A monthly IT contract or paying only when something goes wrong? Compare actual costs, find out when each model is best, and discover what reactive support really entails.
It’s the first decision any company makes when setting up its IT: should it pay a fixed monthly fee, or call someone only when something breaks? Both models are valid—the question is at what stage of the company’s growth does each one stop making sense.
Per-incident support (break-fix): You pay per visit or per resolved incident. No monthly commitment, no guaranteed continuity. Managed services: A fixed fee covers continuous monitoring, preventive maintenance, help desk support, and—at the most comprehensive levels—server management and cybersecurity. The goal is not to “fix what breaks” but to prevent it from breaking in the first place.
| Support by Event | Managed Services | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $800 – $2,500 MXN per visit, variable | Fixed monthly fee, easy to budget for |
| Prevention | None — action is taken after the failure | Continuous Monitoring and Maintenance |
| Continuity | Each visit may be with a different technician, with no medical history | Documentation and accumulated context of the environment |
| Best for | Very small operations, one-off projects | Companies that rely on their systems to operate |
| Risk | Solutions that address the symptom, not the cause | It may be disproportionate for a minimal setup |
Comparing the price per visit (800–2,500 MXN) to the monthly fee (3,500–25,000 MXN—see our article on how much it costs to outsource IT in Mexico) always seems to favor the per-event model. The calculation changes once the cost of downtime is factored in: for large corporations, firms like Gartner estimate the cost of IT downtime at thousands of dollars per minute—a figure intended for large-scale operations, but one that illustrates the principle at the SMB level as well: every hour the system is down represents payroll costs without production, sales that aren’t closed, and, if customers are waiting for a delivery, a reputation at stake. A study by Hiscox reports that 41% of small businesses suffered at least one cyberattack in the past year, with a median cost per incident of thousands of dollars—a risk that the per-event model, by design, neither prevents nor monitors.
Here’s a rule of thumb used by several Mexican providers: if your company calls technical support more than 2–3 times at mes, you’re already paying more for one-off visits than you would for a basic managed plan—without any of the preventive benefits.
It’s not an outdated model. It makes sense for: operations with 1–4 people using simple equipment and without critical reliance on systems; one-off, limited-scope projects (a migration, an installation, an office move); and companies that already have an in-house staff member capable of resolving 90% of problems and only need occasional backup.
The clearest sign is growth: more than 5–10 users, a genuine reliance on systems for operations (billing, production, customer service), exposure to compliance requirements (pharmaceutical, financial, data protection), or—as is often the case with subsidiaries of international groups in Mexico—the need to report to the parent company with a predictable budget and a single point of contact.
5 questions to help you decide: How many users depend on your systems? What would happen if the system went down for 4 hours tomorrow? Does your IT budget need to be predictable (for reporting to headquarters)? Do you handle sensitive or regulated data? How many times have you called support in the last 3 months? If two or more of your answers point to “yes, it’s critical,” that’s a sign you should switch to a managed model.
Keptos It offers both models but recommends the one that matches the actual scale of the operation. For more details, see " IT Management for Businesses in Mexico," or, for the specific case of connection continuity, " Starlink " and " Managed Cybersecurity."
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