This trade has more names for itself than it has business models. Managed service provider, IT managed services company, technology support company and full service IT company describe the same product in the great majority of cases: a monthly fee for running the estate. What actually varies between two providers is not the label but three things, and each of them is answerable before you sign: what is fully managed, what your own people still do, and what falls outside the fee.
Fully managed IT services, and what a managed IT support provider means by the word
Fully managed usually means the provider is responsible for the whole estate: servers, workstations, network devices, the backup job and the users, monitored and patched to their schedule with a desk in front of it. What it almost never means is that everything is included, because projects, hardware, licences and out-of-hours work sit outside the fee at nearly every provider. Ask for the schedule of what is monitored and the schedule of what is excluded as two separate documents.
Co-managed IT services, and who they are actually for
Co-managed is for a business that already has an IT person and needs a bench behind them: overnight and holiday cover, the tooling a single person cannot justify, escalation for the things they have not seen before, and somebody to do the patching so the internal person can do the work only they can do. It is not a cheaper version of fully managed. It is a different shape, and it fails when the split of responsibilities is left informal, so insist on a written division by system.
What your own people keep either way
Knowing the business. A provider learns your estate quickly and your business slowly, and the person inside who knows which application the finance team cannot work without on the last day of the month is not replaceable by a contract. Even a fully managed arrangement needs somebody internal who owns the relationship, approves changes, and is the single point the provider calls. Naming that person, with time allowed for it, is the difference between a contract that works and one that drifts.
How to compare IT support providers that describe themselves identically
Four documents, requested from both. The schedule of included services. The schedule of exclusions. The response commitment with times against severity tiers. The offboarding clause. Two firms whose websites are indistinguishable produce visibly different versions of those four, and the differences are where the money and the risk are. Of the 29 providers read for this record on 10 September 2026, seven publish a price before any of this, so expect to ask.
Questions people ask about IT managed services companies
Is there a difference between an MSP and an IT managed services company?
Not in practice. The labels are interchangeable in this market; the schedules underneath them are not, which is why the schedules are what to compare.
What does fully managed actually include?
Monitoring, patching, backups, endpoint protection and a desk for the named estate. Projects, hardware, licences and out-of-hours work usually sit outside it.
Who is co-managed IT support for?
A business with an IT person who needs a bench: cover, tooling, escalation and the routine work. It needs a written split by system, or it drifts.
Do we still need somebody internal?
Yes, even under a full contract. Somebody has to own the relationship, approve changes and be the point of contact, and that time should be planned for.