How to Tell If Your IT Company Is Overcharging You for Phones

April 10, 2026

A lot of small businesses get their phone service through their IT provider — who’s reselling someone else’s platform at a 2-3x markup. Here’s how to know.

The Setup You Don’t Know You Have

Here’s a scenario that plays out thousands of times a day: a small business hires an IT company — an MSP, a managed services provider — to handle their technology. Computers, network, security, the works. At some point, the MSP says “we can do your phones too.” It sounds convenient. One vendor for everything. One bill. Done.

What the MSP doesn’t usually explain is what “we can do your phones” actually means. In most cases, it means they’ve signed up as a reseller for a white-label VoIP platform — companies like SkySwitch, Viirtue, RingLogix, Bicom Systems, or one of dozens of others. The MSP puts their own logo on the portal, sets their own pricing, and sells it to you as “their” phone system.

The platform isn’t bad, necessarily. Some of these white-label systems are perfectly fine. The issue is the markup.

The Math Nobody Shows You

White-label VoIP platforms typically charge resellers somewhere between $3-8 per seat per month for the base platform, plus per-minute or per-channel charges for calling. The reseller’s total cost for a typical small business user — including the platform, calling, phone numbers, and E911 — might be $8-14 per seat per month.

What does the MSP charge you? Typically $25-45 per seat per month. Sometimes more.

That’s a 2-3x markup. On a 20-person phone system, the difference between the MSP’s cost and what you’re paying could be $400-600/month — $5,000-7,000/year — for a product the MSP didn’t build, doesn’t develop, and largely doesn’t manage at the platform level.

To be fair: some markup is reasonable. The MSP provides support, handles basic configuration, deals with your day-to-day phone questions. That has value. The question is whether the markup reflects the value of their support or just the fact that you don’t know what the underlying service costs.

How to Tell If This Is You

You Can’t Name Your Phone Platform

Ask yourself: what is the actual phone platform your business runs on? Not the MSP’s brand name — the underlying technology. If you don’t know, that’s the first sign you’re on a white-labeled system. A provider that built their own platform will tell you so, because it’s a selling point. A reseller will use their own brand name and deflect questions about the underlying technology.

What to do: Ask your MSP directly: “Who built the phone platform we’re using? Is it your own technology or are you reselling someone else’s platform?” An honest MSP will tell you. If they get vague or defensive, that’s an answer too.

Your Phone Admin Portal Looks Generic

White-label platforms often have a recognizable look and feel despite the reseller’s branding. If your phone system admin portal looks like it could belong to any company — generic layout, minimal customization, the reseller’s logo clearly pasted over a template — you’re probably looking at a white-label platform.

Your Phone Support Goes Somewhere Unexpected

When you call your MSP with a phone problem, do they fix it themselves or do they “escalate” it and get back to you later? If basic phone issues like extension changes, voicemail resets, or call routing updates take hours or days and seem to involve someone else behind the scenes, your MSP is likely filing a ticket with their upstream platform provider and waiting for them to resolve it.

The Price Per Seat Seems High Relative to What You Get

If you’re paying $30-45/user/month and your phone system doesn’t include anything unusual — just desk phones, voicemail, and basic call routing — the price is likely inflated by margin. A provider that owns their own platform can typically deliver the same (or better) feature set for less, because there’s no middleman taking a cut.

You Can’t Get a Straight Answer on What’s Included

Some MSPs bundle phone service into their managed services agreement in a way that makes it hard to see what you’re actually paying for phones. If your monthly managed services bill includes IT support, security monitoring, backup, and phones — and you can’t get a line-item breakdown — the phone cost is probably hidden for a reason.

Why MSPs Do This (And Why It’s Not Evil)

Let’s be fair: MSPs aren’t running a scam. They’re running a business, and phone service is a high-margin product that’s easy to layer onto an existing client relationship. From the MSP’s perspective:

They already have the client relationship and the trust
Adding phone service increases their monthly recurring revenue
The white-label platforms make it easy — minimal technical effort
The client gets convenience (one vendor, one bill)
The markup funds the MSP’s support and operations

The issue isn’t that MSPs shouldn’t sell phone service. It’s that the markup often isn’t proportional to the value they’re adding on the phone side specifically. If your MSP is charging $35/seat/month and the extent of their phone support is “I’ll file a ticket with the platform” — that’s a lot of money for a middleman.

What It Actually Costs Without the Middleman

A VoIP provider that built their own platform — meaning they control the infrastructure, the software, and the support — doesn’t have the reseller cost structure. There’s no upstream platform fee being marked up. The cost of adding a user to a platform you own is marginal.

This doesn’t mean direct providers are always cheaper than MSPs on a per-seat basis — pricing varies, and some direct providers charge plenty for their own reasons. But the structural advantage is real: a provider without a middleman’s margin built into the price has more room on pricing, more control over the product, and can provide direct support that doesn’t route through a third party.

We’ve written about the white-label reseller model in our provider shutdown guide and in our piece on VoIP price increases — it’s the same structural issue showing up in different ways.

What to Do About It

Get Your Per-Seat Cost in Writing

Ask your MSP to break out the phone cost separately from the rest of your managed services agreement. You want to know exactly what you’re paying per user per month for phone service alone — not bundled, not estimated, the actual number. If they won’t provide this, that tells you something.

Shop a Direct Comparison

Get a quote from one or two VoIP providers who own their own platform. You don’t have to switch — you’re just calibrating. If the direct provider quotes you $15/user and your MSP charges $38/user, you now have a data point for the conversation about value.

Don’t be a-moose-d if the gap is significant. It usually is.

Evaluate the Support You’re Actually Getting

What does your MSP’s phone support actually include? Are they managing your call routing, training your staff, handling moves/adds/changes same-day? Or are they mostly passing through tickets to the platform provider? If the support is thin, the markup is paying for convenience, not capability.

Consider Splitting IT and Phones

There’s no rule that says your IT provider and your phone provider need to be the same company. Many businesses get better results — and save money — by using an MSP for computers, security, and network, and a dedicated VoIP provider for phones. Modern phone systems are cloud-based and need minimal on-site IT involvement. You don’t need your MSP to “manage” them.

The risk your MSP might raise is “what about integration?” But VoIP phones on your network are no more complicated than any other device on your network. Your MSP can still manage the network switches, the firewall, the QoS settings. The phone provider manages the phone service. These aren’t hard to separate.

Have the Conversation

If you like your MSP and want to keep working with them, there’s nothing wrong with saying: “I got a quote for phone service at $X per seat. You’re charging me $Y. Can we talk about that?” A good MSP will either adjust the pricing, explain the value that justifies the difference, or acknowledge the markup and let you make an informed decision.

A Note About Us

We’re a direct provider. We built our own platform. We don’t resell anyone else’s system, and nobody resells ours. When you call us with a problem, the person who answers is the person who fixes it — we don’t file a ticket with some upstream platform and wait.

We work alongside MSPs all the time. Your IT company handles your IT. We handle your phones. It’s clean, it’s straightforward, and nobody’s paying a markup they don’t know about.

Curious what you’re actually paying for phones? Drop us a line and tell us what you have now. We’ll give you an honest comparison — and if your MSP’s pricing is actually fair for what they’re providing, we’ll tell you that too. No pressure, no 47-slide deck.