Selling IT support online: monthly plans, one-off fixes and the hardware shop on one website

This guide is for a UK IT support firm or managed service provider of two to fifteen people that looks after small businesses and home workers, invoices by hand each month, and wants its plans, fixes and hardware sold from its own website. It covers what firms like yours charge, how monthly plans, one-off fixes and hardware work as products on one site, what a client can do from their account, and where VAT, your books and trust fit. We build Orbit Commerce, so weigh the Orbit parts with that in mind. Every figure was checked against its source on 8 November 2026.

How do small IT support firms price today?

Three models cover nearly everyone: per user per month, per device per month, or time, as block hours or break-fix by the hour. The published UK numbers come from providers with an interest in where the range sits. These are from three dated pages, read on 8 November 2026:

The per-user, per-device and block-hour figures are AIS Technology’s, an Essex and London provider (28 September 2026). AMVIA in Sheffield gives £30 to £80 a user and publishes its own plans from £25, £40 and £60 (March 2026). Cloud Plus gives £25 to £75 a user and £75 to £150 an hour for break-fix (6 September 2026).

Publish yours. A ten-person firm buying support for the first time compares two or three of you in an evening, and the one with a price on the page gets the enquiry. Put a price on the fixes and on plans for teams of up to about 20, and write “larger teams are quoted” under them.

How do you sell monthly support plans from your website?

On Orbit a support plan is a subscription product. A plan sets how often the product’s price is charged, so a monthly plan and a yearly plan priced for the year are two products. The client picks one, pays at checkout, and the subscription appears in their account and your Subscriptions list. Quantity is seats, changed from a stepper on their account page as the team changes (subscriptions).

From their account a client can pause, resume or cancel, each with its own email in your branding; cancelling takes effect at the end of the current period. Switch customer pausing, cancelling or plan changes off in Subscription settings and the account page asks them to contact you instead. A card payment for a support plan goes through Orbit Payments at the card rate of your Orbit plan, with nothing added.

Two set-up notes: each plan charges its price from the first payment, so onboarding is sold as a one-off service or a draft order, and the plan comparison goes on an ordinary page with a pricing table that links to each plan.

The subscription takes the money; your help desk keeps the tickets

The subscription takes the money and records who is on which plan; tickets, logged time and the list of a client’s devices stay in your help desk. Keep it where it is, whether that is Halo, ConnectWise PSA (both checked 8 November 2026) or a shared inbox, and make the plan page say what is included: the hours you answer, how to raise a ticket, what is quoted separately. Write “24/7” or “same day” only if someone is on the rota at 3am.

One-off fixes: bookable services paid at checkout

A remote fix hour, an on-site visit and a laptop rebuild are service products, each with a length, places per slot (one, for an engineer’s time), the notice you need in hours, a gap between bookings, and an optional cancellation fee from 0 to 100% with a policy in plain words. Opening hours are one weekly schedule for the shop, and you can block time out (bookings).

The client picks a date and time on the product page, pays the full price at checkout, and the booking lands on your calendar as Confirmed. They get a confirmation email, and My Bookings in their account lets them reschedule to a free slot in the next 30 days, download a calendar file, or cancel with the refund shown first; afterwards you mark it complete or no-show.

• The cancellation fee is one percentage. It applies whenever the client cancels, so set 0% on remote fixes and a fee on half-day visits if that is fairer.
• The length is the product. A 30-minute and a one-hour remote fix are two products.
• Full payment at checkout, a calendar file in the confirmation. The client pays the full price when they book. The confirmation email carries a calendar file so the visit sits in their calendar with its own reminder, and a service per engineer lets a client book the person they know.
• A free 15-minute call comes in as an enquiry. A booking carries a price, so the free call goes through a contact form.

Home workers buy as consumers: a fix bought online carries the 14-day cancellation right in the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, and regulation 36 needs the client’s express request before work starts inside those 14 days, or they bear no cost for it (legislation.gov.uk, checked 8 November 2026). Have a solicitor check your terms.

The hardware shop and the new-starter kit

Laptops, routers, docks and cables are physical products: weight and dimensions, stock per location, a low-stock flag at ten or fewer, backorders if you want them, and variants for memory or storage with their own SKU, price and stock (products). Delivery runs on shipping zones and rates, with local pickup for clients who collect from the workshop and labels bought from the order through Orbit Shipping, paid per label.

A new-starter kit is a bundle: up to 30 component products with a quantity each, sold as one item with its own page and price, and available only while every part is in stock. Bundles are switched on per shop, so ask Orbit. Setting the kit up is sold as a bookable service or included in the plan.

What about business clients, contracts and quotes?

Most of your clients are companies, so you may look at the B2B features: company accounts with several buyers, a price list per company applied when they sign in, trade applications and spending limits. They come with the Enterprise plan at £999 a month, or £749 a month billed yearly, ex VAT (B2B and trade), and are built for a wholesaler’s trade accounts; a firm of two to fifteen people has what it needs on Solo.

The Solo route works. Plans and fixes sit at public prices, the client’s office manager holds the plan in their own customer account, and a line under the plans says teams over 20 are quoted. A quoted contract becomes a draft order: add a custom line, then email a payment-due invoice, copy a payment link that lasts seven days, or mark the order paid when the bank transfer lands (orders). Bank transfer can also be a checkout option for hardware, and a client on account terms gets a payment-due invoice from the draft order.

Card costs matter at these amounts. On Solo a UK personal Visa or Mastercard costs 2% + 25p and a UK business card 3.3% + 25p, nothing added on top. An eight-seat plan at £45 a user, £360 a month, costs £7.45 in fees on a personal card and £12.13 on a business card. A quoted contract paid by bank transfer against its invoice carries no card fee (payment processing fees).

What should an IT support website show to earn trust?

• Cyber Essentials, as text. The NCSC calls it “the minimum standard of cyber security recommended by the Government for organisations of all sizes”. Certification through IASME is priced by size from £320 + VAT, with Cyber Essentials Plus above it, and the NCSC says “a growing number of organisations require suppliers to be certified to bid for work” (NCSC, checked 8 November 2026). State your level and expiry date on the page.
• Microsoft or Google partner status, under its current name. Microsoft no longer offers Silver and Gold memberships and asks partners to stop referring to them; today’s programme is Solutions Partner designations, with Modern Work and Security pathways (Microsoft Learn, 13 October 2026). Google’s partner network has three tiers, Select, Premier and Diamond, across Google Cloud and Workspace (Google Cloud, checked 8 November 2026). State what your partner account shows, nothing more.
• Insurance. Employers’ liability cover of at least £5 million is a legal requirement as soon as you employ anyone, with a fine of £2,500 a day without it (gov.uk, checked 8 November 2026). Procurement forms also ask for public liability and professional indemnity.
• Google reviews. Ask at the end of every job with the review link or QR code from your Business Profile, and never offer a discount for one, which Google treats as fake content (Google help, checked 8 November 2026). The Google Reviews add-on shows your rating and reviews on any page, and the free Product Reviews plugin takes star ratings on hardware (reviews).

VAT, invoices and getting paid into Xero or QuickBooks

IT support and computer hardware are standard-rated: the standard VAT rate is 20% and applies to most goods and services (gov.uk VAT rates). Registration is compulsory once VAT taxable turnover is more than £90,000 (gov.uk thresholds; both checked 8 November 2026), and plans, fixes and hardware all count.

Business buyers expect prices ex VAT and home workers inc VAT, and a shop shows one or the other: in Settings, under Tax, prices are entered exclusive with VAT added at checkout, or inclusive, so print “ex VAT” or “inc VAT” beside every price. Add your VAT number there too and every paid order gets a VAT invoice by email the moment the payment is captured; without a VAT number customers get a plain invoice (payouts and VAT).

Payouts are itemised into the charges, refunds and fees behind them. The Xero and QuickBooks Online plugins, add-ons priced in the plugin store, send each paid order to your accounts as a sales invoice with its payment and each refund as a credit note or refund receipt, against the accounts and VAT rates you map once. Otherwise export orders as CSV and follow the clearing-account method in our bookkeeping guide.

A status page, a help page, live chat and a knowledge base

Status page. Build a page in the page builder called Service status with a dated list of known issues: a notice board you update by hand. Basic mode locks the layout so whoever is on the help desk can change the words without moving anything (page builder).

Help page. An FAQ block for the questions you answer every week, your hours, how to raise a ticket, and a contact form for the free call; every “Book a fix” button links to a service product.

Live chat. Live Chat is an add-on with a free plan and paid plans, priced on its listing: a chat button on every page, online inside the hours you set, and outside them an away form that opens a ticket and emails you a link. Help articles are searchable from the widget’s Help tab, and signed-in clients see their tickets under Support in their account (live chat). It is the support inbox for the shop; time against a plan and the device list stay in your PSA.

Knowledge base. The blog is on every plan, on your own domain, with no post limit; blogs are containers, so create one called Guides beside News and file how-to posts there, and a Blog Listing block puts the latest on the help page (store blog). When something like the PHP2Shell flaws lands, a short post on what you did that morning is worth more than a badge.

Where Orbit fits

Everything above runs on Solo at £25 a month, or £19 a month billed yearly, ex VAT, with a 14-day free trial and no card to start: subscription plans, bookable services, physical products and bundles, the page builder, the blog, VAT invoices and the finance reports. Google Reviews, Xero and QuickBooks are add-ons priced in the plugin store, and Live Chat has a free plan and paid plans. Solo has one staff account; Team at £85 a month has ten (pricing).

The theme store lists free and premium themes by industry; pick one for a services business and change its colours, fonts and logo in the dashboard. Our hub on selling services online in the UK covers the wider patterns, and selling digital products, subscriptions and services goes deeper on consumer law.

Read next: the new UK rules for selling subscriptions, selling fixed-price design and marketing packages and live chat for a one-person shop.

Questions people ask about selling IT support online

Can I sell IT support plans as subscriptions on my own website?

Yes. A support plan is a subscription product billed monthly, and a yearly option is a second product priced for the year. The client subscribes on the product page, pays at checkout, and changes seats from their account. Subscriptions are on every Orbit plan, from Solo at £25 a month.

Can my clients pause or cancel their support plan themselves?

Yes, if you let them. From their account a client can pause, resume or cancel, each with its own email, and cancelling takes effect at the end of the current period. Switch those off in Subscription settings and the account page asks them to contact you instead.

Where do tickets and time logging live when a plan is sold on Orbit?

In your PSA. The subscription on Orbit is the recurring charge and records who is on which plan; tickets, response-time clocks, time logging and device lists stay in your help desk, and the plan page says how clients raise a ticket.

Do I charge VAT on IT support?

If you are VAT registered, yes: the standard rate of 20% applies to most goods and services, IT support and hardware included (gov.uk, checked 8 November 2026). Registration is compulsory once VAT taxable turnover is more than £90,000, and plans, fixes and hardware all count.

Do I need the Enterprise plan to sell to businesses?

No. Company accounts and per-company price lists are Enterprise features at £999 a month, built for wholesalers. A small IT firm sells at public prices on Solo, lets each client’s office manager hold the plan in their own account, and invoices quoted contracts through a draft order.

Build the plan page, a booking and a laptop listing in the 14-day free trial, no card required, and take one test order of each.