Was skeptical about managed IT services until we hit a wall last year

I run a small accounting firm over in Beaverton and for years I handled our own tech issues. Never saw the point in paying someone else to deal with servers and emails. Then last January our whole system got hit with ransomware on a Monday morning. I spent three days trying to fix it myself and lost over $12,000 in billable hours. Finally called a local managed IT place out of desperation and they had us back up by Wednesday afternoon. They also showed me backups we never had and a firewall setup that would have stopped the attack cold. Now I pay them $800 a month and it feels cheap compared to that one week. Has anyone else had that moment where you realized DIY was actually costing you more?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_skyler1mo ago

Ran a dental practice up in Hillsboro and had the exact same wake up call about two years ago. Our server crashed on a Friday and I spent the whole weekend trying to restore from what I thought were backups. Turns out the backup drive had been failing for months and I never noticed. Paid a managed IT company $1,200 to come in on Sunday and they recovered about 90% of our patient data from an old tape backup I didn't even know we had. That one weekend cost me more in lost productivity and stress than four months of their service. Now I sleep better knowing someone else is watching the backups and patching stuff before it breaks.

pat_hall871mo ago

Did you have any warning signs before the crash? Because we had a similar scare last year with our office server... the backup logs were showing errors for weeks but I just ignored them like an idiot. Ended up paying a premium for emergency data recovery too.