Every business owner has heard some version of this: We will just call someone when something breaks.
It sounds pragmatic. It sounds cheap. It is neither.
What Break-Fix Actually Costs
Break-fix is reactive. And reactive has a price tag that does not show up on the invoice — until it is too late.
Downtime. Every hour your systems are down, you are hemorrhaging revenue. For most SMBs, one day of full IT outage costs between $10,000 and $50,000 in lost productivity, stalled transactions, and recovery time.
Emergency rates. When you call an IT shop in a panic, you are paying emergency rates — typically $150-$300/hour, no SLA, no priority. They are already overbooked because everyone else called in a panic too.
Bandage fixes. Break-fix patches the symptom, not the root cause. The same issue comes back. And back. Each visit is a separate bill, a separate interruption, a separate fire drill.
No visibility. You have no idea what is happening in your environment until it detonates in front of you.
What Managed IT Actually Looks Like
Managed IT is not just paying someone monthly. It is a different model entirely.
- 24/7 monitoring — problems get caught before they become outages
- Predictive maintenance — patches, updates, and health checks run on a schedule, not after the fact
- Fixed, predictable costs — you know what you are paying, and why
- Faster recovery — when something does go wrong, your team already knows your environment
The Real Math
A break-fix shop charges $200/hour. You call them six times a year. Each call averages three hours, plus one major incident at eight hours.
That is $6,800/year — with no prevention, no monitoring, and no accountability.
A managed IT partner charges $1,500-$3,000/month for the same coverage. Over a year, comparable spend — but with security patching, backups, monitoring, and a team that knows your network before it catches fire.
The difference? The managed IT model does not let you run the engine until it seizes.
Ready to move away from reactive firefighting? Talk to NSI Tech about a managed IT plan built for your business — not a vendors widget.