Managed IT Support for UK Businesses

Managed IT support is an agreement where an external team takes ongoing responsibility for your technology, for a fixed fee per user per month. Rather than paying by the hour when something breaks, you pay a predictable monthly amount and the provider is responsible for keeping things working in the first place.

In practice that means a helpdesk your staff can contact, monitoring that spots problems before people notice them, patching and updates applied on a schedule, Microsoft 365 managed properly, security controls maintained, and backups that are tested rather than assumed.

The difference that matters is where the incentive sits. Pay-by-the-hour support earns more when things go wrong, managed support earns the same either way, so preventing problems is in everyone's interest.

Helpdesk: your staff raise tickets through our 1-Fix Portal, phone or email. Issues are triaged by urgency so genuine outages jump the queue.

Proactive monitoring: servers, endpoints and network monitored continuously. Most problems are picked up and dealt with before anyone reports them.

Patch management: Windows and third-party updates applied on a schedule, rather than whenever someone remembers.

Microsoft 365 management: licences, accounts, mailboxes, SharePoint and Teams configured and maintained. Joiners and leavers handled properly.

Security controls: 24x7x365 MXDR endpoint protection, email security, multi-factor authentication and access control managed and maintained.

Backup and recovery: clous and Microsoft 365 backups, with recovery tested rather than assumed.

Account management: a named person who knows your business, reviews your technology with you and helps you plan and budget.

Onboarding and offboarding: new starters set up and leavers removed cleanly, which is where most access problems begin.

Fixed-price managed IT support in the UK usually falls between £50 and £150 per user per month. Where you sit in that range depends on what is genuinely inside the fee, not on how good the provider is.

Factors that move the price include:

Security depth: endpoint protection, email security and awareness training included as standard sit higher in the range.

Backup score: Microsoft 365 backup plus server and clous data costs more than endpoint backup alone.

Coverage hours: business hours only sits lower in the range, extended or out-of-hours cover sits higher.

Onsite requirement: remote-first support sits lower than a service with regular scheduled onsite visits.

Compliance needs: regulated firms needing evidence, reporting and audit support sit higher.

Estate complexity: multiple sites, legacy servers or non-standard applications add cost.

A quote at the bottom of the range that excludes email security, endpoint protection and Microsoft 365 backup is not cheaper. It is a different, smaller service. Once you but those separately you are usually back in the middle of the range, with two suppliers instead of one, and nobody accountable when something falls.

We price per user, so your cost is predictable and scales with headcount rather than with how many tickets your team raises.

Providers quote in different shapes, which makes comparing them harder than it should be. These are the questions that show the difference:

• Is the helpdesk unlimited or capped? Some contracts cap tickets per user and charge for anything over.

• Is Microsoft 365 management included or extra? It should be core.

• Is endpoint protection included? If it is an add-on, add its cost before you compare.

• Is Microsoft 365 backup included? Microsoft protects the platform, your data is your responsibility.

• What are the response times, and what happens if they're missed? Ask for them in writing, by priority level.

• Are out-of-hours and onsite visits included or billed separately?

• Who will you actually deal with? Ask whether you get a names account manager or a queue.

• How do they handles joiners and leavers? This is where access problems usually start.

• What happens at the end of the contract? Ask how documentation and administrative access are handed over. A provider confident in the service will not make leaving difficult.

We've supported UK businesses from Berkshire since 2002. We're Cyber Essentials Plus certified, rated 4.9 out of 5 on Google, and we've been names in Britain's Top 50 MSPs for IT Services for seven consecutive years at the Reseller Choice Awards. We were also Network Group MSP of the Year in 2024.

What clients tell us they notice is the communication. No geek speak, no waiting to find out what's happening, and a team who explain what a problem means for your business rather than describing it in technical terms and leaving you to work out the rest.

We work best with established businesses of roughly 50 to 250 users where technology matters to the operation. We support clients across Reading, Bracknell, Wokingham, Oxford, Newbury, Basingstoke, Maidenhead and the wider Thames Valley, and through 1-Fix East across Norfolk and the East of England.