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Dataprise and Zazz end up on the same shortlists for good reason. Both run full-service managed IT and cybersecurity on a per-user model with published plan tiers, and both serve small and mid-sized companies in regulated industries. The differences show up once you put the tiers next to each other: what each dollar buys, how long you’re committed, and who owns your security program between meetings.
Dataprise has grown into a national provider over three decades, much of that growth through acquisitions. Zazz is built for companies of 20 to 500 people that want a fixed monthly cost per user and senior IT leadership without enterprise-level rates. We’re one of the two providers in this Zazz vs Dataprise comparison, so we’ve kept every Dataprise figure to what the company publishes and named where its model is strong. Pricing for both providers was checked on November 10, 2026.
Zazz vs Dataprise at a glance
| Zazz | Dataprise |
Headquarters and footprint | US and Canada, remote-first delivery with on-demand onsite support in both countries | Rockville, Maryland, with offices across the US |
Typical client | 20 to 500 employees, often compliance-driven or high-growth | Small and mid-sized businesses (2,500+ served) |
Pricing model | Fixed per-user fee, three tiers plus custom engagements | Per-user bundled plans, three tiers |
Entry tier | Essential, $100 per user per month | IT Foundation, from $102 per user per month |
Middle tier | Professional, $125 per user per month | IT Fortify, from $158 per user per month |
Top published tier | Enterprise, $150 per user per month | IT Comply, from $210 per user per month |
Contract terms | Month-to-month to annual | Annual-term pricing, discounts for multi-year commitments |
Provider certifications | ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 20000, ISO 9001 | 750+ technical certifications held by its engineers |
Engagement models | Fully managed, co-managed, projects, nearshore or offshore teams | Fully managed, co-managed, consulting, field services |
Who Zazz and Dataprise are built for
Zazz runs day-to-day IT operations for more than 100 businesses across the US and Canada, from the 24/7 helpdesk and endpoint management to cloud, backup and security. Delivery follows the ITIL framework, and the team itself holds ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certification, which matters when a provider has admin access to your systems. Most clients have between 20 and 500 employees and work under audit pressure in healthcare, financial services, legal, SaaS, manufacturing or logistics. Our managed IT services are designed for companies at that size that have outgrown ad hoc IT but don’t want to fund a full internal department.
Dataprise has offered managed IT for more than 30 years. Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, it reports serving 2,500+ small and mid-sized clients and managing around 386,000 devices for about 260,000 users. The company is a portfolio company of private equity firm Trinity Hunt Partners and has widened its US footprint by acquiring regional providers, including Hooks Systems in North Carolina, 360IT Partners in Virginia and Cohere in New York City. Channel Futures named it MSP 501 MSP of the Year for 2025.
So the two providers differ more in shape than in category. Dataprise brings national scale and a long menu of specialist services. Zazz works within a narrower client band, and every account gets a dedicated Delivery Manager as its single point of contact for escalations, monthly reporting and quarterly strategy reviews.
Zazz vs Dataprise pricing: what each tier costs
Both providers price per user per month and list their tiers publicly, which makes managed IT pricing per user easier to compare than usual. Zazz charges a fixed $100, $125 or $150 per user, and the Essential fee already covers the critical IT and security tools, monitoring platforms and protection systems, valued at more than $50 per user at retail. Dataprise pricing is published as “starting at” figures for its three plans, and the company notes that costs rise with team size and add-ons such as cloud management, compliance services or disaster recovery. Dataprise launched these per-user plans in December 2025, with discounts for multi-year terms.
Tier level | Zazz plan | Zazz price (per user, per month) | Dataprise plan | Dataprise starting price (per user, per month) |
Entry | Essential | $100 | IT Foundation | $102 |
Middle | Professional | $125 | IT Fortify | $158 |
Top | Enterprise | $150 | IT Comply | $210 |
Outside the tiers | Custom engagements | Scoped to your environment | Consulting and project services | Scoped to your environment |
The entry tiers sit $2 apart. The gap opens at the middle tier, where most growing companies land: Professional costs $33 less per user per month than IT Fortify, and Enterprise costs $60 less than IT Comply. Dataprise’s co-managed plan sheet quotes lower figures ($102, $144 and $167 per user), but those assume 300 users on a one-year term, so a 40-person company shouldn’t plan around them.
For anyone weighing Zazz as a Dataprise alternative, the budget effect is easiest to see in annual terms. The table below uses Zazz’s fixed prices and Dataprise’s published starting prices for a 50-person company.
Example: annual cost for 50 users
Tier level | Zazz annual cost | Dataprise annual cost (from) | Difference per year |
Entry | $60,000 | $61,200 | $1,200 |
Middle | $75,000 | $94,800 | $19,800 |
Top | $90,000 | $126,000 | $36,000 |
Treat these as planning figures. A Dataprise quote depends on your environment, and the tiers don’t contain identical services, which the next section breaks down. Even so, the middle-tier difference is close to $20,000 a year that stays available for hardware refreshes, projects or training.
Zazz vs Dataprise: what’s included at each tier
Tier prices only compare cleanly once you know what sits inside each bundle. This table shows the tier where each comparable service first appears, based on Zazz’s plan details and Dataprise’s published plan descriptions.
Service | Zazz | Dataprise |
24/7 helpdesk and end-user support | Essential | IT Foundation (enhanced help desk in IT Fortify) |
Remote monitoring and device management | Essential | IT Foundation |
Backup and recovery | Essential (SaaS backup and recovery) | IT Foundation (managed data backups) |
Endpoint security | Essential | IT Foundation |
Security awareness training | Essential | IT Foundation |
24/7 SOC monitoring | Essential (24/7 SOC monitoring and MDR) | IT Foundation |
SIEM | Essential | IT Fortify (with threat hunting and vulnerability scanning) |
Strategic CIO advisory | Professional | Offered as a separate IT consulting service |
Business continuity planning and DR testing | Professional (crisis management and business continuity) | IT Comply (annual disaster recovery test) |
Compliance reporting | Professional (governance and compliance reporting), Enterprise (audit-ready reporting) | IT Comply (gap assessment and monthly compliance reviews) |
vCISO | Enterprise (advisory and security program oversight) | IT Foundation (quarterly review), IT Fortify (monthly review) |
Penetration testing | Enterprise (annual external test) | IT Fortify (annual test) |
Laid out this way, the pattern is easy to read. Both providers put 24/7 SOC monitoring in their entry plans, and Zazz Essential also includes MDR and SIEM, which Dataprise adds at IT Fortify. From there, Zazz puts senior leadership on the account sooner, so a CIO-level advisor joins at $125 per user.
Essential also covers the IT lifecycle work that tends to land on an office manager or COO when nobody owns IT:
- Employee onboarding and offboarding
- Device procurement
- Asset tracking and inventory management
- Software license and subscription management
- Employee productivity analytics and performance reporting
- Email security, anti-phishing protection and domain authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC)
Because 24/7 SOC monitoring, MDR and SIEM are already part of Essential and run by our managed security services team, a company whose auditor, insurer or board expects continuous monitoring doesn’t need to move up a tier to get it.
Contracts, onboarding and flexibility
Contract terms are one of the clearest differences in Zazz vs Dataprise. Zazz agreements run from month-to-month to annual, you pick the term, and no plan has a minimum seat count or an onboarding fee. Dataprise’s published prices assume an annual term, and it offers discounts for multi-year commitments.
A multi-year discount makes sense if you’re confident about the next three years. Most companies with 20 to 500 employees aren’t. Headcount shifts after a funding round, an acquisition or a reorganization, and an MSP contract that can’t flex with it becomes a cost line nobody can fix until renewal. We’d rather keep clients because the service holds up, and most of ours stay long-term on flexible terms.
Onboarding at Zazz starts within 5 to 7 business days of signing, and most mid-sized clients are fully transitioned in 2 to 4 weeks. The transition covers:
- An environment audit with credential and asset inventory
- Backup and patch management validation
- A security risk assessment
- Documentation of your systems, policies and access controls
- SLA alignment and setup of monitoring and ticketing
After that, critical tickets get a first response in under 10 minutes on average. You receive monthly reports on ticket volumes, resolution times, patch status, uptime and SLA compliance, plus strategic recommendations at each quarterly review.
Security and compliance depth
In a Zazz vs Dataprise security comparison, two things matter most: how the provider protects its own access to your systems, and how much of your compliance work it will carry.
On the first point, Zazz holds ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certification, along with ISO 20000 for IT service management and ISO 9001 for quality management. An MSP holds admin credentials across your environment, so your auditor will ask for its security reports during vendor risk review. Having current reports ready keeps that step short.
On the second, Zazz supports clients working toward HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 with technical controls, monitoring, policy templates, user training and audit preparation through its governance, risk and compliance services. At the Enterprise tier, that becomes active compliance management with audit-ready reporting, an annual external penetration test and continuous dark web monitoring for exposed credentials.
Dataprise has real depth on security as well. It reports monitoring around 4 billion cyber events a day, runs incident response and framework assessment services, and appears on MSSP Alert’s Top 250 MSSP list. For a mid-sized company whose main pressure is passing an audit on schedule, Zazz puts more of that compliance work inside the per-user fee, and at a lower price at every tier.
vCIO and vCISO access: review cadence versus program ownership
Both providers include security leadership in their plans, and they package it differently. Dataprise includes a quarterly vCISO review in IT Foundation and a monthly review in IT Fortify, and IT Comply adds a monthly compliance report review with the vCISO. Those reviews give you a regular read on your security posture.
Zazz separates strategic leadership into two roles. Professional, at $125 per user, adds strategic IT leadership and CIO advisory: roadmap planning, technology assessments, vendor and budget guidance, and executive reviews. Enterprise, at $150, adds a vCISO who oversees the security program itself, alongside active compliance management. You can see how the advisory side works on our virtual CIO services page.
The difference shows up between meetings. A review tells you how things looked at the end of the quarter, while program oversight makes one person accountable for policy changes and audit evidence as they happen. For a company preparing for its first SOC 2 Type II audit, we’d put that ownership ahead of review frequency.
Remote-first support versus local field presence
Dataprise operates offices across the US and offers field services for hands-on repairs and hardware setups. Zazz delivers support remotely by default, 24/7, through email, phone, portal and remote tools, and covers physical work with on-demand onsite support and smart-hands dispatch across the US and Canada under its Custom engagements. That includes onsite hardware such as switches, firewalls, wireless access points and servers, whether they sit in your office, a colocation facility or a hybrid setup.
For a cloud-first company running Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, everyday tickets such as password resets, VPN access and device configuration are resolved remotely through platforms like NinjaOne. Onsite work matters more for businesses with physical infrastructure spread across several sites.
If your operations depend on regular onsite visits across many locations, such as retail branches or clinics, ask any provider for its onsite response time by city and get it written into the SLA before you sign. We’ll give you ours for each of your locations during scoping.
How Zazz fits common buying situations
Most companies weighing Zazz vs Dataprise fall into one of a few situations. Here’s the Zazz plan that fits each one, with the Dataprise plan you’d most likely be quoted alongside it.
Your situation | Zazz plan | Comparable Dataprise plan | What changes for you |
20 to 150 employees, no internal IT, need the helpdesk and device lifecycle handled | Essential, $100 | IT Foundation, from $102 | 24/7 SOC, MDR and SIEM plus onboarding, procurement and license management included at a similar price |
Growing team that needs an IT roadmap and vendor management | Professional, $125 | IT Fortify, from $158 | CIO advisory and vendor management included for $33 less per user |
Preparing for SOC 2, HIPAA or a customer security review | Enterprise, $150 | IT Comply, from $210 | vCISO program oversight, audit-ready reporting and an annual external pen test for $60 less per user |
Internal IT team that needs after-hours cover or extra hands | Custom (co-managed) | Co-managed plans | Coverage scoped around your team, including nearshore or offshore staff |
Headcount likely to change after funding or an acquisition | Any tier, month-to-month | Annual term | Add or remove users without waiting for renewal |
Illustrative example (not a client case): An 80-person healthcare billing company in Nashville is preparing for its first HIPAA risk assessment and has a two-person internal IT team. It needs audit-ready reporting, a vCISO to own the security program, and overnight coverage so its own staff aren’t on call every night. At the top published tiers, Zazz Enterprise comes to $144,000 a year and Dataprise IT Comply starts at $201,600. The company pairs Zazz Enterprise with a co-managed arrangement: its two IT staff keep ownership of the billing platform, and Zazz runs the helpdesk overnight and on weekends. The $57,600 starting-price gap gives it room in the budget to scope that coverage properly.
Questions to ask any MSP before you sign
Whichever provider you choose, these questions surface the costs and gaps a pricing page won’t show:
- What’s the per-user price at our actual headcount, and what term length does it assume?
- Which security services are in the fee, and which are add-ons, such as SOC monitoring, SIEM, MDR or penetration testing?
- Who is our named contact, and how quickly do escalations reach a senior engineer?
- What are the first-response targets for critical tickets, and how are they reported each month?
- Are there onboarding or setup fees?
- Can we review your own SOC 2 Type II report or ISO 27001 certificate?
- What are the exit terms, and how are documentation and credentials handed back if we leave?
We answer all seven in writing during scoping, and you should expect the same from every provider on your list.
Talk through your quote with a Zazz IT advisor
If you’re weighing Zazz vs Dataprise proposals now, talk to an IT advisor and bring the quote you have, from Dataprise or any other MSP, to a 30-minute IT setup review. We’ll map it against our tiers line by line, show you what’s excluded, and tell you plainly if our model isn’t the right fit. There’s no commitment.
Frequently asked questions
Is Zazz a good Dataprise alternative?
Yes, especially for companies with 20 to 500 employees. Zazz runs managed IT and security in three per-user plans, with 24/7 SOC monitoring, MDR and SIEM from the first tier, CIO advisory from Professional, terms from month-to-month to annual, and SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification for its own operations.
How much does Dataprise cost per user?
Dataprise publishes starting prices of $102 per user per month for IT Foundation, $158 for IT Fortify and $210 for IT Comply. Prices rise with team size and add-ons. Its co-managed plan sheet lists $102, $144 and $167 per user, based on 300 users and a one-year term.
How much does Zazz managed IT cost per user?
Zazz charges a fixed fee per user per month: $100 for Essential, $125 for Professional and $150 for Enterprise. Each fee includes the tools and platforms for that tier, with no seat minimums or onboarding fees. Custom engagements cover projects, co-managed IT and onsite support across the US and Canada.
How do Zazz and Dataprise plans compare?
Both providers offer three per-user tiers, and the difference sits in what each tier contains. Zazz Essential includes 24/7 SOC monitoring, MDR and SIEM. Professional adds CIO advisory and vendor management, and Enterprise adds vCISO program oversight and an annual external penetration test. Compare inclusions at the tier you’d actually buy.
Does Zazz require a long-term contract?
No. Agreements run from month-to-month to annual, with no seat minimums or onboarding fees. Onboarding starts within 5 to 7 business days of signing, and most mid-sized clients are fully transitioned within 2 to 4 weeks. A dedicated Delivery Manager is the single point of contact from day one.
Does Zazz include vCIO and vCISO services?
Yes. Strategic IT leadership and CIO advisory are included from the Professional tier at $125 per user per month. The Enterprise tier at $150 adds vCISO advisory and security program oversight, active compliance management, an annual external penetration test and continuous dark web monitoring.
Can Zazz work alongside an internal IT team?
Yes. Through Custom engagements, Zazz provides co-managed or partial IT support, after-hours and holiday coverage, on-demand onsite smart-hands across the US and Canada, and dedicated nearshore or offshore teams that work with your existing staff and escalation workflows.
Does Zazz support companies in Canada?
Yes. Zazz supports companies across the US and Canada with 24/7 remote support and on-demand onsite smart-hands for hardware such as switches, firewalls, wireless access points and servers, whether they sit in an office, a colocation facility or a hybrid setup.
Zazz vs Dataprise: which suits a mid-sized company better?
For most companies with 20 to 500 employees, Zazz is the stronger fit: security operations from the first tier, CIO advisory in the middle tier, vCISO program oversight at Enterprise, flexible terms and a dedicated Delivery Manager. Companies that need frequent onsite visits at many sites should confirm onsite response times by city with any provider.
