The first question anyone asks about managed IT is what it costs. The second question — the one that actually decides things — is what that number covers, and it usually gets answered with a PDF of forty bullet points where everything sounds included and nothing is specific.
We think the second question deserves a straight answer, so here is how we'd break it down for anyone comparing providers, including if you never speak to us.
Managed IT is six areas, not forty bullets
Almost everything a provider does falls into one of six areas. Any proposal you're reading can be sorted into these, and the sorting is more useful than the bullet list it came from.
- Identity & Access. Who has an account, what they can reach, and how that ends the day they leave. Multi-factor authentication, admin account control, the joiner-mover-leaver process.
- Devices & Endpoints. The computers people actually work on — monitored, patched, protected, inventoried, and replaced on a plan rather than when they die.
- Email Security. The single most common way money leaves a small business. Filtering, impersonation protection, and the controls that catch a changed bank detail before finance acts on it.
- Backup & Recovery. Not whether backups run. Whether someone has restored from them on purpose, how long it took, and what the plan is when the answer needs to be fast.
- Support & Response. Who picks up, what they can actually resolve, and whether the person on the other end has seen your environment before.
- Network & Infrastructure. The wireless, the firewall, the switches, and the server if you have one. This is the area most likely to sit outside a small-business agreement, and the one most likely to be assumed inside it.
If a proposal doesn't let you sort it into six areas, that's not a formatting problem. It's a scope problem.
What's usually not in the number, and should be said out loud
A flat rate covers the ongoing work. It does not usually cover the one-time work, and there is nothing wrong with that split — it's how the number stays predictable. What matters is whether the split is written down before you sign or discovered afterward.
Typically outside the monthly figure:
- Projects and migrations. Moving to a new system, a new office, or a new platform is scoped and quoted on its own.
- Initial setup and onboarding. Getting your environment into a managed state is real work with a real cost.
- Hardware. The computers themselves, and usually the licences that run on them.
- On-site visits and after-hours work, if your agreement is built around remote support during business hours.
None of that is a catch. All of it is a conversation you'd rather have in week one than month four.
The thing to compare is the pricing mechanism, not the price
Two providers can quote similar figures and mean completely different things, because what they price on differs. Some price per user. Some price per device. Some price on the environment as a whole.
That distinction matters more than the number, because it decides what happens next year. Ask what can move the bill. If the answer includes anything other than your environment genuinely changing — more computers, a new location, a system you didn't have before — you'll be having that conversation again.
Any lever that changes your cost without your environment changing is a lever you'll eventually be negotiating.
It's also why headcount is a poor proxy. A ten-person firm running entirely on laptops and Microsoft 365 is a fundamentally simpler thing to manage than a ten-person shop with a server, two locations, and a line-of-business application that has to stay running. Same headcount, different work. Complexity sets the number, not how many people you employ — and a provider who quotes off headcount alone hasn't looked at what they're taking on.
What to ask for before you sign anything
Whoever you're talking to — us or anyone else — ask to see these written down. Documents are more useful than answers here, for both sides. Putting it on paper is what surfaces the assumptions, and it gives you something to hold everyone to later.
- The six areas, with a line through the ones that aren't included. An honest proposal has exclusions on it. One that appears to include everything is either expensive or vague.
- The pricing mechanism. Per user, per device, or per environment — and what specifically triggers a change.
- What onboarding covers and what it costs. Separately from the monthly figure.
- The support boundary. Which hours, which channels, remote or on-site, and what falls outside.
- Your named engineer and your escalation contact. Both names, on day one, not discovered during an incident.
- The exit. Notice period, what you're handed back, and who holds your documentation and admin credentials while the agreement runs. If the answer to that last one is "we do," you don't have a provider, you have a dependency.
Why an IT company would tell you to do this yourself
Because a business that understands what it's buying is a better client and a better partner — and because most of what goes wrong in these relationships traces back to a scope conversation nobody had. We'd rather have it in week one.
A few items on that list will help you argue for keeping IT in-house, or for staying with your current provider and just tightening the agreement. Those are fine outcomes. The comparison is worth doing properly either way, and it costs us nothing when someone does it well.
If you want the six areas mapped against what you're actually running today, that's what our free IT risk review produces — thirty minutes, then a one-page findings report on your security, backup, and support gaps plus an inventory of your environment. Frequently it's the first complete one an organization has ever had. It's yours to keep whether or not we ever speak again.
For the wider view on what drives the figure itself, we cover that in how much managed IT services cost. If your setup is genuinely simple — laptops, Microsoft 365, one location, no server — the shape of the answer is different, and that's small business IT support. And if you already have someone internal and don't want to replace them, co-managed IT is the arrangement worth reading about first.
We're a veteran-owned team in the Denver metro, working with organizations in the 15-to-70 person range — nonprofits, professional services, and manufacturers. Senior engineers only, month-to-month, no multi-year lock-in.
So: if you pulled up your current agreement right now, could you tell which of the six areas it covers — and which one everybody has been assuming?
Book a free IT risk review or call us at 720-794-0400.