IT glossary
MSP (Managed Services Provider)
An MSP, or managed services provider, is a company you pay a fixed monthly fee to run your technology: the helpdesk, servers, networks and updates.
The model is a subscription rather than a call-out. Instead of paying for hours when something breaks, you pay a predictable amount per user or per device, and the provider carries the cost of things breaking. That is the part worth noticing: if your systems misbehave constantly, it costs them, not you.
Why it matters to you
Most organizations under about 200 people cannot justify a full internal IT department, but they need the range of skills a department has: someone for the network, someone for Microsoft 365, someone for security, someone to answer the phone when a laptop will not start on a Monday. An MSP spreads those people across many clients, so you get access to all of them without employing any of them.
The product is not tickets closed. It is that technology stops taking up room in your head.
What it usually includes
- A helpdesk your staff can reach by phone, email or chat
- Monitoring, patching and updates across servers and devices
- Backup, and periodic proof that a restore actually works
- Staff onboarding and offboarding
- Dealing with vendors: the internet provider, the line-of-business software company
- Budgeting and planning, often through a vCIO
What to check before signing
Ask what is genuinely included and what quietly becomes a separately quoted project. Ask what the response targets are, whether they apply outside business hours, and how they are measured. Ask what happens to your data and documentation if you leave.
Ask about price ranges early, too. In Canada, managed IT commonly lands somewhere around $100–$250 per user per month, with flat-rate agreements often between $1,500 and $5,000 a month, we set out how that is built up in our guide to managed IT pricing in Canada.
The common misconception
That an MSP has to replace internal IT. Often it does, but plenty of organizations keep their own person and bring in a provider alongside them for coverage and specialist skills. That arrangement has its own name, co-managed IT, and it is worth asking about before you assume the choice is all or nothing.