Pay-as-you-go IT support looks cheaper because there’s no monthly bill. Managed IT support looks more expensive because there is. Over a full year, the picture is often the other way round, because the real cost of IT isn’t the invoice. It’s the downtime, the lost data and the security incidents that happen when nobody is looking after your systems. Here’s a fair comparison to help you decide.
How each model works
Pay-as-you-go (break-fix)
You call an IT company when something breaks. They fix it and bill you for the time, often with a minimum charge or call-out fee. Between calls, nobody monitors your devices, applies updates or checks backups unless you pay for that separately.
Managed IT support
You pay a fixed monthly fee, usually per device or per user, and the provider takes responsibility for keeping your systems healthy. That normally includes a helpdesk with no per-ticket charges, 24/7 monitoring, managed updates, security tools and Microsoft 365 management. Our managed IT support starts at £23 per device per month, excluding VAT.
Side by side
| Pay-as-you-go | Managed IT | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | None, but unpredictable bills | Fixed, per device or user |
| Who prevents problems? | Nobody | Your provider, through monitoring and maintenance |
| Security tools | Usually bought separately | Usually included |
| Response when something breaks | When an engineer is free | Prioritised under your agreement |
| Knowledge of your set-up | Starts from scratch each time | Documented and familiar |
| Incentive | Paid more when things break | Paid the same, so prevention pays |
That last row matters more than it looks. A break-fix provider earns more when your systems fail. A managed provider earns the same either way, so every problem it prevents saves it time. The incentives point in opposite directions.
The costs that don’t appear on the invoice
- Downtime. If five people can’t work for half a day while a fault is diagnosed, that’s 20 lost working hours, often more than the repair bill.
- Repeat problems. Without a record of your set-up, the same issue is often fixed the same way several times.
- Security gaps. Missed updates, no MFA and untested backups don’t cost anything until the day they cost a lot. The UK Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 found that 43% of businesses had experienced a breach or attack in the previous year.
- Your time. Someone in the business ends up acting as the IT person, chasing suppliers and resetting passwords.
A worked example over a year
Take a hypothetical eight-person office. On pay-as-you-go it has a quiet year with a handful of call-outs: a printer, a new starter, a slow laptop. Then a disk fails in the file server with no recent backup, and the office loses most of two days while data is recovered, on top of the emergency bill. On a managed plan at £28 per device, the same office would pay £224 a month plus VAT. The failing disk would have been flagged by monitoring and replaced out of hours, and backups would have been checked every day.
Not every year contains a disaster, which is exactly why pay-as-you-go can feel cheaper. Managed IT is partly insurance, and partly the steady improvements that come from someone being responsible for your systems all year.
When pay-as-you-go makes sense
It’s a reasonable choice if all of these are true:
- You have one or two computers and very simple needs.
- Your important data is in Microsoft 365 or another cloud service, and it’s backed up.
- You’re comfortable switching on MFA and updates yourself.
- A day without IT wouldn’t seriously hurt the business.
When managed IT makes sense
- You have three or more staff relying on their computers every day.
- You hold client data, take card payments or handle money.
- Clients, insurers or tenders ask you about security.
- You’re growing and keep adding people, laptops and software.
- Nobody in the business wants to be the IT person.
A middle way
If you have someone in-house who enjoys IT, co-managed support gives them a team behind them: our monitoring and security tools, specialist knowledge and holiday cover, while they stay focused on the day-to-day work that needs someone on site.
Find out which is right for you
Our free IT review looks at your devices, backups, security and how much your team depends on IT, then recommends the model that fits, even if that’s pay-as-you-go. Book a free IT review or read how much IT support costs in Kent.