The short version
Fully managed: we are your IT department. Your staff call us for everything, we monitor and secure everything, and you get a quarterly plan and one monthly invoice.
Co-managed: you have an internal IT person, or an office manager who handles the day-to-day well, and we provide the layers one person can't: 24/7 monitoring, the full security stack, backup and recovery, after-hours and vacation coverage, projects, and a senior partner for planning. Same tools, same portal, same process.
Side by side
| | Fully managed | Co-managed | | --- | --- | --- | | Who answers the first call | Our help desk | Your internal person, with us as escalation | | Monitoring and patching | Us | Us, visible to your person in the shared portal | | Security stack | Us | Us (EDR, email security, MFA, training, firewall) | | Backup and recovery | Us | Us, or shared | | Projects (moves, migrations, refreshes) | Us | Together, or us | | After-hours and vacation coverage | Us | Us | | Quarterly planning and budgeting | Us with the owner | Us with the owner and your IT person | | Documentation | Ours, in your portal | Shared, in the same portal | | Pricing | Per user, security included | Per user, scoped to what you hand us | | Typical fit | 10 to 100 employees, no internal IT | 40 to 200 employees with one or two internal IT staff |
Signs you want fully managed
- Nobody at the business has "IT" in their job title, and the office manager is tired of being it.
- You're under HIPAA, the FTC Safeguards Rule, or IRS 4557 and need the controls and the evidence handled.
- A day of downtime costs more than a month of service.
- You'd rather have technology handled than discussed.
Signs you want co-managed
- You have an internal IT person who's good with users and line-of-business software but stretched thin.
- That person is on call for everything, including nights and vacations, and it isn't sustainable.
- Security, backup, and compliance documentation keep slipping because the day-to-day fills the day.
- You're worried about what happens if that person leaves.
- A big project (new location, migration, phone system) is bigger than one person.
How the split actually works
In most co-managed engagements, your internal person keeps the first call, the user support, and the applications they know. We take monitoring, patching, the security stack, backup, after-hours, and projects, and we meet with them and the owner every quarter. They see every ticket, asset, and alert in the same portal we use, so nothing happens behind their back. Many of our co-managed clients describe it as "our IT person finally has a team."
What it isn't
Co-managed is not a way to quietly replace someone, and it's not a cut-down plan. The security stack is the same. If a provider offers "co-managed" at a steep discount, ask what was removed.
Our position, stated plainly
We do both on the same plan. If you have a capable internal person, co-managed is usually the right call and we'll build it around them. If you don't, fully managed is simpler and we'll run it end to end. A free assessment is the fastest way to find out which one fits.