What Is Managed IT and Does a Small Business Need It?

Managed IT in one paragraph

With managed IT, an outside company takes ongoing responsibility for some or all of your technology for a monthly fee. They keep Windows, Office and your website updated, make sure backups run and can be restored, watch for security problems, set up and remove user accounts, and answer your team's questions when something goes wrong. The aim is fewer problems, not just faster fixes. The alternative, break-fix, is calling someone only when something has already gone wrong and paying for their time.

What a managed IT service usually includes

• Patching and updates for Windows, macOS, Microsoft 365 apps, browsers and, for websites, the CMS, plugins and themes.
• Backups of devices, file shares and cloud data such as Microsoft 365 mail and OneDrive, with test restores.
• Monitoring: website uptime, failed backups, security alerts, disk space, expiring domains and SSL certificates.
• Security basics: MFA on every account, antivirus or Microsoft Defender, Conditional Access, phishing filtering.
• User management: setting up new starters, removing leavers, password resets, licence changes.
• A helpdesk your staff can contact when Outlook stops syncing, a printer disappears or Teams will not join a call.
• Advice on what to buy and when to replace kit.

Not every plan includes everything, so check what is covered and what is billed as extra.

Managed IT vs break-fix

Break-fix looks cheaper until something serious happens, such as a ransomware attack with no working backup, or a website that has not been updated for two years and gets hacked. Managed IT spreads the cost and makes the bad days less likely.

How to tell if you need it

You probably need managed IT if any of these sound familiar:

• Nobody is sure whether backups are working, or when they were last tested.
• Staff set up their own laptops and some still have admin rights.
• MFA is on for some accounts but not others.
• When someone leaves, their account stays active for weeks.
• The website has not been updated since it was built.
• You lose time each week fixing small IT problems yourself.

If your business is a sole trader with a laptop and Gmail, ad-hoc help is probably enough. Our guide on how to choose an IT support company covers the questions to ask either way.

What to check before you sign

Whichever provider you choose, ask a few questions first. Is the price fixed, or does it change with users and devices? What is the hourly rate for work beyond the plan? How long is the minimum term? Most importantly, will your Microsoft 365 tenant, domain and backups stay in your business's name, with your own admin login? If a provider holds all the keys, leaving later is slow and expensive. A good managed IT company should also give you a short written record of what it manages: users, devices, licences, backups and key settings, so nothing depends on one person's memory.

dijitul's managed plans

Our plans are simple and published:

• Essential, £25 a month + VAT: updates applied and checked, daily backups, uptime monitoring and security monitoring.
• Business, £50 a month + VAT: everything in Essential plus 1 hour of fixes or changes each month and priority support.
• Complete, £99 a month + VAT: everything in Business with 3 hours each month, plus IT and Microsoft 365 helpdesk support for your team.

Work beyond your included hours, or for businesses without a plan, is £45 an hour + VAT. Most support is remote; anything that needs a site visit is quoted upfront. Read more on managed IT services and IT helpdesk, or compare plans.

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