$91 to $200 per user per month is what managed IT costs a Dallas real estate firm in 2026, and the bill turns on one question, whether each 1099 agent counts as a user. Staff seats land inside that range. An agent can cost the brokerage nothing, or $160 a month.
I run operations at Uprite, so I see what a brokerage’s roster does to an invoice once onboarding is over, the welcome emails have gone out, and the monthly user count finally settles. Our guide to IT services for real estate firms in Dallas describes the work itself. This page puts numbers on real estate IT support cost in Dallas. The angle here is narrower. It’s the seat count. That’s the number that moves, and it’s how 2 quotes for the same Dallas brokerage can end up more than $6,000 a month apart while describing almost the same service.
Every rate below comes from our published managed IT pricing page, our own Dallas pricing estimates, or Microsoft’s price list, and every office count traces back to federal surveys of the 4 core DFW counties, Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and Denton. Where a number depends on a provider fee nobody publishes, I say so instead of guessing at it. No invented rates.
What Does a Dallas Real Estate Firm Pay for Managed IT?
Real estate IT support cost is what an outside provider bills each month to run a firm’s email, laptops, office network, backups, and security, almost always quoted per user, often under an annual agreement. For a Dallas brokerage the tricky word is user, since a lot of the people who sell homes for the firm never appear on its payroll.
| Price layer | Per user per month | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Uprite IT Essentials, remote, for teams under 12 | $91 and up | Uprite pricing page |
| Uprite IT Pro, remote with 24/7 coverage, for teams of 12 or more | $110 and up | Uprite pricing page, available in Dallas |
| Uprite Fully Managed IT, onsite work included | $138 and up | Uprite pricing page |
| General managed IT across DFW | $135 to $200, with most firms at $150 to $175 | Uprite estimate from DFW proposals |
| Security-heavy or compliance-driven setups | $250 to $300 | Texas MSP Pricing Index |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium license | $22 | Microsoft list price, added to the plan rate |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic license | $7 | Microsoft list price, added to the plan rate |
Our Fully Managed starting rate of $138 sits at the bottom of the DFW band, and the band itself comes from the proposals we write and review across the metroplex, which is why our guide to managed IT services cost in Dallas calls it an estimate and not a survey. DFW also runs a bit higher than Houston and San Antonio at the standard tier, according to our Texas MSP Pricing Index. Labor is part of why. In the May 2025 BLS wage survey, DFW help desk wages were the highest of the 3 metros.
None of that is specific to real estate. Not yet. The industry part shows up in the next table.
Why the Seat Count Decides a Dallas Brokerage’s Bill
Dallas County’s private employers averaged 20 people per establishment in 2025. Offices of real estate agents and brokers averaged 3.8. That’s tiny. In Tarrant it was 2.0, in Collin 1.9, and in Denton 1.7, so across the 4 core counties a typical brokerage office carried about 2.7 people on payroll, according to the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
That’s not the roster. It’s the payroll. QCEW leaves out proprietors and the unincorporated self-employed, and a sponsored agent working on commission as an independent contractor is self-employed. The 1099 agents are missing from the count. A North Dallas office with 3 people at the front desk might sponsor 40.
| County | Broker and agent offices, 2023 | Fewer than 5 employees | 5 to 9 | 10 or more | Share under 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas | 1,297 | 1,122 | 89 | 86 | 86.5% |
| Tarrant | 730 | 659 | 43 | 28 | 90.3% |
| Collin | 806 | 740 | 31 | 35 | 91.8% |
| Denton | 500 | 473 | 19 | 8 | 94.6% |
| 4 counties | 3,333 | 2,994 | 182 | 157 | 89.8% |
The source is the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns 2023 county file, industry code 531210, offices of real estate agents and brokers. The census only counts paid employees here, so contractor agents sit outside these numbers too. Same blind spot.
Nearly 9 in 10 DFW brokerage offices have fewer than 5 employees. Only 157 of 3,333 have 10 or more. Small offices, big rosters.
Now look at how per-user pricing is written. Ours says the price is based on the number of users, meaning employees, who need IT support. It’s a common way to word it, and it works fine for a dental office or an accounting firm where the people who need logins and the people on payroll are the same list. At a brokerage they aren’t the same list. Not even close. The payroll might be 4 names. The list of people who need a brokerage email address, a sign-in to the transaction software, and access to the shared drive could be 50. Count both lists.
So every quote you get has to answer one question before its total means anything. Are the agents in it? Ask first.
4 Ways to Count an Agent, and What Each One Costs
A brokerage doesn’t have to treat every agent the same way. Most shouldn’t. Here’s the per-agent monthly cost under each model, built only from numbers that are published somewhere you can check.
| How the agent is counted | What the brokerage provides | Monthly cost per agent | Built from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full managed user | Help desk, device management, security, backup, onsite support | $160 | $138 Fully Managed IT plus $22 Business Premium |
| Remote-tier user | Help desk and security, remote only | $132 | $110 IT Pro plus $22 Business Premium |
| Licensed identity, no help desk | Brokerage email, sign-in controls, device security policy | $22 plus a management fee | Business Premium list price |
| Basic brokerage mailbox | Brokerage email address and web Office apps | $7 plus a management fee | Business Basic list price |
| Outside the brokerage | Nothing, the agent uses personal email and devices | $0 | None |
License prices are Microsoft’s annual list prices for Business Premium and Business Basic, checked on October 20, 2026.
Two rows end in a management fee, and I’m leaving that blank on purpose. We don’t publish an agent rate. A license doesn’t configure itself, though. Somebody has to create the account, push the sign-in rules, and shut it off the day an agent hangs their license somewhere else. Ask every provider what that costs per agent. Get it in writing.
Putting agents on a different plan from office staff depends on mixing plans. Our pricing FAQ says clients can mix plans across departments or user types in some cases, so office staff on Fully Managed and agents on a remote tier is a real conversation, not a promise. It varies by firm. IT Pro is listed for teams of 12 or more employees outside Houston and San Antonio, so whether sponsored agents count toward that 12 belongs in the same plan-mixing conversation. Ask about it.
The $0 row looks like the cheapest. It is, until somebody needs a file. Texas puts the records duty on the broker. TREC Rule 535.2(h) requires a broker to hold transaction records at least 4 years past closing or termination, and the list includes substantive communications with the parties, plus the sponsorship agreements between the broker and each agent. When those communications live in an agent’s personal Gmail, the broker owns a 4-year obligation over a mailbox it can’t open. That’s a records problem first. Security comes second. The security side, wire fraud in particular, is covered in our piece on wire fraud and client data at brokerages.
Large brokerages hit a different wall. A licensing one. Microsoft describes Business Premium’s identity and access management as being for up to 300 users. A Dallas firm licensing 350 agents is past the size Microsoft’s business plans are built for, so the license math has to be redone on its enterprise plans before the license lines on this page hold. Plan for it early.
A Worked Example, 5 Staff and 40 Agents in North Dallas
Take a hypothetical brokerage off the Dallas North Tollway. Five people on payroll run the office, with an office manager, 2 transaction coordinators, a marketing coordinator, and a bookkeeper. Forty sponsored agents work out of it, mostly from their cars and kitchen tables. Round numbers, on purpose. Here’s the same firm priced 4 ways, with Business Premium licensing included wherever the brokerage pays for it.
| Seat model | Monthly | Yearly | How it adds up |
|---|---|---|---|
| All 45 people as full managed users | $7,200 | $86,400 | 45 at $138, plus 45 licenses at $22 |
| Staff fully managed, agents on remote IT Pro | $6,080 | $72,960 | 5 at $138, 40 at $110, plus 45 licenses |
| Staff fully managed, agents as licensed identities | $1,680 plus the agent management fee | $20,160 plus the fee | 5 at $138, plus 45 licenses at $22 |
| Staff only, agents outside the brokerage | $800 | $9,600 | 5 at $138, plus 5 licenses |
Starting prices only. Onboarding, hardware, and any security work beyond the plan aren’t in these totals.
The top and bottom rows are 9 times apart. Same firm. Same office. Same agents. When 2 Dallas proposals for a brokerage look wildly different, this is usually why, and it’s worth reading the user count before you read the price.
Which row is right? That depends on the agents. Specifically, on what they actually do with brokerage systems. An agent who leads a 6-person team, runs listings out of the shared drive, and calls the office when the scanner stops working is a full user. The tax form doesn’t change that. A part-time agent who closes 3 deals a year mostly needs a brokerage mailbox the broker can keep for 4 years. If I were pricing that North Dallas office, I’d quote the staff as full users, put the agents on licensed identities, and move the handful of team leads up to full seats by name. With 4 team leads on full seats, that hybrid comes to $2,232 a month before the agent management fee, which is under a third of the top row.
The roster also moves every month. Dental offices and law firms don’t deal with that. Agents join. Agents leave for another brokerage on a Friday afternoon. Ask how a provider bills a seat that starts on the 20th, and how fast it shuts an account off when an agent leaves. Our guide to agent onboarding and offboarding IT in Dallas covers the mechanics of that second part.
What Sits Outside the Monthly Rate?
A monthly plan runs what you already own. That’s all it does. Several real estate costs land outside it.
- Onboarding. In the Dallas proposals we write and review, one-time setup fees run from about $3,000 for a clean single office to $25,000 for a multi-office firm with old servers and legacy systems still in use.
- Microsoft licensing, billed on top of every plan. Business Premium is $22 per user on an annual subscription and $26.40 on a monthly one, a 20% premium for skipping the annual commitment. Ask how seat reductions work on each term.
- Hardware, which a good assessment can sometimes shrink instead of grow.
- Security work beyond the plan, which pushes compliance-driven setups toward $250 to $300 per user.
That third line is where the biggest single number in this guide comes from. It’s a big one. A Texas real estate firm came to us on the verge of spending more than $120,000 on new server hardware. Its environment had grown to 14 or more virtual machines, with legacy systems and a tangled Active Directory on top. The assessment consolidated it down to 3 virtual machines, the firm skipped the hardware purchase, and the whole project cost about $20,000. Not $120,000. The full story is in our case study on how a Texas real estate firm cut IT costs by over $100K. For scale, $120,000 is nearly 17 months of the most expensive row in the worked example above. Assess before you buy.
Property Management Firms Price Like Everyone Else
Property management is a corner of Dallas real estate where the seat count is easy. Staff are staff. Leasing agents, maintenance techs, and accountants are usually on payroll. Headcount is simple. Residential property managers in the 4 core counties averaged 10.4 employees per establishment in 2025, and 13.3 in Dallas County alone, according to the same QCEW data, against 2.7 for the brokerage offices counted earlier.
So per-user pricing works the way it was written. No agent math. What moves a property management quote is the number of leasing offices, after-hours coverage for maintenance lines, and the property management platform the firm runs on, all of which our page on IT support for Dallas property management companies covers in more depth.
What If the Office Manager Just Handles IT?
Plenty of small brokerages already pay for IT this way, without a line item. The office manager resets passwords, sets up the new agent’s email, and calls the copier company. It adds up. That time has a price.
The federal wage survey for metro areas put office and administrative supervisors in Dallas-Fort Worth at a mean of $36.62 an hour in May 2025, which is the closest federal match for the person who usually ends up running IT at a small brokerage. Benefits and payroll taxes add about 43 cents to every wage dollar, per the BLS employer cost release, so a loaded hour costs about $52.32. Do the math. Three hours a week of IT work is $8,162 a year. That’s $680 a month, within $10 of putting all 5 staff in the worked example on Fully Managed IT at $138 each, before licensing, and it buys no monitoring, no tested backup, and no one answering the phone at 7 on a Saturday when an agent can’t get into a listing. Nobody covers that.
Hiring a full-time support person is the opposite extreme. It’s expensive. The same survey put DFW computer user support specialists at $63,030 a year, roughly $7,504 a month once benefits and taxes are loaded in. That’s slightly more than putting every person in the worked example on a full managed seat. And it’s one person. One set of vacation days. For a bigger firm that already has that person, co-managed IT in Dallas covers the gaps without replacing them.
What to Ask a Dallas IT Provider Before Signing
Bring these to every proposal. Write down the answers. They’re what make 2 quotes comparable.
- Who is a user in this quote, staff only or staff plus agents?
- Can agents sit on a different plan than the office staff, and what does each plan include?
- What do you charge to manage an agent who has a license but no help desk access?
- How do you bill a seat that starts or ends mid-month?
- How fast do you shut off an account when an agent leaves?
- Is Microsoft licensing in the rate, or billed on top, and on which term?
- Which of our servers or computers would you replace in year 1, and what would that cost?
Our own answers, for comparison. Uprite’s Dallas office sits at 5757 Alpha Road, Suite 530, in North Dallas. We price per user from the rates on our pricing page, and the free discovery call walks through your users and systems, agents included, before we suggest a plan. Mixing plans is possible case by case. Licensing is extra. It sits on top of the plan rate. New clients get a first-year rate guarantee and a 120-day satisfaction promise. If you’re still choosing between firms, see the scored list of the best IT providers for Dallas real estate firms. It compares them on more than price.
Everything those rates cover for a brokerage, from the office network to agent accounts, is laid out on our Dallas real estate IT services page.
Send us your staff count, the size of your agent roster, and your current IT invoice. We’ll walk through staff and agents separately, show Microsoft licensing on its own line, and tell you which agents we think need a full seat.
Price My BrokerageDallas Brokerage IT Pricing Questions
What does a Dallas brokerage pay each month for managed IT?
Somewhere between $91 and $200 per staff user per month, plus Microsoft licensing. The total depends far more on how agents are counted. A 5-person office with 40 agents can run from about $800 a month with agents left out to $7,200 with every agent on a full managed seat.
Do 1099 agents count as users in a managed IT quote?
Only if the brokerage decides they should. Per-user pricing is usually written around employees, and most sponsored agents are independent contractors, so each quote has to say whether agents are in. Ask that question first, because it can move a Dallas brokerage quote by thousands of dollars a month.
Can agents be on a cheaper plan than office staff?
In some cases, yes. Uprite allows plan mixing across user types, so office staff can sit on Fully Managed IT at $138 while agents use a remote tier or a licensed identity with no help desk. Other providers handle this differently, so get it in writing.
Does real estate IT cost more in Dallas than in Houston?
A little, at the standard tier. The Uprite Texas MSP Pricing Index shows fully managed IT running $135 to $200 per user across Dallas-Fort Worth, against $125 to $175 in Houston, and BLS data puts DFW help desk wages highest of the 3 big Texas metros.
How much does Microsoft 365 cost for each agent?
$7 to $22 per agent per month at Microsoft list prices on an annual subscription. Business Basic gives an agent a brokerage mailbox and web apps for $7. Business Premium adds device management and Defender security for $22, or $26.40 per agent on a monthly subscription instead.
Do property management companies pay the same rates as brokerages?
The per-user rates are the same, but the seat count works differently. Property management staff are mostly on payroll, averaging about 10 employees per DFW office in 2025 federal data, so the quote simply follows headcount. Leasing offices and after-hours lines move the price instead.
Should a small brokerage hire an IT person instead?
Rarely, at under 50 seats. A full-time DFW support specialist costs about $7,504 a month with benefits loaded in, which is more than putting 45 people on full managed seats. A hire makes more sense alongside co-managed support once a firm has outgrown one office.
