Managed IT services: what’s included — and what you actually need

Managed IT services are not a bundle you must buy whole. What the term covers, the baseline every company needs, and what is upsell. Test your IT free.

Every month an invoice arrives: “Managed IT services — monthly fee.” It gets paid, because the computers work and the e-mail flows. What exactly is inside that line item, nobody in the company really knows — and fair enough. It’s handled.

Except half of what gets sold as “managed IT” you may not need. And the most important item is often missing.

This is not a catalogue. It is a guide for owners and managing directors who want to know what they are paying for — written by an IT company that will talk you out of part of its own catalogue.

What hides under “managed IT services”

Devices and users. New laptops ready for day one, updates, troubleshooting, accounts created for joiners — and, crucially, closed for leavers. This is the core. Every company with more than a handful of computers needs it.

E-mail and Microsoft 365. Mail, shared documents, Teams, licences. And the configuration that stops strangers from writing in your name: out of 262 companies in our free audit, 191 had misconfigured e-mail (SPF, DKIM or DMARC). Seven in ten. That is precisely the gap through which the fake invoice that looks like yours arrives.

Servers and cloud. Company data, accounting, shared drives. Most smaller companies today need no server in the office at all — cloud is cheaper and safer at that size. Whoever proposes one should be able to say why you specifically need it.

Backups. A backup nobody has ever restored from is not a backup — it is a feeling. Ask when the last restore test ran.

Security. From the basics (updates, strong passwords, two-factor authentication) to advanced tooling. This is also where the most overselling happens — more below.

Helpdesk. A number your people can call, with a real response time. In Prague, ideally in English and Czech.

And one thing that usually does not belong under managed IT, even though companies expect it: your website and marketing. Different craft. An IT provider keeps the domain, certificate and hosting healthy; it does not design your site.

The baseline every company needs

Regardless of size or industry: updates for everything (not just Windows), backups with a tested restore, two-factor authentication at least for e-mail and banking, order in accounts and access, and one phone number your people know. That’s it. A ten-person company with this baseline is better off than a corporation with twenty security tools and no restore test.

What most smaller companies don’t need

An office server (cloud handles it), 24/7 monitoring (unless you run three shifts), an “enterprise security bundle” whose alerts nobody reads. If a provider pushes an item they cannot explain in one sentence with an example from your own operations, strike it. A good provider tells you what you don’t need — it is where we like to start.

Three typical companies — and what they actually need

An office of 10, everything in the cloud. Laptops, Microsoft 365, accounting as a service. Needs: device and account management, a tidy M365 tenant, backup of cloud data (yes, cloud needs backing up too — a file deleted 90 days ago is gone for good), two-factor authentication, a helpdesk. Does not need: a server, expensive networking, 24/7 monitoring. This is the cheapest type of company to manage — and precisely where the most unnecessary extras get sold.

A manufacturer of 40, two shifts. Offices plus machines with computers that “must not be touched”. Needs everything the office needs, plus thought-through exceptions for production machines (if they cannot be updated, they must at least be separated from the rest of the network), backups with tested restores — an hour of stopped production is expensive — and clarity about who physically shows up when the warehouse network dies. This is where a local Prague provider earns its keep.

A services firm of 80, three branches. The main topic is identity and access: who can reach what from where, how fast the account of a salesperson who left on Friday gets closed, how people work securely from home. Plus one helpdesk for all branches — 90 % of issues are solved remotely, nobody should wait “until IT drives over”. This type of company gets the most value per crown from professional IT management.

How managed services are packaged in contracts

Three usual forms. A monthly flat fee for ongoing management — routine, monitoring, helpdesk. An hourly rate for one-off work beyond scope. A fixed-price project for bigger changes: office moves, cloud migration, a new branch. A healthy contract combines all three and makes clear where each item belongs. An unhealthy one has a single sentence — “IT services as required by the client” — and an argument over every invoice.

What it costs

A sensible flat fee follows your device and user count. Our prices are not hidden behind “request a quote”: build your services in the online calculator and see the figure for your headcount and devices instantly. No surprises. Full stop.

How to spot dead weight in your current invoice

Take last month’s IT invoice and run it through this sieve. Items nobody in the company understands. “L2 infrastructure management” can mean anything — ask for a one-sentence explanation with an example from last month. Services for things you no longer have. A classic: monitoring for the server that moved to the cloud a year ago. Licences for people who left. Paid for years, used by nobody. “Security” without specifics. If a line item cannot answer “what exactly do you watch, and what happened last month”, it is decoration. With an audit result in hand (below), this is an hour of work — and it often pays for itself on the first invoice.

How to find out what you need

You don’t need a consultant for half a day. Start with what is visible from the outside: run the free online audit — 13 checks, 5 minutes, no meeting. Leaked passwords, e-mail configuration, exposed services. With the result in hand, you lead the next “managed services” conversation. Not the salesperson across the table.

Frequently asked questions

Can we keep part of IT in-house?

Yes — the most common model combines an internal IT person (who knows the business) with an external team carrying the routine and the cover. The split that works: internal for priorities and projects, external for updates, backups, monitoring and helpdesk.

What should a managed services contract contain as a minimum?

A written scope (included/excluded), a defined response time, per-device or per-user pricing, access documentation rules, and an exit procedure. Missing any of these is negotiating debt for later.

Do managed services make sense if everything currently works?

“Everything works” describes today — it says nothing about backups, unpatched holes or accounts of former employees. The oldest problems we find in audits come precisely from companies where everything had “worked” for years. Checking takes five minutes and costs nothing — and the result gives you the evidence to open that conversation with your current provider.