MSP vs. Break-Fix IT Support

How it works

Break-fix IT is exactly what it sounds like: something breaks, you call a technician, they fix it, you pay by the hour. There's no ongoing relationship, no proactive monitoring, and no accountability when nothing is actively broken. The technician's incentive is to spend as many hours as necessary to fix the immediate problem — not to prevent the next one.

Break-fix was the standard model before managed services existed, and it's still common among small businesses that view IT as a cost to minimize rather than an asset to manage. Many businesses use break-fix by default — not because it's the right choice, but because they've never been given a clear alternative.

The structural problem with break-fix

• No monitoring: Problems go undetected until they become outages. A failing drive, compromised credential, or unpatched vulnerability sits quietly until it causes a crisis
• No accountability: Break-fix technicians have no obligation to your uptime or security posture. They show up when called and leave when paid
• No documentation: Without ongoing management, your IT environment is typically undocumented — making every new problem harder and more expensive to diagnose
• No security: Break-fix covers hardware and software failures. It does nothing to detect intrusions, manage patches, or implement security controls
• Unpredictable costs: $0/month with no incidents; $3,000–$10,000+ when something serious goes wrong

What you pay per incident

A typical break-fix incident — a crashed workstation, a malware infection, or a server problem — runs 4–8 hours of labor at $125–$300/hour. That's $500–$2,400 in technician costs alone, before any hardware replacement or data recovery. For an after-hours emergency, rates are typically 1.5–2× the standard rate.

For serious incidents like ransomware, recovery becomes a specialized engagement. Incident response firms charge $200–$500/hour, with full ransomware recoveries routinely running $15,000–$75,000 in professional services alone — separate from ransom payments, data restoration, and system rebuilding costs.

Costs you don't see on the invoice

• Lost productivity: Staff unable to work during outages — typically $200–$600/employee/hour at loaded cost
• Lost revenue: Customer-facing systems down during peak hours; bookings, orders, or appointments that don't happen
• Emergency premiums: After-hours, weekend, and holiday rates significantly inflate break-fix costs for incidents that don't respect business hours
• Data loss: Without regular backups, break-fix incidents can result in permanent data loss that no technician can recover
• Compliance exposure: A breach on an unmonitored system triggers notification obligations, potential fines, and investigation costs that dwarf any MSP contract

Break-fix

• Pricing: $0 until something breaks; $125–$300+/hour when it does
• Monitoring: None — you find out about problems when users complain
• Response time: Hours to days depending on technician availability; no SLA
• Security: Not included — you're responsible for patching, AV, and detection
• Backups: Not managed — backup failures go undetected
• Relationship: Transactional — no documentation, no continuity
• Best for: Very small operations with minimal technology reliance and low compliance exposure

Managed IT (MSP)

• Pricing: $100–$175/user/month — predictable, all-inclusive
• Monitoring: 24/7 — issues detected before users notice them
• Response time: SLA-backed — typically 15-minute response for critical issues
• Security: Included — EDR, patching, email security, identity management
• Backups: Managed and verified — restore testing on a defined schedule
• Relationship: Ongoing — documented environment, consistent engineer knowledge
• Best for: Any business with meaningful technology dependence, customer data, or compliance obligations