The three models

Most small businesses fall into one of three IT support models, often without having deliberately chosen one:

DIY (do it yourself): The business owner or a technically inclined employee handles IT issues as they arise. Common in very small businesses where the cost of outside support feels unjustifiable.

Break-fix: Call an IT consultant or repair shop when something breaks. Pay hourly. No ongoing relationship.

Managed service provider (MSP): Pay a monthly fee for ongoing IT management — monitoring, maintenance, help desk support, and proactive issue resolution.

When each model makes sense

DIY is appropriate when:

  • You have fewer than 5 employees
  • Your IT consists of a few laptops, cloud software, and Wi-Fi
  • You have genuine technical confidence handling the basics
  • The cost of an IT problem is low relative to the cost of a support contract

The risk: DIY often means deferred maintenance (skipped updates, no backups, unreviewed security) that accumulates into larger problems over time.

Break-fix is appropriate when:

  • You have 5–15 employees and relatively simple, stable IT
  • Your IT problems are infrequent (a few times per year)
  • You don’t need guaranteed response times
  • You want to control costs and pay only for what you use

The risk: break-fix provides no proactive monitoring, so problems often escalate before they’re caught. Hourly rates run $100–200/hour for competent support.

MSP is appropriate when:

  • You have 10+ employees or critical IT infrastructure
  • Downtime would meaningfully impact revenue
  • You need guaranteed response times (SLA)
  • You want someone proactively monitoring your systems

MSP costs typically run $75–150 per user per month for comprehensive coverage. This feels expensive until you calculate what an unmanaged outage costs in lost productivity.

Finding good IT support

For break-fix and MSPs, ask for references from businesses your size in your industry. Ask specifically: how fast do they respond when something is down? What does their support process look like? Have they ever let a client down, and what happened?