Managed IT
A plain explanation of what an MSP does day to day, what should be included in an agreement, and how managed IT differs from break-fix support.
Reviewed 2026-08-01 by the Machina IT engineering team.
A managed service provider takes ongoing responsibility for a company's technology: monitoring systems, patching and maintaining them, supporting employees, managing security and backups, coordinating vendors, and planning upgrades. The relationship is continuous and priced monthly, rather than being called in after something breaks.
The scope document matters more than the feature list. It should say what is included, what is a billable project, what the response commitments are, who owns after-hours coverage, and what happens to your documentation and administrative credentials if the relationship ends.
Ask specifically whether security tooling, Microsoft 365 data protection, onsite visits and vendor management are included, because these are the common exclusions.
One internal generalist covers a lot of ground but cannot be an expert in help desk, servers, networking, security and strategy at the same time — and cannot cover vacation, illness or 2am.
The realistic comparison is not MSP versus employee; it is what mix of both gives the business coverage. Co-managed arrangements exist for exactly this reason.
Common mistakes
Common questions
Not always month to month, but it is predictable, and it removes the incentive problem where a provider earns more when things break.
Commonly annual with monthly billing. What matters more is the termination and data-handover language.
We review your network, security posture, cloud tenant and recovery plan, then hand you a plain-language report of what we found and what it means for the business.
