I am not sure we have the budget for IT support.

Every business pays for IT; the only question is the currency. Without a provider, the payment is invisible but real: the owner's hours spent troubleshooting (billed, effectively, at the most expensive rate in the company), employee productivity lost to slow machines and recurring glitches, emergency repairs at crisis prices, and the standing risk of one incident (ransomware, a dead server, a compromised email account) whose cost dwarfs years of support fees. 'No IT budget' usually means these costs are simply not being counted.

On the actual numbers: managed IT is priced per user or device, so a small business gets a small bill. Providers offer right-sized plans, and a minimal engagement covering the essentials (monitoring, security, backup, someone to call) costs closer to a utility bill than a salary. Compare that with the two figures worth writing down: what an hour of your own time is worth times the hours you spend on IT, and what a day of full downtime would cost your business. For most companies, those two numbers settle the budget question quickly.

If cash flow is genuinely tight, say so in the first conversation. A good provider would rather start you on a lean plan that covers the fundamentals and grow with you than oversell you today; the essentials-first plan is a normal product, not a favor. What is worth avoiding is the false economy of nothing at all, where the budget conversation gets settled later by the incident instead of by you.