Decision guide
Break-fix vs managed IT support
Break-fix is cheaper when almost nothing breaks and nothing you run is critical. It stops being cheaper the moment downtime has a cost, because the model gives the provider no incentive to prevent the problem and gives you an incentive to delay calling. For most businesses with more than about fifteen staff, the arithmetic has already turned.
What is actually being compared
- Break-fix
- You call when something breaks and pay for the time and parts. No ongoing relationship or commitment.
- Managed IT
- A fixed monthly contract to keep things working, with prevention and monitoring built in.
Side by side
How they differ in practice
| Feature | Feature | Break-fix | Managed IT |
|---|---|---|---|
Incentive alignment | Provider earns more when things break | Provider earns the same whether or not things break | |
Prevention | None, it is unbilled work | Core of the contract | |
Your incentive to call | Delay to avoid cost | Call immediately, it is included | |
Cost predictability | Unpredictable, worst in a bad month | Fixed monthly | |
Knowledge of your setup | Rebuilt each visit, often a different technician | Documented and retained | |
Response time | Whenever they are free | Contracted | |
Security posture | Nobody is responsible for it | Owned and reported |
Break-fix is defensible if
- You are very small, under about ten people, with no server, no compliance obligation and a tolerance for being offline for a day.
- Your critical systems are entirely somebody else responsibility, for example a fully hosted platform your supplier operates.
The point it stops working
- When you have anything that stops the business: a billing counter, a production system, a booking platform.
- When you hold customer or patient data, because nobody being responsible for security is a decision rather than an absence of one.
- When you find yourself calling monthly, at which point you are paying managed-contract money without any of the prevention.
When the other option is right
For a genuinely small operation, a managed contract can be more than the business needs, and we would rather quote an AMC or nothing than sell one. The honest test is whether an outage costs you money on the day it happens.
Before you decide, get these numbers
- Add up what you actually spent on break-fix over the last twelve months, including parts, emergency call-outs and any weekend rates. Most businesses have never totalled it and are surprised.
- Add the cost of the downtime around those incidents. Not the invoice, the hours people could not work.
- Count how many times the same problem recurred. Repeat faults are the clearest signal that nobody is being paid to fix causes.
- Check the basics nobody is currently responsible for: MFA coverage, backup restore testing, patch status, and whether any former employee still has access.
- If the totals are close, choose managed IT anyway. The variance is the argument, not the average, and the bad year is the one that matters.
Questions
Common questions
Still deciding?
Talk it through with an engineer, not a salesperson
Tell us your situation and we will tell you which option fits, including when that is not us. Initial reply within 4 business hours.