IT Managed Services Pricing Models
Value-Based
This is a flat-fee model that includes all of the Toronto managed IT services provider’s (MSP) offerings in one services package at one price. The MSP determines the price based on the number of end -users and devices at your company.
In other words, with value-based pricing, you get end-to-end IT support services in the form of monitoring, patching, updates, help desk support, and others.
There are no qualitative tiers. The MSP offers a consistent experience for all businesses. The price only varies based on the number of seats the MSP is supporting.
A major benefit of this pricing model is that it’s predictable, so it makes IT budgeting easier.
Per User Per Month
This model may be appealing to businesses with employees using multiple devices. The MSP can offer a set of services for all of those devices (e.g., patching, updates, end-user enrollment, and de-provisioning, etc.) at a simplified per-user price. The price varies based on the number of services you sign onto for each user, but it can range from $125 to $250 per user per month.
Per Device Per Month
This is a monthly fee for each device the business asks the MSP to cover. Though it can get very costly for individually-owned devices such as laptops and phones, it works for managing shared resources such as servers and printers.
Prices vary based on the device itself, for example:
- $300 per server
- $200-300 per firewall
- $50-100 per switch
What’s Included in Managed IT Services Prices?
As you can see, MSP pricing plans can vary quite significantly based on the type of services they’re offering and the end-user/business’ needs. In this section, we’ll examine your options
in terms of the services you can get from MSPs.
Partially Managed IT Services
The basic idea of partially managed IT services is that you defer some tasks (e.g., server management) to the MSP, but take care of other issues internally.
However, this is still an all-inclusive service in the sense that if you select server management, you must get the MSP to manage all of your servers. Why? The main reason is to mitigate risk and eliminate gaps by ensuring all of your assets are leveraging the MSP’s support.
Fully Managed IT Services
With fully managed IT services, you take your hands off the wheel and leave all of your IT with the MSP. This is good for businesses that want to dedicate all of their internal resources to core business tasks, such as product development, generating revenue, etc.
The basic idea of fully managed IT is that MSPs, such as Fusion, essentially function as your IT department. Not only does the MSP deal with break/fix situations as they come (which is very reactive), the MSP will proactively work to find and fix the root-causes for those problems.
The MSP shouldn’t be detached or isolated to one area, like the help desk. Rather, it should be the system administrator that manages your IT infrastructure. It should operate as a system analyst that manages your applications. It should also roadmap future needs and assist with IT procurement. In effect, it’s like ‘IT out-of-the-box.’.
Co-Managed IT Services
If you have a small IT team, you’ll find that one person can’t handle every part of certain IT tasks or functions. For example, network security requires more than a network engineer. It requires a team for monitoring, asset management, etc.
Unfortunately, it’s very expensive to hire specialists for each of those roles, especially because many of these positions are in high demand elsewhere.
However, you can defer those functions (e.g., network security) to a co-managed IT partner such as Fusion. In this case, the MSP will bring an entire team to manage the function, but
at a price equivalent to the cost of one new employee. So, as an example, we have a medium-sized business client with an IT department consisting of 4 people (including the IT director). The IT director was spending a lot of time on system admin work instead of leading the company’s IT plans.This client asked Fusion to manage the system admin tasks and help desk escalation work, i.e., the most time and resource-intensive tasks. In turn, the IT team focused on only IT planning, L1 help desk support, business processes, and ERP.
The basic idea is that you can expand your IT capabilities without necessarily adding to your payroll. However, once more, you should look for an MSP that has the experience to identify which of your business functions are consuming too many of your internal resources.
In turn, the MSP should help you identify areas to outsource based on the maximum value you will generate in terms of productivity, freed-up time, and ROI.
Infrastructure Management
Certain MSPs, including Fusion, also provide managed infrastructure support. Be it a sports arena with 30,000+ seats in need of WiFi or new expansion offices, the MSP will install and manage IT assets there so that your team can function in those locations. See How You Can Generate 2X ROI via Managed IT Services:
- The Ultimate IT Outsourcing Strategy To Increase ROI
- What Exactly Are Managed IT Services?
- The Benefits of Managed IT Services
Are Managed IT Services Costs Worth It?
Let’s say you have the budget to hire a new full-time IT employee. For that cost, you’ll get an expert in a specific field, but with limited time/capacity. On the other hand, you can spend the same amount of money and leverage the benefits of a complete IT team.
Basically, hiring that additional IT person doesn’t necessarily solve your IT headaches. But if
you work with an MSP that covers all of your IT needs, you can take your attention and focus out of IT and put it towards other business priorities.
According to a CompTIA survey, 46% of organizations saved 25-50%+ in annualized IT costs through Managed Services. So, it definitely works, the key is finding the right services/support and pricing model.
For the cost of just one new full-time employee, you can take your attention off IT and put it towards growing your business. Contact Fusion Computing today for a FREE consultation.