We sell managed IT, so treat this with the scepticism it deserves. But the argument for it does not need scare statistics about ransomware, and we are not going to use any. It rests on something duller: the cost of reactive IT is real, it is just invisible until you add it up.
Break-fix looks cheaper because the cost is hidden
Under a reactive model you pay when something breaks. Nothing breaks for a while, so it feels free. Then a server drive fails on a Tuesday, and the invoice for the callout is the smallest part of what that day cost you.
The real cost is the eight people who could not work, the orders that did not go out, and the two days spent rebuilding something from a backup that turned out to be four months stale. None of that appears on the IT invoice, which is exactly why the reactive model keeps looking affordable.
What the options actually cost
| Approach | What you get | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency callout | One incident, after the fact | $200–$500 |
| "The one who's good with computers" | An employee doing IT instead of their job | Hidden |
| Part-time IT contractor | Available when not at their other client | $2,000+/mo |
| Full-time IT hire | Everything, plus benefits and cover | $6,000+/mo |
| Managed IT (up to 10 users) | Helpdesk, monitoring, patching, backups, M365 | $199/mo |
The third row is the one most small businesses are actually on without realising. Someone in the office is the de facto IT person because they are willing, and the cost is that they are not doing the job you hired them for — while the actual IT work still gets done at whatever standard one busy non-specialist can manage.
What managed IT actually covers
- Helpdesk — anyone on your team can call or email about anything, with no per-incident charge to argue about.
- Proactive monitoring — failing drives, full disks and suspicious sign-ins are flagged before they become downtime.
- Security patching — every device kept current, on a schedule, without anyone having to remember.
- Backup management — configured, monitored, and restore-tested, which is the part that gets skipped.
- Microsoft 365 administration — accounts, email, Teams, licensing, MFA enforcement.
- Onboarding and offboarding — new starters working on day one, leavers fully revoked the same day.
Where the risk actually is, for a business your size
Not sophisticated targeted attacks. For a business under twenty-five people the realistic failure modes are mundane, and all four are housekeeping problems:
- A machine two years behind on updates.
- A password reused across a dozen services, one of which has been breached.
- A former employee whose account was never actually disabled.
- A backup that has been silently failing since spring.
Why a fixed fee changes behaviour
Per-incident billing has a side effect nobody intends: staff stop reporting things. If every call costs money, people work around the broken printer and put up with the laptop that takes ten minutes to boot, and you hear about the failing drive when it fails rather than when it started warning.
A fixed monthly fee removes the hesitation. Everything gets reported, problems surface early, and the provider's incentive flips — a stable environment is now in their interest too, because chaos costs them margin rather than earning it.
Signs you are ready for it
- Three or more people who cannot do their jobs when tech fails.
- Tech problems interrupting work more than about once a month.
- You store customer data — names, emails, payment details.
- You use Microsoft 365 with nobody really administering it.
- Nobody can say with confidence when a backup was last restored successfully.
And when it is not worth it
If you are three people on laptops, everything is in Microsoft 365, there is no server and nothing has broken in a year, a managed plan is probably not the right spend. Ad-hoc support when you need it will serve you fine.
We will tell you that at the assessment rather than selling you a plan. A contract sold to a business that does not need one gets cancelled in six months, and we would rather have the smaller honest relationship that lasts.