Most organisations buy IT support in one of two ways. Either a fixed amount each month that covers an agreed number of users and devices, or an hourly rate with no contract. Both are normal. The question is which one fits the way your organisation actually works.
The answer is usually visible in numbers you already have, so this is a short guide to finding them.
Count the requests, not the people
Headcount is a poor guide on its own. A team of ten designers with large files and colour printing can raise more support requests than a team of forty people who only use email and a browser.
If you have any record of the last six months, count how many times somebody asked for help. If you have no record, ask the person who has been fixing things. They will usually remember the weekly rhythm better than any system.
Under two or three requests a month, an hourly arrangement is often cheaper. Above about one request a week, a plan starts to pay for itself, because the time spent explaining your setup each time is time you are paying for.
Ask what the hourly rate does not include
An hourly arrangement covers the fix. It does not usually cover the work that stops the fix being needed again: updates, monitoring, licence tidying, checking that backups can actually be restored.
That work is invisible until it is missing. When you compare an hourly rate against a monthly figure, the monthly figure normally contains it. Comparing the two rates alone will always make the hourly one look cheaper than it is.
Think about who carries the risk
On an hourly arrangement, the provider earns more when more things break. On a monthly plan, the provider earns the same whether your systems behave or not, so it is in their interest to reduce the number of requests.
This is not a moral point about providers. It is simply worth knowing which way the incentive runs before you sign anything.
Check how your budget is approved
A monthly plan is a single line that can be forecast a year ahead. An hourly arrangement produces a different invoice every month, and each one may need approval.
For a charity, a school or any organisation with a finance committee, the predictable line is often worth more than a small saving. For a small business where one person signs everything, the flexibility may matter more.
A middle route that often works
You do not have to choose the whole thing at once. A common arrangement is a small monthly plan that covers the preventative work, monitoring and a set number of hours, with anything beyond that charged by the hour.
It keeps the maintenance in place, keeps the monthly figure low, and gives you a real measure of how much support you use before you commit to a larger plan.
Questions worth asking a provider
- What exactly is included each month, and what falls outside it?
- Who answers the phone, and will it be the same people next month?
- What happens if we use more hours than the plan covers?
- How do you decide which request is urgent?
- Can we see what was done last month without asking for a report?
- What notice do we need to give if we want to leave?
A provider who answers those plainly is usually easier to work with than one who answers them impressively.
What a support plan should say in writing
A plan is only predictable if the document behind it is specific. These are the clauses worth reading closely, and the answers that suggest a provider has thought about them.
What a user and a device mean. A plan priced per user should say whether a person with a laptop, a desktop and a phone counts once or three times. A plan priced per device should say whether servers, printers and network equipment are included or extra. Both approaches are fine. Vagueness is not.
What happens when the count changes. If you take on four people in March, does the cost change in March or at the next renewal. If somebody leaves, does it come back down. A plan that only moves upwards is common and worth knowing about before you sign.
What falls outside. Project work, out of hours attendance, hardware, licences and travel are usually charged separately, which is reasonable. The document should list them rather than leave you to discover each one on an invoice.
What response time means. There is a difference between a response and a resolution. Most plans commit to the first. Ask what the second looks like in practice for a whole organisation outage, for one person unable to work, and for an ordinary request.
How priorities are decided. There should be a written definition of urgent that does not depend on who shouts loudest. If the contract has none, agree one by email and keep it.
What you get each month. At minimum, the number of requests, what they were about, and which faults recurred. The recurrence figure is the most useful number in the whole report, because it shows whether problems are being fixed or only cleared.
How the price changes. Many agreements contain an annual increase clause. Ask what it is tied to and when it was last applied.
How to leave. The notice period, whether the term renews automatically, and what the provider will hand over. A provider who has written that down is a provider who expects to be judged on the work.
What we would suggest
If you have no record of your support volume, start hourly for a quarter and keep a simple list of what you called about. At the end of the quarter you will know your real number, and the choice makes itself.
If you already know your volume and it is steady, a plan removes the monthly argument about cost and lets the provider spend time on prevention rather than on billing.
Either way, ask for the arrangement in writing before the first invoice. Read more about how we handle both on our IT support page, or tell us how support works for you today and we will say which route we would put forward.