost without a solution. An 8-hour RTO sounds acceptable until you calculate the 8 hours in staff cost, missed orders, and SLA breach to customers.

When to bring us in: 
For choosing the right RTO/RPO tier at the right price, /contact. We outline three scenarios with actual line items.

Question 14

Hardware lease vs buy, where does SMB break-even sit

Accepted Answer

1. Convert purchase to monthly cost over the depreciation term (commercial term often 3 years; the NL tax minimum for inventory including laptops is typically 5 years at 20% per year, check with your accountant). A 1200-euro laptop on a 3-year straight-line is roughly 33 euros per month.
2. Get a lease quote for the exact same model. Operational lease bundles service, warranty, and trade-in, which explains the higher monthly price.
3. Decide your refresh interval. Refreshing every 3 years works well with lease. "Until it dies" is almost always cheaper bought, because lease ends force replacement.
4. Consider tax impact. Lease is fully an operating expense. Purchase is a capital expense you depreciate. For a growing business with variable profit this affects both cash flow and corporate tax.
5. Count failure risk. Buying makes you responsible after warranty. Leasing makes the lessor swap units. For SMB without spare hardware that is a real argument.

When to bring us in: 
We work the two models for your fleet size and refresh cadence. /contact with current park and desired cycle.

Question 15

What does IT-onboarding a new employee cost

Accepted Answer

1. Hardware: laptop, dock, monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset. For an office workstation between 1100 and 1800 euros all-in. For a hybrid worker with a dual-monitor home setup it is more.
2. Licences: M365 Business Standard or Premium, possibly CRM, design tools, or industry software. Adds up to a few tens of euros per month easily.
3. Accounts and access: provisioning M365, AD rights, mailbox, Teams, drive permissions, VPN, password manager invite, hardware key registration. In practice this is a half to full day of IT work per new hire.
4. Telephony: VoIP extension, possibly a second SIM or softphone licence. Separate from any mobile phone reimbursement.
5. Budget a first-week helpdesk buffer. New hire equals questions. Plan 2 to 4 hours extra support in the first fortnight. Always happens, rarely budgeted.

When to bring us in: 
For clients we run onboarding as a fixed per-person package. /contact if you want this predictable.

Question 16

What does IT-offboarding a leaving employee cost

Accepted Answer

1. Stop or reassign licences. Each forgotten licence keeps billing monthly until someone cancels. Budget a few tens of euros wasted per missed seat per month.
2. Mailbox conversion. Converting a leaver mailbox to shared costs no licence. Keeping it active does cost a licence. Standard task, often forgotten.
3. Collect or resell hardware. Budget an hour of logistics plus a wipe. Reselling refurbished generates some return but also time.
4. Revoke access cleanly. Disable AD, unlink MFA tokens, revoke password manager access, recover any hardware key. Do not forget external SaaS where they logged in via SSO.
5. Documentation and handover. What is in their OneDrive, which passwords in their vault, which shared inboxes did they follow. Not IT work, but someone has to do it before the chair is empty.

When to bring us in: 
We set up an offboarding checklist once for your organisation and run it routinely per leaver after that. /contact.

Question 17

What does Copilot for M365 actually cost per month

Accepted Answer

1. Pull the list price from microsoft.com. It applies per user per month on top of M365 Business Standard or Premium.
2. Decide who will actually use it. Anyone for whom the tool does not save time is waste. Start with directors, sales, marketing, or a role profile with heavy writing or analysis.
3. Run a 2 or 3 month pilot for 5 to 10 people. After that you can measure whether hours saved track with licence cost. Anecdotal "kind of useful" is not ROI.
4. Compare with cheaper alternatives. ChatGPT Team or Plus, Claude Pro, or Gemini deliver most of the text-AI for less money, without M365 grounding (Outlook, Teams, SharePoint context).
5. Count training time. Without coaching most users stick at 30% of Copilot potential. Plan at least an hour of training plus a handout per user.

When to bring us in: 
For a Copilot pilot with measurable goals we draft a plan. /contact with intended user count and role profiles.

Question 18

Which IT costs do people often miss in their yearly budget

Accepted Answer

1. Shadow IT. Tools departments buy themselves on a credit card (Notion, Calendly, a design tool, an AI tool). Twice a year do a credit card export filtered on SaaS. Surprising.
2. Mobile subscriptions. Often booked via HR or facilities, not IT. Add them in to see real workstation cost.
3. Auto-renewals on tools nobody uses anymore. Adobe licence of a departed designer, a SaaS account of a former intern. Audit yearly.
4. IT hours in other departments. The account manager who resets a colleague password. The office manager installing a laptop. Count those hours as IT time.
5. Cloud overruns. AWS, Azure, or a SaaS with API tokens can spike unexpectedly. Set budget alerts on every cloud account so it shows up monthly.

When to bring us in: 
We run a hidden-cost audit as a one-off project. /contact with current tooling state.

Question 19

What percentage of revenue should IT be

Accepted Answer

1. Pull last year IT spend from the GL (hardware, SaaS, telecom, external IT hours, security, audit). Express the total as a percentage of revenue.
2. Benchmark within your sector. A logistics SMB with heavy ERP differs from a design studio with no server. NL trade bodies (FME, INretail, MKB-Nederland) publish ratios periodically.
3. Split into fixed and project. Fixed (licences, depreciation, retainer) should be a predictable line. Project (migration, audit, new branch) belongs separately.
4. Be careful with external benchmarks. Gartner numbers reflect enterprise. SMB in NL rarely sits at that enterprise share.
5. Ask the inverse question. "What investment would lift productivity per employee by 5%". That drives better decisions than a fixed percentage.

When to bring us in: 
For a sanity check on current IT spend and advice on where to cut or invest, /contact with last year cost overview.

Question 20

What does a proper workstation cost on top of the laptop

Accepted Answer

1. Dock: USB-C dock with enough ports and charging is 100 to 250 euros. Dell, Lenovo, Caldigit are the safe brands. Avoid ultra-cheap generic docks under heavy use.
2. Monitor: 27 inch with USB-C charging runs 250 to 500 euros for a solid one. For two screens count twice. An ultrawide replaces two monitors at roughly the price of two combined.
3. Keyboard and mouse: 60 to 200 euros total. Logitech MX or equivalent lasts; generic sets wear out after a year.
4. Headset: for Teams or VoIP work, 80 to 200 euros for a decent USB headset (Jabra Evolve, Poly Voyager). Cheaper exists, generates audio complaints.
5. Webcam: laptop cameras are mostly fine in 2026. An external Logitech or Poly is only required for meeting-room setups, unnecessary for solo work.

When to bring us in: 
For volume purchasing we arrange tiered pricing via Lenovo or Dell. /contact with desk count and typing vs meeting role profile.

Question 21

What does a decent firewall for an SMB office cost

Accepted Answer

1. Decide the scale. For an office up to 25 people an entry-business firewall (Fortinet 40F, Sophos XGS 87, Watchguard T20) is enough. For 25 to 100, a tier higher. Beyond that you need serious hardware.
2. Hardware purchase: for SMB-tier units this is roughly between a few hundred and a thousand euros one-off. Not the place for generic consumer gear.
3. Yearly licence: here sits the real cost. Anti-malware, web filtering, IPS, VPN licences add up. Often the same order of magnitude as the box, but recurring.
4. Implementation and config: between 4 and 12 hours of external work depending on VLANs, VPN, and rules. Do not skip this in the quote.
5. Maintenance. Firmware updates, rule review, log walking are about an hour a month at a competent provider. Either inside a retainer or invoiced separately.

When to bring us in: 
For a new firewall with the right licence mix and config we help clients in a day. /contact with desk count, guest wifi requirement, and VPN need.

Question 22

What does business fiber cost per month and is it needed

Accepted Answer

1. Compare consumer fiber (KPN, Odido, Ziggo) with business fiber (KPN ONE, Eurofiber, Open Dutch Fiber resellers). The difference is install requirements, SLA, and service window.
2. An SLA with 4-hour response for a manufacturer is not a luxury. Consumer fiber says an outage on Saturday evening is fixed "Monday between 8 and 5". Count that downtime.
3. Symmetric versus asymmetric. For uploading backups, hosting video calls, or remote work, symmetric (equal up/down) is a real advantage.
4. Static IP or multiple IPs. For VPN setup, IP-whitelisting at customers, or mail servers you need static IP. Consumer fiber often gives dynamic, business gives static by default.
5. Expect 12 or 36 month contracts. 36 lowers price but locks you in. For a growing business prefer 12.

When to bring us in: 
To choose between providers and the right circuit for your office, /contact with address and usage scenario.

Question 23

EDR versus classic antivirus, is the price gap worth it

Accepted Answer

1. Classic antivirus (Windows Defender built-in, or a free tier) catches known malware. For a sole trader doing only Office work, that is a defensible floor.
2. EDR (CrowdStrike Falcon Go, SentinelOne, Microsoft Defender for Business, Sophos Intercept X) catches suspicious behaviour. List price runs from a few euros per endpoint per month to tens for enterprise tiers.
3. For SMB with customer data or NIS2 scope, EDR is practically required. Insurers ask for it routinely. Antivirus-only no longer meets most policy conditions in 2026.
4. Microsoft Defender for Business is included free in M365 Business Premium. If you already have Premium, you have effectively already taken the EDR step. Do not undervalue that.
5. Add response cost. An EDR tool with nobody reading alerts is half the job. Either do it yourself, buy an MDR service on top, or take an MSP retainer that includes it.

When to bring us in: 
For choosing between Defender for Business included, standalone EDR, or full MDR, /contact with current tenant and customer-sensitivity profile.

Question 24

What does a serious SMB website build cost

Accepted Answer

1. Template plus DIY (Wix, Squarespace, WordPress with theme): a few hundred to a thousand euros one-off plus hosting. Fine for a business-card site. Not for lead generation or conversion work.
2. WordPress by a freelancer or small agency: one to five thousand euros depending on page count and design demands. Includes one-off design and build, excludes hosting and maintenance.
3. Webflow or headless build by a design agency: five to fifteen thousand euros for an SMB site. Top of range for animations, custom CMS fields, multilanguage.
4. Always ask what IS and IS NOT in the price. Domain, hosting, SSL, yearly maintenance, content migration, photography, copy, SEO basics, analytics. A quote without these is a half quote.
5. Budget yearly maintenance separately. Between 50 and 200 euros per month is normal for backups, updates, security, small copy tweaks. No maintenance is not an option once a site is live.

When to bring us in: 
For an honest quote at your scope (page count, languages, integrations), /contact with current site or a one-pager.

Question 25

What does a NAS for a 10-person team with backup cost

Accepted Answer

1. Unit: a Synology or QNAP for 4 to 6 disks runs between 600 and 1500 euros in 2026 depending on CPU, RAM, and bays. For ten users in a fileserver role a 4-bay is often enough.
2. Disks: NAS drives (WD Red, Seagate IronWolf) are 80 to 200 euros each by capacity. Plan 4 plus 1 spare. Minimum 3 for RAID 5, 4 for SHR-2 (in practice for SMB data you plan more generously, not on the minimum).
3. UPS: a NAS without UPS is a NAS that corrupts during a power blip. Between 100 and 300 euros for a decent APC or CyberPower.
4. Off-site backup: the NAS sits in your office. Fire or burglary ends it. Synology Hyper Backup to C2, a second NAS at someone home, or a cloud backup. Not optional.
5. Maintenance: firmware updates, RAID monitoring, and a yearly restore test. Budget an hour or two per quarter if you DIY, or fold into a retainer.

When to bring us in: 
For choosing between Synology, QNAP, or UGREEN and the right backup strategy around it, /contact with data volume and backup requirements.

Question 26

What does security awareness training cost and how often

Accepted Answer

1. Tools: KnowBe4, Phished.io, SoSafe, or Hoxhunt. List price is public or via partners. Order of magnitude is a few euros per user per month for SMB tier.
2. Format: monthly phishing simulation plus a short clip, plus a yearly deeper incident scenario. Monthly because once-yearly is forgotten in weeks.
3. Count internal hours. An awareness platform without someone reviewing campaigns is a missed opportunity. An hour a month for analysis and a short internal recap is realistic.
4. Insurers ask for it now. The policy questionnaire literally lists "do you run yearly awareness training". A no is a red flag at premium time.
5. Start with a baseline measurement. Send a phishing simulation in month 1 without warning. The click rate is your starting point. Then measure if it drops over a year.

When to bring us in: 
We deploy awareness platforms for clients and analyse campaign results. /contact with headcount and sector.

Question 27

What does MDM via Intune or an alternative cost

Accepted Answer

1. Have M365 Business Premium? Intune is already included. No extra licence for Windows, Android, and iOS devices. Just implementation work.
2. No Premium? Buy Intune separately as Microsoft Intune Plan 1, list price on microsoft.com. Or as part of EMS E3.
3. Non-Microsoft alternatives: Jamf for Apple-only fleets, Kandji, Mosyle, Hexnode. Their list prices sit in the same order as standalone Intune, sometimes higher.
4. Budget implementation time. Setting up an Intune tenant properly with device policies, app deployment, and security baselines is roughly 1 to 3 days for a specialist. Do not skip.
5. Maintenance: pushing app updates, enrolling new hires, wiping leavers. For 10 to 30 devices this is about an hour a month. Above that it scales linearly.

When to bring us in: 
For the right MDM tool for your Windows, macOS, and mobile mix, /contact with device count and current licence state.

Question 28

Fixed retainer or pay-per-hour, which is cheaper for SMB

Accepted Answer

1. Look back at last year. How many hours of external IT work did you actually buy. Multiply by hourly rate. That is your real cost on the per-hour model.
2. Compare with a retainer quote. A fixed monthly fee buys scale: engineer pool, monitoring, knowledge base. At the same hour usage retainer often lands lower than ad-hoc.
3. Count risk. On per-hour an outage is two days of work at acute rates, often after-hours with surcharge. On retainer that response is in-scope.
4. Maintenance is predictable, incidents are not. A retainer covers the predictable and absorbs part of the unpredictable. Per-hour covers neither proactively.
5. The real argument is predictability. For management an identical IT bill each month is easier than something different every month. Cashflow planning wins there.

When to bring us in: 
For a comparison of retainer cost against your current pay-per-hour practice, /contact.

Question 29

How do I compare IT quotes fairly between vendors

Accepted Answer

1. Build your own comparison table with line items: licences (which), hardware (which models), retainer (hours range, response time), project work (separate or included), maintenance (firmware, backup, security updates).
2. Ask each vendor to map their quote to YOUR table. If they refuse, you know they want their layout to stay incomparable.
3. Stress-test the assumptions. "10 employees, 1 office, M365 Business Premium" is clear. "Management of your IT environment" is not. Force specifics.
4. Read the fine print. Cancellation, mid-contract price changes, escalation route, after-hours surcharges, exit clauses (data and credentials portability). The real difference between salesman and partner is here.
5. Ask for references in similar customers. A vendor who can name three in your sector is a serious signal. One who cannot is also a signal.

When to bring us in: 
For a second opinion on a live IT quote we will review it. /contact with the quote (with confidential lines redacted) and your business context.

Question 30

My AWS, Azure or GCP bill is suddenly running away

Accepted Answer

1. Open Cost Explorer (AWS), Cost Management (Azure) or Billing Reports (GCP) immediately. Sort by service, then by resource. The top 3 almost always explains the problem.
2. Common culprits: NAT Gateway running forever, an S3 bucket hit by a crawler per request, a test VM nobody shut down, or a SaaS with API tokens exploding.
3. Set a budget alert on the account right now. An email when spend crosses X% of target is not a solution but prevents repeat.
4. Schedule non-prod resources to power down outside office hours. A test VM that only runs daytime is immediately 60% cheaper.
5. When in doubt ask vendor support for analysis help. On large spend spikes AWS, Azure and GCP sometimes return a (partial) credit on a one-off mistake, if reported quickly.

When to bring us in: 
For structural cost reduction (reserved instances, right-sizing, region choice, tag strategy) we help clients in a cloud cost review. /contact.

Question 31

What is a fair IT budget for a freelancer in year 1

Accepted Answer

1. One-off: laptop (refurbished business or new mid-tier), monitor, dock, keyboard, mouse, headset. Total ranges 1000 to 2000 euros depending on demands.
2. Monthly: domain (few euros), business mail (M365 Business Basic or Workspace Starter), backup (M365 or third party), password manager (Bitwarden Business or 1Password), MFA (free app).
3. Do not forget: bookkeeping package (Moneybird, e-Boekhouden, MoneyMonk, Yuki) depending on VAT workload and bank connection.
4. Do not: take an "all-in" hosting package with mail. Mail separately at M365 or Workspace, hosting separately, domain separately. Looks pricier, much better long term.
5. Do not: start without backup. An external disk plus a cloud backup together cost a few tens per month. Losing two years of work costs more.

When to bring us in: 
For a complete year-1 IT setup as a freelancer, /contact. We do it right in half a day instead of cleaning up later.

Question 32

AWS bill tripled in a month, nothing changed deliberately

Accepted Answer

1. Open Cost Explorer and group by Service and Usage Type. "DataTransfer-Out-Bytes" or "NatGateway-Bytes" usually stands out.
2. Walk the VPC flows. A NAT Gateway suddenly pushing volume points at a new service or a retry loop in a Lambda.
3. Check if a third party started a new bulk export (analytics, backup tool, AI training job).
4. Enable Cost Anomaly Detection and set a budget alert. AWS does not warn on invoices by default.

When to bring us in: 
On a multi-thousand-euro shock in days, open a support ticket. AWS sometimes grants credits for clearly unintended usage, but not automatically and not always.

Question 33

Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, what does my SMB actually need?

Accepted Answer

1. List the E5 features you would actually use. Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 and advanced audit logs are the two SMBs most often genuinely want.
2. Compare E3 + Defender for Endpoint P2 add-on price with E5 price (Microsoft publishes both; numbers vary by region and currency).
3. Under 300 staff, also compare with Business Premium plus targeted add-ons. Below that threshold, Business Premium is usually meaningfully cheaper than Enterprise.
4. Do not count sticker price only: do you need Power BI Pro for everyone or only a handful? For a handful, buy standalone Pro on E3.

When to bring us in: 
Compliance requirements (NIS2, ISO 27001, NEN 7510) can make specific E5 modules feel obligatory. We help scope before you sign a multi-year contract.

Question 34

Vendor offers a 36-month contract with discount versus 12-month without

Accepted Answer

1. Read the clauses on cancellation, price changes and user flexibility. Some 36-month contracts allow annual price hikes despite the "fixed" term.
2. Compute break-even. If the discount is for example 15%, how many months must the tool stay to beat 12-month flexibility? Doubt the tool will be in your stack in 18 months: pick 12.
3. Negotiate an exit or swap clause. Many vendors accept a mid-term move to a higher tier when you threaten to cancel.
4. Record the end date in a shared calendar with a 90-day pre-alert, otherwise it rolls over silently on the old terms.

When to bring us in: 
On contracts above meaningful annual value or with use-or-lose clauses: have procurement or an external advisor read along. Standard templates are usually drafted in the vendor favour.

Question 35

What is a reasonable IT budget per employee per month for an SMB?

Accepted Answer

1. Count per employee: M365 or Google Workspace license, security layer (EDR plus MFA), backup, MDM, and a share of connectivity and firewall.
2. Add hardware depreciation over 3 or 4 years, so laptop plus dock plus monitor divided by lifetime in months.
3. Add a management layer, whether that is a retainer with an external partner or an internal IT person divided by headcount.
4. Plan a buffer for incidents, projects and upgrades, in our experience 10 to 20 percent on top of the run-rate.

When to bring us in: 
If you are unsure your per-employee budget fits your sector and risk profile, we are happy to take a quick look.

Question 36

How do I budget IT when I do not know if we will be 5 or 25 people this year?

Accepted Answer

1. Split the budget into fixed (office, base firewall, domain, hosting) and variable per employee (licenses, laptop, management).
2. Avoid 36-month license commits for total capacity, choose monthly or yearly with room to grow.
3. Reserve an onboarding pot per new hire, do not start billing only when the first person walks in.
4. Review every quarter, not yearly, because during growth half of your estimate is stale within three months.

When to bring us in: 
If you have a growth path but do not know what to keep flexible versus locking in, we can model it for you.

Question 37

When is per-user pricing more sensible than flat-rate, or vice versa?

Accepted Answer

1. Count active users and seasonal peaks, a team that halves in winter does not want a flat-rate set for the summer maximum.
2. For licenses like M365 per-user is almost always clear, for management or helpdesk flat-rate can be cheaper if you have few tickets.
3. On flat-rate, always ask what is in scope and what is excluded, especially project work, after-hours and hardware.
4. Run both models over 24 months with realistic growth, not just the best-case scenario.

When to bring us in: 
If you have two quotes with different models on the table, we can line them up in the same units.

Question 38

What costs come on top of Microsoft 365 besides the licenses?

Accepted Answer

1. Plan for an external party to set up and harden, M365 is configurable to be secure but is not secure by default.
2. Add a backup solution, Microsoft retention policy is not a backup per their own terms.
3. Account for add-ons: Defender for mail filtering, Intune for management, Teams Phone for calling, sometimes in Premium but not Standard.
4. Do not forget migration costs if you come from Google or another mail provider, and awareness training you will still need afterwards.

When to bring us in: 
If you want clarity on hidden M365 cost lines, we can do a quick scan on your tenant.

Question 39

What does a business laptop really cost over its full lifetime, not just purchase?

Accepted Answer

1. Purchase plus extended warranty or accidental damage protection adds more for business models than consumer laptops.
2. Management per month: MDM, EDR, patching, monitoring, a fixed amount per device until you trade it in.
3. Plan for a few incidents over three years, screen replacement, battery, or a reinstall after corruption.
4. Include retirement: data wipe, certified destruction or trade-in value, plus transport to a processor if needed.

When to bring us in: 
If you want a TCO table for your laptop fleet, we can fill in an honest version based on your current models.

Question 40

Is SaaS really cheaper than running your own server, and when not?

Accepted Answer

1. Calculate over 5 years including management, not just 1 year of license versus purchase.
2. For stable teams with basic office workloads, SaaS almost always wins on flexibility and uptime risk.
3. For specific workloads (CAD licenses, ERP with large databases, video archives) own hardware can still be cheaper if you already have management.
4. Account for the transition: data migration, reintegration, training, and possibly double costs during migration.

When to bring us in: 
If you are torn between staying or switching, we can run the numbers with you without bias on the outcome.

Question 41

Zero trust sounds expensive, is it worth it for an SMB?

Accepted Answer

1. Start with MFA for everyone, conditional access on sensitive apps, and device compliance via Intune.
2. Add network segmentation and VPN replacement only when you genuinely need location-independent work.
3. Avoid expensive all-in-one zero trust platforms until you have the basics, otherwise you buy things that overlap with M365.
4. The biggest win is not tooling but policy: who gets access where and how you verify it.

When to bring us in: 
If you want an honest cost overview of zero trust steps that make sense for your situation, we can map it out.

Question 42

My cloud bill creeps up 5 or 10 percent every month, nobody knows why.

Accepted Answer

1. Take your last three monthly invoices and compare the top 5 line items, not the totals.
2. Look for storage that never shrinks: old snapshots, dev databases, log retention without limits.
3. Check VMs and containers sitting idle, especially test environments nobody shuts down, and overprovisioned database instances.
4. Set billing alerts and tags on everything, so a new department or project does not silently start costing money.

When to bring us in: 
If you want a cost review of your AWS, Azure or GCP without us shutting anything down without approval, we can dig in.

Question 43

Buy everything from one vendor or best tool per area, which is cheaper?

Accepted Answer

1. Distinguish between commodity (mail, file storage) and where the actual work happens (CRM, ERP, project tools).
2. For commodity a bundle is usually fine, for core systems you want the best tool and full ownership.
3. Ask about exit costs and data export options before signing, a bundle without a clean exit is a lock-in gift.
4. Best-of-breed costs more in integration and management, count that in before you pretend the math wins.

When to bring us in: 
If you are torn between an all-in bundle and separate best-of-breed tools, we can walk through what fits your scale per area.

Question 44

Pay external IT per incident or sign a fixed contract?

Accepted Answer

1. Count last year's incidents, including small ones: password resets, printer issues, integrations that broke.
2. Calculate an hourly rate plus response-time buffer on those incidents, that is your per-incident annual cost.
3. Compare that to a retainer that includes an SLA and proactive management, not just reactive firefighting.
4. Below a few incidents per month per-incident may work, above that or under compliance pressure a retainer almost always wins.

When to bring us in: 
If you want to know which model fits your incident history, we can run the math against your actual tickets.

Question 45

Should I budget for GDPR fines as a cost line?

Accepted Answer

1. The Dutch DPA publishes its fine decisions, see what they have done in your sector, not generic maxima.
2. Do not only count the fine, add forensic investigation, customer notification, legal advice and reputation damage.
3. Do not build a fine pot, build prevention: GDPR register, breach procedure, awareness, data minimization and encryption.
4. For a real risk number you need a DPIA on your highest-risk processes, not a generic percentage.

When to bring us in: 
If you want an honest risk estimate for your sector without the standard fear stories, we can fill it in together.

Question 46

Which IT costs are truly one-off and which return every year?

Accepted Answer

1. One-off: hardware purchase, migration, first setup of M365 or Google, audit project, training at start.
2. Recurring: licenses, management hours, backup, security tools, awareness, hosting, domain, mobile connectivity.
3. Periodic (not one-off, not monthly): hardware replacement every 3 or 4 years, audit every 1 or 2 years, revised NIS2 step when law shifts.
4. Ask every quote to break out into these three columns, then you immediately see what you forget or what doubles up.

When to bring us in: 
If you get a quote that puts everything on one line, we can deconstruct it for you.

Question 47

Refurbished laptops, when is that smart and when false economy?

Accepted Answer

1. Pick a vendor that offers a serious warranty, not a second-hand marketplace purchase for business use.
2. Refurbished is strong for standby laptops, training units, or admin roles where performance is not a bottleneck.
3. Plan a shorter depreciation period (1 or 2 years) and schedule replacement sooner than new.
4. Check battery cycle count and whether the model is still supported by the manufacturer for security updates, otherwise the savings vanish.

When to bring us in: 
If you want to know which roles fit refurbished at your company, we can advise per profile.

Question 48

How do I avoid buying software we already have or do not use?

Accepted Answer

1. Pull your M365 or Google admin reports and check what is actively used versus paid for.
2. Ask each team which subscriptions they personally took out for work, those are often surprising duplicates.
3. Check current licenses for features the new package claims to add, sometimes they are already included.
4. Look at bundles: M365 Premium already contains Defender, Intune and MFA tools you would otherwise buy separately.

When to bring us in: 
If you want an audit of your software stack to see where you pay twice, we can do that in a few hours.

Question 49

What do I get for security with a small budget per employee per month?

Accepted Answer

1. Start with MFA on all accounts, usually free with M365 or Google and delivers the largest risk reduction.
2. Add a decent EDR per device, often included in M365 Business Premium or through an external SOC license.
3. Automate patch management via Intune or an alternative, unpatched endpoints are the largest entry route.
4. Awareness training, even a short yearly one, costs little and often delivers more impact than an expensive firewall on the top shelf.

When to bring us in: 
If you want a security stack that fits your budget and risk, we will help compose it without overdoing it.

Question 50

How do I know if I have too many or too expensive licenses?

Accepted Answer

1. Pull the active user list and compare it to payroll, ex-employees with active licenses are pure waste.
2. Per user: check which features they actually used in the last 90 days, not what they theoretically could.
3. For people who only need mail and calendar, a lighter license can be enough.
4. Company add-ons like Power BI Pro or Project: count active users, not seats purchased.

When to bring us in: 
If you want a license cleanup on your tenant without doing the digging yourself, we can pick it up quickly.

Question 51

Why does .nl domain pricing differ so much between providers?

Accepted Answer

1. Compare renewal pricing, not the first-year promo, that is where the real difference sits.
2. Check whether DNS management, DNSSEC, mail forwarding and redirects are included by default or come back as upsells.
3. A cheap registrar without 24-hour support is expensive the moment your domain is unreachable.
4. For business use: pick a registrar that handles DNS failover and transfer lock cleanly, not just the lowest price.

When to bring us in: 
If you are torn between registrars or want to move your domain without downtime, we can guide the transfer.

Question 52

ChatGPT Plus, Team or Enterprise, what fits our SMB?

Accepted Answer

1. Plus per account only makes sense if 1 or 2 people use it and you do not need a shared workspace.
2. Team adds admin panel, shared workspace and the default promise that your input is not used for training.
3. Enterprise is interesting under audit requirements, SSO, SCIM, longer context and more admin control, usually for larger teams or strict sector work.
4. Also consider Microsoft Copilot if you are deep in M365, it can cover similar work from Word and Outlook.

When to bring us in: 
If you want to know whether Team is enough or Enterprise is required for your compliance, we can match it to your risk profile.

Question 53

What does running an on-prem server really cost versus the same workload in the cloud?

Accepted Answer

1. Beyond purchase, count: 24/7 power, cooling, UPS, replacement parts and an OS plus any SQL or CAL licenses.
2. Include management hours for patches, monitoring and troubleshooting, even if your own IT person does it 'on the side'.
3. On hardware failure you take downtime or you build redundancy, both add cost in time or money.
4. Compare that to a cloud VM with similar specs over 5 years including backup and management, then you see the real comparison.

When to bring us in: 
If you want an honest comparison for your specific workload, we can run it for you.

Question 54

Which IT costs can I deduct as a Dutch freelancer?

Accepted Answer

1. Software subscriptions, hosting and domain are standard deductible plus VAT-reclaimable when used for business.
2. Hardware above a threshold amount is depreciated over 3 or 5 years, handled in your bookkeeping software.
3. For mixed private-business use (e.g. mobile, home internet) you deduct the business share, not 100 percent.
4. If in doubt ask your accountant, rules around work-cost scheme and investment deduction change and are not the same for every freelancer.

When to bring us in: 
If you want to know whether a specific purchase is smart around year-end, we can think along plus involve your accountant.

Question 55

Do you have a budget template for IT from a Dutch SMB perspective?

Accepted Answer

1. Categories: licenses, hardware, management, security, connectivity, training, projects, buffer. Per row: monthly, yearly, owner.
2. Per category split fixed and variable-per-employee, so growth reflects automatically.
3. Add a column for upcoming changes (planned contract shifts, price hikes, end-of-license dates).
4. Schedule a 30-minute quarterly review where you discuss deltas and surprises, that keeps it alive.

When to bring us in: 
If you want a filled example for your scale and sector, we are happy to share a workable base.

Question 56

Domain, hosting and mail at one provider or split them up?

Accepted Answer

1. Keep your domain at a serious registrar with DNS management, that is your center: everything points to it.
2. Run mail separately at Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, even if hosting stays with your hosting party, this avoids downtime during moves.
3. Pick hosting based on what your site needs, not what the mail provider throws in.
4. Avoid setups where mail, domain and hosting sit in a fixed bundle without DNS control, then you are stuck.

When to bring us in: 
If you want to untangle your setup without losing mail, we can migrate it step by step.

Question 57

Running my own mail server, is that not much cheaper than M365 or Google?

Accepted Answer

1. Plan time for anti-spam, blocklist monitoring and keeping SPF, DKIM and DMARC clean continuously.
2. Plan a second server or fallback for uptime, otherwise you lose mail the moment the box hiccups.
3. Count management hours for patches, security and monitoring, even if you do it yourself, that is opportunity cost.
4. Compare that to an M365 or Google Workspace subscription per user per month, those few euros buy you stability.

When to bring us in: 
If you really doubt between self-hosting mail for an SMB, we can run the scenarios honestly for you.

Question 58

What does migrating from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace, or vice versa, cost?

Accepted Answer

1. Plan a full migration project: mail archive, calendar, contacts, shared files, and revised integrations with other apps.
2. Include awareness and training, since shortcuts and habits differ, productivity dips for 1 to 3 weeks.
3. Keep parallel licenses during cutover, that means paying double for a few weeks to avoid data loss.
4. Do not underestimate integrations: CRM connectors, e-signatures, scanners and ERP links can break.

When to bring us in: 
If you are considering a switch for budget reasons, we can first lay the real saving and migration cost side by side.

Question 59

My vendor says I need to upgrade again, can I skip this cycle?

Accepted Answer

1. Check how long your current version is supported for security updates, that is your hard deadline.
2. Skipping one version is usually manageable, provided the later A-to-C upgrade is still supported.
3. Plan for higher migration costs on a big jump: more changes, more training, more integrations to re-fit.
4. Schedule upgrades in a quiet season and not right before your busiest month or an audit, the stress compounds.

When to bring us in: 
If you want to know whether an upgrade fits your planning now or can safely wait, we can look at your version and support status.

IT costs and budgeting