Co-managed IT
Keep your IT person. Add a team behind them.
Co-managed IT means your in-house IT person stays in charge and an outside team takes a defined share of the work: the monitoring, the patching, the after-hours alerts, or the projects that never get started. Who does what is written down before anything begins.
Sample data · “Your Business”, Oxford, AL
Quick answer
What is co-managed IT?
Co-managed IT is a shared arrangement: a business keeps its own IT person or small IT team, and an outside IT company takes on specific duties alongside them, such as monitoring, patching, security, backups, projects or after-hours cover. The split is agreed in writing so nothing falls between the two. Operation Buildup quotes co-managed IT per business, based on which duties move over.
How the work is usually split
Three common ways to divide it.
There is no single right split. It depends on what your IT person is good at, what they have no time for, and what would hurt most if it were missed.
You keep the people, we keep the plumbing
Your IT person stays the face staff know: they handle requests, new hires and the line-of-business software. The outside team runs the background work: monitoring, patching, security alerts and backup checks.
We take the help desk, you keep the projects
The outside team answers everyday requests so your IT person can finish the server move, the new location or the software rollout that keeps getting pushed back.
Cover and second opinion
Your IT person runs everything, with a team to call for vacations, sick days, after-hours emergencies and problems outside their specialty.
Who does what
Decide each duty on purpose.
Often stays in-house
- Walk-up and day-to-day staff requests
- The business software only your team knows
- Buying decisions and budgets
- Knowing who is who, and who needs what
Often moves to the outside team
- 24/7 monitoring and alerting
- Patching for computers and servers
- Security monitoring and alert review
- Backup checks and restore tests
- After-hours emergencies
Usually shared
- Onboarding and offboarding staff
- Microsoft 365 administration
- Firewall and network changes
- Documentation and passwords
- Larger projects
Shared duties are where things get dropped. For each one, name a single owner and a backup.
Signs of overload
When one IT person is not enough.
- Updates are months behind because there is never a quiet day to install them
- Nobody has tested restoring a backup in the last year
- The network diagram, passwords and vendor contacts live in one person’s head
- Projects that were approved last year have not started
- Your IT person cannot take a full week off without their phone
- Security alerts arrive by email and go unread
- Every problem is fixed the moment it breaks, and nothing is planned
None of these mean your IT person is doing a bad job. They mean the job has grown past one person.
Put it in writing
What the agreement should say.
A co-managed arrangement works or fails on the handoffs. These six items keep them clean.
- 01
A duty list with one owner each
Every recurring task, from patching to password resets, with one named owner. “Both” is not an owner.
- 02
Who has admin access to what
Which accounts each side holds, how they are stored, and how access is removed when the arrangement ends.
- 03
How work is handed over
One shared queue of requests, so a handoff is a reassignment with notes, not a hallway conversation.
- 04
Who decides
Your IT person stays the decision maker for your business. The outside team recommends; it does not overrule.
- 05
Documentation that belongs to you
Network diagrams, device lists and procedures are kept where both sides can read them, and they stay with your business.
- 06
How it ends
Notice period, return of passwords and documentation, and removal of the outside team’s tools.
Before you sign with anyone
Questions to ask a co-managed provider.
- Which duties are in the monthly price, and which are billed as projects?
- Will our IT person see the same alerts and tickets you see?
- Who do staff contact first, and how does a request get passed across?
- What happens after hours, and who gets the call?
- Do we keep our documentation and admin accounts if we part ways?
- How do you work with an IT person who disagrees with your recommendation?
What it costs
Quoted to the split you choose.
Co-managed IT has no list price because no two splits are the same. The full Managed IT plan is shown beside it for comparison.
Priced on the duties that move to us and the number of people and devices involved. You get the duty list and the price together, before any work starts.
- A written duty split, one owner per task
- Shared documentation that stays yours
- Vacation and sick-day cover, if you want it
- Projects quoted separately at a fixed price
If you would rather hand over the whole job, the full plan covers everything below. Minimum 5 users. Microsoft 365 licenses billed separately at Microsoft’s price.
- Unlimited remote help desk (phone & email)
- 24/7 monitoring and alerting
- Patch management
- Microsoft 365 administration and support
- Backup monitoring and management
- Advanced security monitoring
Questions
Co-managed IT, plainly answered.
Will co-managed IT replace our IT person?
No. The point is the opposite: your IT person keeps the role and gets a team behind them for the work one person cannot cover alone. The written duty split makes that clear to everyone.
How much does co-managed IT cost?
It is quoted per business, in writing, based on which duties move to us and how many people and devices are involved. For comparison, full Managed IT is $175 per user, per month, with a 5-user minimum.
Who do our employees call?
Whoever the duty split names. Most businesses keep their own IT person as the first contact and pass specific kinds of requests to the outside team through a shared queue.
Can you just cover vacations and after-hours?
Yes, that is one of the common arrangements. It needs up-to-date documentation and working admin access before the first day of cover, so we set those up first.
Do we have to change the tools our IT person already uses?
Not necessarily. We look at what is in place first. Monitoring and patching that we are responsible for run on tools we manage, and your IT person can see what those tools report.
What if our IT person leaves?
Because the documentation and admin access are already shared, the business is not locked out. You can hire a replacement into the same arrangement or move to the full Managed IT plan.
Contact
Request an IT assessment.
A hands-on review of your computers, network, security and backups, quoted up front, with findings in plain English.