Managed service provider (MSP)
A managed service provider (MSP) is a company that takes ongoing responsibility for a business's IT, covering support, monitoring, security and infrastructure under a monthly agreement rather than one-off project work.
A managed service provider takes ongoing ownership of your IT estate for a monthly retainer. You aren't booking a technician each time something breaks. The service typically covers user support, device management, Microsoft 365, cybersecurity, backups and monitoring between incidents. One supplier is responsible for keeping the technology your people use working. The difference from break-fix IT is the ongoing duty: the MSP is paid to stop problems forming, and to attend the ones that still get through.
In a firm of 10 to 500 people, employees raise tickets when email or devices fail. The MSP helpdesk handles those requests, while remote monitoring watches systems around the clock. Patching and licence work run on a schedule. You agree the scope and a service-level agreement before work starts, covering response times and who owns recovery if a system goes down. Firms of this size often buy the IT function as a monthly service rather than recruiting it.
The retainer fails when the contract lists tools but not outcomes. You then pay for monitoring that nobody acts on, while capacity and backup tests go unreviewed. Extra users and extra sites often land in the same fee until cover thins out. When connectivity and cloud sit with different firms, an outage becomes a dispute about whose system caused it.
When it matters
- →When day-to-day IT has no named owner on the payroll.
- →When technicians only appear after a system has already failed.
- →When you need a written response time you can hold someone to.
- →When nobody can name who owns backups or security updates.
Related terms
Managed service provider (MSP): common questions
What does a managed service provider do?
An MSP is paid to run your IT every month, not to visit when it fails. Typical cover includes a staff helpdesk, remote monitoring, scheduled patching, Microsoft 365 administration and backups. Cybersecurity often sits in the same agreement. You should see a named scope and a record of the work done between tickets. If the monthly fee only buys a contact route for when things break, you haven't bought a managed service.
What is the difference between an MSP and break-fix IT?
Break-fix IT is reactive. You wait until a laptop or mailbox fails, then pay a technician to repair it. An MSP is paid a monthly retainer to look after the estate between those moments. Monitoring and patching are supposed to run whether anything has broken or not. You know the monthly cost and what it covers. With break-fix, nobody owns the system until it has already failed.
How much does a managed service provider cost in the UK?
There's no single market price, because cover depends on how many people and sites you have, and which systems the provider takes on. Wanzo's published prices exclude VAT. AI + Managed IT starts at £1,250 a month. AI Starter is from £495 if you only need the automation layer. AI Transformation starts at £2,950. Ask any MSP to name the users and devices in the fee, and what happens to the monthly figure when you add a site.
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