Managed IT Services
IT, handled. All of it.
Managed IT services means happier IT runs your entire IT function for a fixed monthly fee: helpdesk, servers, network, devices, security, updates and planning. It is built for Canadian organizations of roughly 15 to 200 people that have no IT staff, one overloaded person, or a provider that has gone quiet.
Who it's for
People usually call us in one of four situations.
None of them is a crisis. All of them are the point at which doing nothing starts to cost more than doing something.
Nobody owns IT. It has landed on the office manager, the controller, or whoever is nearest the server cupboard. It works until it doesn't, and nothing is documented.
Your provider has gone quiet. Tickets get closed, nothing improves, and nobody has told you what is coming next year or what it will cost.
Your IT person has left, or is about to. Everything they knew left with them, including several passwords.
Someone is asking questions you cannot answer. A cyber-insurance renewal, a client audit, a new contract with security requirements attached.
If you already have an IT person
You probably want co-managed IT rather than this page. Same team, different shape: they stay, we stand behind them.
What's included
Everything below is in the monthly fee.
Not a starter tier. If something genuinely sits outside the agreement, we tell you before we do it, not on the invoice afterwards.
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A helpdesk a person actually answers
Phone, email or portal. Laptops, logins, printers, email, the thing that worked yesterday. Your team stops asking each other and starts asking us.
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Monitoring and maintenance
Servers, network gear and laptops watched continuously, patched on a schedule, and checked before they fail rather than after.
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Security built in, not sold separately
Endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication (a second check before a login is accepted), email filtering and patching are part of the service, not an upsell.
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Backup and recovery you have seen work
Backups run automatically, and we test a restore on a schedule. A backup nobody has restored from is a hope, not a backup.
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Microsoft 365 and cloud administration
Accounts, licensing, mailboxes, permissions, shared files. New starters set up before their first day; leavers removed the same day.
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Device lifecycle
What you own, how old it is, when it needs replacing, and what that will cost, kept in a list, not in someone’s head.
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Vendor wrangling
Your internet provider, your phone system, your line-of-business software vendor. We hold the queue so your team does not have to.
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A plan reviewed every quarter
What we did, what is coming, what it costs, and what we would do next if it were our money. In writing, in plain English.
How it works
The first ninety days, in order.
Taking over someone else's IT badly is disruptive. Taking it over properly is mostly paperwork and patience.
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Week 1, we learn the place
We document what you have: servers, accounts, licences, contracts, passwords and the three things everyone knows are held together with tape. You get that document whatever happens next.
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Month 1, the obvious risks close
Multi-factor authentication on, backups verified, unsupported software identified, ex-staff accounts removed, monitoring live. Nothing dramatic, and nothing that interrupts your week.
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Quarter 1, the plan starts running
You get a written roadmap and a budget, and the first review meeting. From here the job is that fewer things break, and the ones that do get noticed by us first.
What it costs
Priced per user, per month.
What it costs depends on what you have. Here is what actually moves the number, so you can tell roughly where you would land before you speak to anyone.
happier IT's managed IT is priced per user, per month, on a fixed fee.
Four things move the number:
- How much security is included. A 25-person accounting firm carrying client financial data needs more than a 25-person landscaping company.
- Whether you are in a regulated sector. Evidence, reporting and audit support take real time.
- The age of what you own. Old equipment breaks more, and costs more to support.
- How many sites you run. Three offices and six jobsites is not the same job as one office.
For market context across Canada, our guide to managed IT pricing sets out the three pricing models and what each typically costs.
What we will not do
We will not quote you a number before we know what you have. A price given before discovery is either padded to cover the unknown, or it is going to change later. Neither is a good start.
The 30-minute call is free, and so is the written plan that follows it.
Why us for this
The security operations centre behind the helpdesk is ours, and it is in Canada.
Most managed IT providers of our size buy their security monitoring from somebody else and pass on the alerts. We run our own security operations centre, the team that watches for suspicious activity, staffed by our own people, in Canada. When something fires at 3am, the person looking at it knows your environment.
That matters for managed IT specifically because security is not a separate product here. It is inside the monthly fee, watched by the same team that answers your helpdesk calls.
Staffed hours: 24/7, with the Surrey office on Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Pacific
Go deeper
- Managed security services (MSSP) How the SOC works and what it watches.
- Cybersecurity services The protection layer, explained without acronyms.
- Co-managed IT If you already have an IT person.
Questions
What people ask before they sign anything.
What are managed IT services?
Managed IT services means an outside provider runs your technology for a fixed monthly fee, instead of billing you by the hour when something breaks. That covers the helpdesk your staff call, the servers and network behind them, the security around all of it, and someone planning what needs replacing next year. The point is the fixed fee: it means we make money when nothing breaks, so our incentives and yours line up.
How is this different from having an IT company on call?
An on-call arrangement, sometimes called break/fix, pays a technician per incident. That means every hour they bill you is an hour something was broken, and nobody is paid to prevent the next one. Managed IT flips it: a predictable monthly cost, proactive maintenance, and a provider whose margin depends on your systems being boring.
What does managed IT cost in Canada?
Canadian managed IT is usually priced per user, per month. We put the number in writing before you commit to anything. Our guide to managed IT pricing in Canada explains what moves it.
Do you replace our IT person?
Not unless you want us to. Plenty of our clients have an internal IT person and hire us to stand behind them, that is co-managed IT. They keep the relationships and the context; we take the after-hours load, the security monitoring, the patching and the projects.
How long does it take to switch providers?
Usually two to four weeks from signing to running, and most of that is discovery rather than disruption. The first job is a complete picture of what you have and where the credentials are. The switchover itself is scheduled around your calendar. You do not need to tell your current provider anything until you are ready.
What if we have a system nobody else supports?
Tell us on the first call. Most organizations have one, an old application the business depends on, running on something older. We would rather know about it up front and price it honestly than discover it in month two.
Are we too small for this?
If you have fewer than about 15 people, managed IT is usually more service than you need, and we will say so. Between roughly 15 and 200 people is where this makes the most sense, big enough that IT problems cost real money, small enough that hiring a full internal team does not add up.
Related
Where to go next.
Industries
Where we work
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Our company spans across Canada and documenting information on over 120 PCs and 20 servers at 5 locations can be hard to manage. We have never had a problem with happier IT’s ability to reproduce documentation on any piece of hardware throughout our entire infrastructure. I benefit from having a consistent monthly payment rate with happier IT and not having to worry about additional hidden costs.
Want to know what this would look like for you?
A 30-minute call. No slides, no audit fee, no obligation. We ask what is breaking and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.