A note before we begin: This bill is a “real cost comparison table for business owners” that we have put together from more than a decade of serving 1,000+ small and medium-sized companies in Beijing. These are not market reference prices — they are the real numbers that show up on owners’ financial statements.
Business owners who have just started a company or just moved into a new office often ask me the same question:
“My company has 30 people. How much should we actually be spending on IT each month? I’m spending RMB 2,000–3,000 a month right now — is that too much? Or too little?”
To be honest: 60% of SME owners either spend far more than they should on IT, or cut corners until something serious happens.
Let’s work through the numbers. By the end you’ll know:
- Whether your company’s current IT spending is in a “healthy range”
- Which costs are unavoidable and which are money wasted
- How the same service can go from RMB 7,000 a month to RMB 3,999
1. Start with the real IT cost breakdown for a 30-person company
We pulled the total 2025 IT bills from 12 Beijing companies of around 30 people and laid out the real figures:
| Item | Average monthly cost | Annual total | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Office desktop / laptop purchase amortization | RMB 1,800 | RMB 21,600 | 3-year depreciation, 30 machines |
| Router, switch, and AP maintenance | RMB 500 | RMB 6,000 | Includes one or two failures a year |
| Firewall / security appliances | RMB 400 | RMB 4,800 | Entry-level SSL VPN appliance |
| Server / NAS | RMB 600 | RMB 7,200 | File server + backup |
| Business broadband | RMB 600 | RMB 7,200 | 200M–500M China Unicom / China Telecom |
| Email, enterprise OA, CRM | RMB 800 | RMB 9,600 | DingTalk, WeCom, self-hosted OA |
| Network maintenance / desktop support | RMB 3,000 | RMB 36,000 | 1–2 outsourced IT engineers |
| Emergency firefighting (annual average) | RMB 500 | RMB 6,000 | Urgent fault repair |
| Total | RMB 8,200 | RMB 98,400 | Average RMB 273 per person per month |
Conclusion: for a 30-person company, spending RMB 90,000–100,000 a year on IT is the “normal level.”
Spend less than that and you’re either skipping what needs to be done or outsourcing to someone unreliable (and the fallout will be severe).
Spend more than that and you’re most likely being overcharged — here’s where the traps are.
2. The five traps business owners fall into most often
Trap 1: Treating “a part-timer who can fix computers” as IT operations outsourcing
Typical scenario: the admin department gets a referral from a friend and hires “Xiao Li, who can fix computers” for RMB 800–1,500 a month, calling him whenever something comes up.
Why it’s a trap:
- Xiao Li usually only knows how to reinstall an OS, fix a printer, and run a network cable — he knows nothing about networking, security, or backup
- When something serious happens (a server goes down, ransomware, data loss), he can’t handle it and won’t turn up
- No invoice (he’s an individual), so the company can’t book the expense or deduct it from tax
- No contract, so no one is accountable for the result
Real case: an advertising company in Chaoyang was hit by ransomware in mid-2024 and five years of design files were locked. The “Xiao Li” they had hired could only say, “I can’t handle this.” In the end they spent RMB 180,000 on an incident response firm and still couldn’t recover the data. They saved RMB 1,500 a month on IT and lost RMB 180,000 plus five years of design assets.
Trap 2: Buying high-end specs for every office computer
Typical scenario: HR hires new employees and the admin says, “Let’s buy i7 + 16GB RAM + 512GB SSD laptops for everyone, RMB 6,500 each.”
Why it’s a trap:
- For 80% of roles (admin, customer service, sales, operations), i5 + 8GB is completely sufficient at RMB 3,500 each
- Only finance, design, and technical roles need high-end machines
- A blanket high-spec policy costs a 30-person company an extra 30 × RMB 3,000 = RMB 90,000
- High-end machines won’t make employees “more productive” either — the performance bottleneck in office software isn’t the CPU
What to do instead: assign spec tiers by role (basic tier RMB 3,500, standard tier RMB 5,000, high-end tier RMB 7,500) and buy a mix.
Trap 3: Buying consumer-grade network equipment
Typical scenario: the office moves, and the admin buys a RMB 300 home TP-Link router for 30 people to share.
- A home router caps out at 50–100 concurrent connections, and 30 people plus phones, APs, and printers easily exceed that
- Once it chokes you have to reboot it and lose the network, and opening a web page takes ten-plus seconds
- No VLANs, no QoS, no guest network isolation
- When a client comes in for a meeting, “why is the WiFi so slow?” is an awkward moment
What to do instead: use an entry-level business router (MikroTik, Huawei USG, iKuai) at RMB 1,500–3,000, which can run 100–200 users reliably.
Trap 4: Assuming you have backups when you don’t
Typical scenario: the company keeps shared files on a NAS and thinks, “We have RAID 1 anyway, so nothing will be lost.”
- RAID is not a backup. RAID protects against hardware failure; it does not protect against ransomware, accidental deletion, fire, or a departing employee wiping data
- A real backup follows the “3-2-1 rule”: 3 copies, 2 types of media, 1 offsite
- For 90% of SMEs, their “backup” is just RAID 1 — it doesn’t count as a backup
Real case: at a 50-person trading company in Haidian, a salesperson the boss trusted deleted three years of customer records plus the CRM before leaving. The NAS had RAID 1, but real-time syncing of the deletion meant the backup was gone too. In the end they could only dig customer contacts out of email by hand. Estimated loss: RMB 2 million in orders.
Trap 5: Waiting until something goes wrong to find an IT company
Typical scenario: the company has never paid for IT planning or network inspections, and employees just muddle through on their own. Then one day the server suddenly goes down and they make an emergency call:
“What’s the situation at your company? We’d have to troubleshoot from scratch. Same-night emergency callout is RMB 800 plus a RMB 3,000 service fee, and we can’t promise it’ll be fixed by tomorrow.”
- Emergency rates run 3–5 times the price of routine maintenance
- In an emergency, no one is negotiating on your behalf
- Lost productivity while the fault lasts (30 people × RMB 1,500 in lost work hours per day = RMB 45,000 per day)
What to do instead: find a long-term IT service provider for monthly operations and maintenance (covering inspections, monitoring, backup, and emergency response) at RMB 2,000–4,000 a month, with no surcharge when something goes wrong.
3. Comparing three IT service models
90% of SME owners choose among these three:
Model A: An in-house IT team (1–2 full-time engineers)
Best suited to: 100+ people / companies with in-house developed systems
- Engineer salary: RMB 10,000–15,000 per month per person
- Statutory social insurance and housing fund: 30%–40% of salary
- Workstation, computer, software licenses: RMB 2,000 per month
- Total cost: RMB 15,000–25,000 per month
- Downside: when they leave, the experience leaves with them, and you have to hire again
Model B: Piecemeal IT outsourcing (the “Xiao Li model”)
Company size: Micro-companies with 5–15 employees
- Monthly service fee: RMB 800–2,000/month
- Emergency breakdown fee: RMB 300–800 per incident
- Equipment purchases billed separately: 5%–15% referral fee
- Annual total: RMB 15,000–30,000
- Downsides: no contract, no backups, and no idea what to do when something big goes wrong
Model C: All-in-One IT Subscription (monthly, SaaS-style)
Company size: Companies with 10–200 employees
| Plan | Monthly fee | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | From RMB 1,999/month | 5–20 users: desktop support + network maintenance + monthly inspections + backup solution |
| Standard | From RMB 3,999/month | 20–50 users: network equipment + firewall + data backup + 8×5 response |
| All-in-One | From RMB 6,999/month | 50–100 users: broadband private line + servers + zero trust + 7×12 response |
| Flagship | From RMB 9,999/month | 100–200 users: dedicated 1-on-1 engineer + 7×24 response + custom solution |
※ The above are reference prices as of August 2026, varying with headcount range and service scope. They do not constitute a binding quotation; the final price is subject to the formal proposal and contract.
Price advantage analysis: A 30-person company choosing the Standard plan pays RMB 3,999/month, or RMB 47,988 per year. Compared with Model A, building it in-house at RMB 150,000–250,000/year, that saves RMB 100,000–200,000. Compared with Model B, the “Xiao Li model,” it looks RMB 15,000–20,000/year more expensive, but it adds: a backup solution, security protection, contractual guarantees, SLA response commitments, and special VAT invoices for tax deduction — with no markup when something serious happens, and a single major incident pays for it.
The company profile best suited to the All-in-One model:
- 10–100 employees
- No dedicated IT department
- Owners or admin staff who no longer want to deal with IT chores
- Concerns about data loss and compliance requirements
IV. Practical Advice: Cut Your IT Costs in 3 Steps
Step 1: Run an “IT Health Check” every January
Checklist (work through it yourself):
- How many computers, servers, and network devices does the company have? Keep a clear record.
- When was the last system patch update?
- Do the backups actually work? Pick a file at random and try restoring it.
- Are the firewall rules still factory defaults? Has the default admin password been changed?
- Who has the passwords to company accounts? Were permissions revoked promptly when employees left?
- Has the Wi-Fi password gone unchanged for 3 years?
If you can’t answer all six questions, it’s time to bring in an IT service provider for a professional inspection.
Step 2: Separate “must-spend” from “can-save”
| Must-spend (cannot cut) | Optimizable (buy as needed) |
|---|---|
| Firewall / security appliances | High-spec computers (by role) |
| Data backup solution | Servers (move to the cloud wherever possible) |
| Network stability (enterprise-grade routers) | Software licenses (replace with SaaS) |
| IT emergency response capability | High-speed private lines (if standard broadband is enough, skip the private line) |
| Contracts / invoicing compliance | Stockpiling security appliances |
Step 3: Choose a long-term IT partner and sign a monthly contract
Stop waiting until something breaks to call. A monthly subscription offers four advantages:
- Controllable budget: a fixed monthly amount that finance can plan around
- Fewer major incidents: routine inspections prevent problems before they happen
- No emergency markup: the SLA is written into the contract
- Invoices available: special VAT invoices for IT service fees, deductible against tax
V. About Us: The Siwenlide All-in-One IT Bundle
We are Beijing Siwenlide. For 14 years we have focused on IT services for small and medium-sized businesses in Beijing, serving over 1,000 clients, with 90% of them staying with us for more than 3 years.
Core Product: All-in-One IT Subscription Service
One contract bundles:
- IT operations (desktop, server, network)
- Network equipment (routers, switches, APs, firewalls)
- Enterprise broadband / private lines (China Unicom / China Telecom / China Mobile)
- Data backup solution
- Emergency response (7×24 or 8×5)
Monthly subscription pricing (tiered by company size / number of sites / response level):
- Basic: from RMB 1,999/month (5–20 users)
- Standard: from RMB 3,999/month (20–50 users)
- All-in-One: from RMB 6,999/month (50–100 users)
- Flagship: from RMB 9,999/month (100–200 users / 7×24 / custom solution)
Highlights:
- Zero procurement: we provide all IT assets; you pay monthly
- Zero depreciation: we replace computers and servers when they reach end of life
- Zero operations anxiety: we handle the breakdowns so you can focus on your business
- 14 years, 1,000+ clients, and 90% of clients stay for more than 3 years
Additional Product: sTrust Zero Trust Secure Access System
If your company needs remote work, multi-location offices, or outsourced access, take a look at sTrust, our in-house platform:
- Replaces traditional VPNs (more secure)
- Replaces Tailscale/ZeroTier (available in China, compliant)
- Up and running in 5 minutes
- Full platform support: Windows/macOS/iOS/Android
See strust.siwenlide.com
Contact Us
Free of charge:
- A 30-minute phone assessment of your company’s current IT setup
- A checklist of IT cost-optimization recommendations
- A comparison table of real costs at companies of a similar size
Phone: 400-686-2011
Website: www.siwenlide.com
Address: Chaoyang District, Beijing
Summary: For a 30-person small or medium-sized business, a normal annual IT budget runs RMB 90,000–100,000. Spend it in the right places and RMB 80,000 covers the full setup; spend it in the wrong places and RMB 150,000 still leaves you with breakdowns. The difference comes down to this: whether you have an IT provider who knows the field and plans alongside you, rather than one who only shows up to put out fires.
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Updated 2026-09-06: What each of the four tiers includes and excludes, and Beijing market rates for the four billing models, are covered in How Much Does IT Outsourcing Cost an SME Per Year? 2026 Billing Models, Published Tiers, and Pitfall Guide; Who Owns the Equipment When the Contract Ends is also explained there in full.
