If you have a business that brings in at least 500k/year, 3+ employees, how do you take care of IT?

What value do you see in paying $250 per user per month? Monthly cost covers:

  • onsite+remote support
  • security licensing
  • device management and security licenses
  • network management
  • email/Microsoft365
  • password manager
  • dark web monitoring

Basically for 3 users, $9k per year you outsource Your IT to a competent local IT company.

This is the service we provide. Customers are month to month and not one cancelled in over 5 years. Customers are happy.

I’m curious what this community thinks of this…

Please ask me any questions you might have…. Thank you,

  • RagsZa@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I don’t know. Seems like expensive for what you get?

    If this was like remote DevOps yeah sure.

    But for 3 people you don’t need much if any network management depending on your workflow. You can have a once off setup with a server if needed. You don’t need dark web monitoring. You can use Bitwarden Business for $35 a month for password management. Email and MS365 is once off setup.

    What security licenses?

    And if you scale slightly higher than that you can just hire your own IT staff or even get an intern to do all these things.

    Personally I know a little bit of IT. So I can do all this myself.

    But I suppose this can work for people who are totally oblivious wrt IT.

    • Tolan_Forket_Munlaf@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      You bring up valid points. I’m curious of how many employees you currently have, if you don’t mind me asking.
      What I mean by security licenses Antivirus EDR, Intrusion Detection and Web Filter.
      - A pizza shop with 5 employees, no computers and 1 POS does not have the same requirements AS a insurance company with 5 employees, 5 desktops and 3 laptops, OR a manufacturing company with 5 employees that produces parts for the power grid.
      A good in house IT will cost at least 60k per year and it could be a whole lot more. What if they leave, or go rogue. What do you do when they are on vacation?

      The biggest down side to in house IT is that their “field of view” is extremely narrow compared to a Managed IT Company that services 15+ clients/environments

      Intern IT… I am not saying that this can’t work, BUT in every instance I’ve observed it was a bit of disaster. One specific scenario where the IT person was always the receptionist/assistant and the person changed every 6 months is one of my favorites, as the moment we took over IT, we fixed A LOT of bad IT processes, coincidentally the business grew from 8 to 17 employees

      A business owner that just wants to have a few employees, not grow and keep it all in house, it is doable. If you are a business owner with the mind set of growth, productivity, optimization, delegation and security at the same time, outsourcing IT is a critical and invaluable tool.

      To make my point a pizza shop with 5 employees and 1 POS needs very little IT, yet if the same owner had 30 pizza shops, outsourcing IT in order to streamline across the board, now that is a thing of beauty and productivity.

    • Tolan_Forket_Munlaf@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Outsourcing and delegating always starts to make sense when the owner realizes he is supposed to work ON the business rather than IN the business.

      I apologize if this comes across as sarcastic or rude… here is what I’ve done…
      - I myself drove multiple times until the gas tank was empty, as I wanted to see how many miles I can drive on a full tank. Only once I had spare gas in my trunk.
      - another time I drove for over over a week, with a nail in my tire, I was pushing it :)

      Nightmare story… I’ve seen a business with malware/trojans on multiple computers. Also they processed credit cards on the same exact computers.

  • accidentalciso@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Outsourcing IT is one of the smartest things that a small business owner can do. I do cybersecurity consulting (vCISO) and specialize in small businesses (1-100 employees). It’s the right decision for almost every one of my clients. My larger clients will often have a dedicated IT manager that takes the lead but uses the IT MSP to get things done. It works very well and is so much less expensive than trying to do it all in-house. The one big thing I didn’t see in your list that I feel should be there at the $250/mo/seat cost is 24/7 Security Operations Center monitoring and response. Also, at that price, I would expect the laptop lease cost to be included as well managed backups for a full turnkey solution.

  • Herronrock@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I hired an it company this year and I pay $1500 per month. To me it’s worth the price even if they only fix one issue that would have taken me or an employee an hour away from generating revenue.

    If I were at $500k in revenue I would not be paying for this service. Your time isn’t all that valuable in this size of business.

    • Tolan_Forket_Munlaf@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Perspective is key. If the profit, customers and business model is sustainable and the ownership/management has a growth/delegation/security mind set, yes it is a “Match Made in Heaven”

      Small detail that I did not specify, 500k in revenue doe snot mean much without specifying the margin :) . Imagine now that is 300k in payroll for the owner and 100K each for the other 2 employees.

      If you were to budget, from the actual computer cost to an all inclusive IT solution, how much do you or would you budget per month per employee? A team members computer is replaced every 3 to 6 years.