"We just call someone when it breaks" feels like the frugal option because most months the bill is small or zero. This guide runs the actual 12 month numbers for a typical 10 person office, using our own published rates for both models, so you can check the math instead of trusting it.
Spoiler: break-fix is genuinely cheaper for some businesses. We will tell you exactly which ones, because we would rather lose a plan sale than sign an office that does not need one.
What break-fix really costs in a normal year
At our $89/hour rate (first hour billed in full, prorated after, no trip fees), a single routine fix (printer offline, email rule gone wrong, one slow PC) typically runs one to two hours. A 10 person office that calls twice a month averages roughly $250–$350/month. That is the number owners remember, and taken alone it beats any managed plan.
A normal year is not twelve normal months. It usually includes at least one multi day event: a dead drive with no verified backup, a server that will not boot, or an email compromise like the one in our first 60 minutes guide. Emergency work is billed at the same honest hourly rate, but ten to twenty hours of it lands in one invoice, $900 to $1,800, at the worst possible time, on top of the revenue lost while your team could not work.
Honest 12 month break-fix total for that office: roughly $3,900 to $6,000 in fees, plus one to three days of downtime nobody invoices you for but everybody pays for.
What the same year costs on a managed plan
The same 10 person office (say 12 devices: ten workstations, a server, a firewall) on our Professional tier at $89/device/month pays about $1,068/month, roughly $12,800 a year, flat. On Essential at $59/device it is about $8,500. No surprise invoices; the plan minimum is $295/month.
So on fees alone, break-fix wins on paper: $4–6k versus $8–13k. If the comparison stopped at fees, nobody would buy managed IT. It does not stop at fees.
The three costs that flip the math
Downtime. Ten people at an average loaded cost of $35/hour is $2,800 per lost workday. The managed model exists to catch failing drives, full disks, and expiring certificates before they become lost days. Monitoring is the product; the fixes are almost incidental. One prevented two day outage covers most of the annual price gap by itself.
The security year. Break-fix means nobody is watching email security, MFA enforcement, or endpoint detection between calls. A single business email compromise averages tens of thousands in losses and cleanup, and cyber insurance questionnaires now ask directly whether you have EDR and enforced MFA. Answering "no" raises your premium; answering "yes" falsely voids your claim.
The compounding mess. Break-fix engineers meet your network for the first time during an emergency. Nobody documents passwords, maps the network, or tests backups, because nobody is paid to. Every future fix is slower and pricier because the last one left no notes. A managed relationship front-loads that documentation in month one.
When break-fix is honestly the right choice
Stay on break-fix if: you have five or fewer computers, no server, no customer data beyond email, files kept in the cloud with tested restore, and you can genuinely tolerate a day of downtime. At that size the $295/month plan minimum buys more coverage than you need. Hourly support plus the free items in our 10 point security baseline is the right sized answer, and we will say so in an assessment.
The switch point is when downtime starts costing real money: a server appears, compliance or insurance paperwork arrives, or ad hoc fixes become a monthly habit. Past roughly three calls a month you are paying managed plan money for break-fix coverage: well over $1,100/month in reactive fees with zero prevention attached.
The 12 month scorecard
Fees only: break-fix ~$4–6k, managed ~$8.5–13k. Fees plus one bad event and ordinary downtime: break-fix ~$8–15k with the risk still live, managed flat with the risk actively managed. The honest framing is that break-fix is a payment plan for problems after they happen; managed IT is a fixed price for having fewer of them.
If you are in Palm Beach County, the free assessment does this math with your real device count and your real downtime cost, and ends in a written flat quote, or a written "you do not need us yet." Both outcomes are on our pricing page already.
Want the scorecard for your office? A free assessment runs your real numbers, and if break-fix is right for you, we will put that in writing too.