Every term, with what it costs.
Managed IT is explained in a hundred glossaries and priced in almost none of them. Every entry here carries a figure.
- Managed service provider (MSP)An outside company you pay a recurring monthly fee to look after your technology, instead of calling someone and paying by the hour when something breaks.
- Managed IT servicesA bundle of ongoing IT work sold for a flat recurring fee, typically covering help desk, monitoring, patching and account administration.
- MSP pricing modelsThe four common ways managed IT is billed: per user, per device, tiered packages, and flat-rate all-inclusive.
- Per-user IT pricingBilling a flat monthly amount for each employee, covering every device and account that person uses.
- Per-device IT pricingBilling for each endpoint under management rather than each person, typically $50 to $150 per device per month.
- Flat-rate IT supportA fixed recurring fee covering an agreed scope of IT work, with no per-ticket or hourly charges inside that scope.
- Break-fix IT supportPaying an hourly or per-incident rate only when something goes wrong, with no ongoing fee or responsibility.
- Monthly minimumThe floor a provider charges regardless of headcount, because per-seat tooling costs money before anyone answers a ticket.
- IT help deskThe staffed function that answers and resolves day-to-day technology problems for employees.
- Service level agreement (SLA)The written commitment to how fast a provider will respond, and what happens if they do not.
- Remote monitoring and management (RMM)The agent software a provider installs on each machine to see its health, push updates and start remote sessions.
- Patch managementThe scheduled process of testing and applying operating system and software updates across every machine in a company.
- Endpoint managementKeeping every device an employee works on configured, updated, protected and supported.
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR)Security software that watches for suspicious behaviour on a device and can isolate it, going beyond signature-based antivirus.
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)Requiring a second proof of identity beyond a password, usually a code or a prompt on a phone.
- Delegated administrationGranting an IT provider administrative access to your cloud tenant without handing over your own account or password.
- Microsoft 365 tenantYour organisation's own instance of Microsoft 365, containing all your users, licences, mailboxes and settings.
- Employee onboarding and offboardingCreating and removing an employee's accounts, licences, devices and access when they join or leave.
- Co-managed ITAn arrangement where an outside provider works alongside internal IT staff rather than replacing them.
- Network monitoringContinuously checking that switches, access points, firewalls and internet circuits are reachable and healthy, and alerting when they are not.
- Firewall rulesThe ordered list of permissions deciding what network traffic is allowed in and out of a business.
- Site-to-site VPNAn encrypted permanent tunnel joining two office networks so devices at each site can reach the other directly.