Why Block Hours Almost Always Cost You More Than a Plan

Block-hour IT packages are a popular middle ground: prepay for 25, 50, or 100 hours of support and burn them down over the year. The pitch sounds reasonable. The math, in practice, almost always tilts toward a Managed plan instead. This post explains why.

The block-hour pitch

A vendor sells you a block of, say, 50 hours at a discount off their hourly rate. Say that works out to $140 an hour, so $7,000 prepaid. You can pull from that block when you need work.

We don’t sell blocks. Support is a monthly plan, and projects get a flat-rate quote. But plenty of shops around here still buy blocks, so here is how the math works.

It feels prudent. It looks cheaper than a Managed plan in the spreadsheet. It usually isn’t.

Why the math turns

1. The work that doesn’t get billed because it doesn’t fit

Block hours are billed in 15-minute or 30-minute increments. Real IT work is full of 3-minute interruptions: “is the WiFi down?” “did you get my email?” “I think my laptop is acting weird.” On a block, those calls either:

• Get billed at minimums and burn the block fast (10 small interruptions × 15min = 2.5 hours)
• Get ignored or deferred until the user gives up

Neither is good. On a Managed plan with unlimited remote support, the 3-minute interruptions are free. We answer them, fix them, move on. Your block stays for actual project work.

2. The “block customer” support tier

Most MSPs prioritize plan customers in the queue. A block customer’s “urgent” sits behind the plan customers’ “urgent.”

This isn’t malicious. It’s how multi-tier support has always worked. But it means a block customer’s response time is structurally worse than a plan customer’s, even if the printed hourly rate is the same.

3. What the block doesn’t include

A typical block-hour engagement does NOT include:

• 24/7 monitoring. That’s a separate subscription on top.
• Endpoint protection licensing. Separate cost per seat.
• Patch management tooling. The labor to deploy patches uses the block; the tool is separate.
• Documentation maintenance. When you call about something, the engineer on the phone doesn’t have your environment in front of them; they’re rebuilding it from your description, which uses the block faster.
• Vendor management. Every minute on hold with AT&T burns the block.
• Reporting. No quarterly executive summary. No insight into where the hours went.

A Managed plan bundles most of these. The block customer pays for them à la carte.

4. The end-of-year scramble

Block hours typically expire 12 months from purchase. If you bought 50 and used 38, you have either:

• 12 hours of “free” work in November-December that you scramble to find a use for (and rarely use well)
• A vendor pushing you to renew the block before it expires, which incentivizes them to find work to fill it

Either way, the actual value of the unused hours often goes to zero.

Real numbers for a 10-person office

Here’s the math we walk customers through. A 10-person office with one server, normal usage:

Block hour scenario (50 hrs/year at a $140/hr block rate):

• Block of 50 hours: $7,000
• RMM monitoring (15 endpoints × $5): $900/year
• Endpoint protection (15 × $7): $1,260/year
• Backup (server + 10 endpoints): $1,800/year
• Email backup (10 users × $5/mo): $600/year
• Patch management tooling: $1,200/year
• Slow-fix labor for à la carte vendor calls: estimated 20 extra block hours = $2,800

Year-one block total: ~$15,560, and once the block runs out you pay the next hours at full rate.

Our Support plan (11 computers × $99):

• $1,089/month × 12 = $13,068/year
• Includes: unlimited remote support, monitoring, patching, managed antivirus
• On-site visits are $100 an hour, 1-hour minimum. No drive charge in Lubbock; outside Lubbock, $1 a mile round trip

Our Office plan (10 people × $249):

• $2,490/month × 12 = $29,880/year
• Includes everything in Support, plus our security tools, every computer backed up and kept for 1 year, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 Business Standard, a desk phone that rings for each person, network and firewall management, and on-site service in our service area

On paper Office costs more than the block, and Support lands close to it. The difference is what stops showing up on other bills. There is no meter on remote support, so the overrun hours go away. On Office, the email licenses, the phone service, the backup, and the security tools are inside the same number instead of on separate invoices. Add those back into the block column before you compare.

When a block makes sense

There are scenarios where a block is the right answer:

• You have a defined project. Build out a new office network. Move to a new email system. Get a flat-rate quote for that scope, with clear deliverables.
• You have an internal IT person and just need overflow. Hours or a scoped project are a sensible way to top up internal capacity without a full Managed relationship.

If the worry is commitment, Support has no contract, and on Office you can pay for setup and leave any month.

For “general ongoing IT support for a business,” block hours rarely beat the plan math.

The simplest test

If you’ve spent more than $1,089 a month on hourly or block IT for 11 computers in the past year, you’re already at our Support plan price without unlimited support. Add what you pay for email and phones, and compare that to Office.

If you want to start smaller, the free Cyber Score takes about two minutes and emails you a written grade on what an attacker can see about your domain from outside. For the money question, the Free IT Blueprint Assessment is the easiest way to see your specific math. We walk your office, count what you have, and show you both paths over three years. You keep the numbers either way.