Managed IT
What a managed IT provider does.
The plain version, for owners who have better things to learn about.
The short version
A managed IT provider is the IT department a small business doesn't have. You pay a predictable amount; someone keeps the systems running, watched, backed up, and planned — and answers the phone when something breaks.
What that covers
Seven jobs. We've done every one of them since 2018.
- Keeping computers working
- Keeping the wrong people out
- Keeping copies of everything, and proving they restore
- Keeping email, phones, and Wi-Fi up
- Keeping servers and cloud accounts patched and tidy
- Buying the right equipment and retiring the old
- Running Microsoft 365 properly
- Planning the year and answering the insurer
Managed versus break-fix
Break-fix
You call when something breaks. You pay by the hour. Nobody is looking between calls.
Managed
Someone is looking between calls. You pay a set amount. Most problems are fixed before you notice them.
Neither is wrong. Break-fix suits a business with two computers and no data it would miss. Past that, it gets expensive in ways that don't show up on an invoice.
What a managed IT provider is not
- Not a software vendor. We don't earn commissions on what we recommend.
- Not the cable company. We can deal with them for you, but we don't own the lines.
- Not a compliance certificate. We can get you ready for one; we can't issue it.
- Not a substitute for the owner's judgment about the business.
How to tell if you need one
- You're the person everyone calls when something breaks.
- Nobody has tested a backup restore in living memory.
- You can't say which machines are still on Windows 10.
- The insurance renewal questionnaire took a weekend of guessing.
- You find out about problems from your clients.
How it's usually priced
Most providers charge monthly, either per user or per device. Per-user pricing follows the person and covers everything they touch; per-device pricing follows the machine. Either way, the monthly amount typically includes monitoring, helpdesk, patching, and backups. Projects, hardware, and software licenses are usually extra, quoted before the work starts.
What Watchman charges: [Pricing pending]
How we do it
We start by mapping what you have, then we put the watch in place around it. After that, the alerts come to us and you get one plain-English page a month.