Fully managed IT services and Co-Managed IT both bring in an outside provider, but they answer different questions. With fully managed IT, one provider runs your whole IT function. With Co-Managed IT, your own IT team stays in charge and a provider takes agreed pieces of the work. Company size matters less than one question: do you have IT people today, and do you want them to keep running IT?
Key takeaways
- Fully managed IT means a provider owns your IT from end to end: support, monitoring, security, planning and vendors. You manage the relationship, not the technology.
- Co-Managed IT means your internal IT staff keep direction, and the provider handles the parts you hand over.
- The deciding question is ownership. If nobody inside the business does IT, fully managed is usually the fit. If you have capable IT staff who are stretched thin, Co-Managed usually is.
- Whichever you choose, the contract should say who owns each responsibility. US and allied cyber agencies give managed service provider customers the same advice.
What are the key differences between managed and Co-Managed IT services?
The key difference is who owns IT. In fully managed IT, the provider is your IT department. In Co-Managed IT, your IT department stays yours, and the provider works alongside it. Almost every other difference follows from that one.
| Fully managed IT | Co-Managed IT | |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns IT | The provider | Your internal IT team |
| Who sets priorities | The provider recommends, your leadership approves | Your IT lead decides and directs the provider |
| Who does the daily work | The provider, all of it | Split by agreement, area by area |
| Who answers when something breaks | The provider, every time | Whoever owns that area |
| Your IT staff | Usually none, or no plan to build a team | Kept, with backup and specialists added |
| What you pay for | A complete IT department | The pieces you hand over, plus your own staff |
| Usually fits | Nobody in-house does IT as their job | Capable IT staff short on time, coverage or one skill |
Who sets priorities
With fully managed IT, the provider recommends what to upgrade, replace or retire, and your leadership approves it. With Co-Managed IT, your IT lead sets the priorities and directs the outside team. The provider still brings advice, but your person makes the call.
Who does the daily work
A fully managed provider answers every help desk request, watches every system and keeps the documentation. In a Co-Managed setup, the work is divided. The provider might take the help desk queue, after-hours coverage or a migration project, while your team keeps the projects and the relationships that need someone on the inside.
Who answers when something breaks
Under fully managed IT, the answer is always the provider. Under Co-Managed IT, it depends on what broke and who owns that area. That's why a Co-Managed agreement needs the call order for each kind of problem settled in writing before the first incident, not worked out during it.
What happens to your IT staff
Fully managed IT is usually chosen when there's no internal IT team, or when a business has decided not to build one. Co-Managed IT is built around the team you already have, and adds backup and specialists rather than replacing anyone.
How the cost compares
The two models are priced differently, so a single monthly number can mislead. With fully managed IT, you're paying for a complete IT department. With Co-Managed IT, you're paying for the pieces you hand over, on top of what your own staff cost. A fair comparison lines up hours, after-hours coverage, specialist skills and who carries the risk when something goes wrong. Ask any provider for a written proposal that spells that out.
When fully managed IT is the better fit
Fully managed IT tends to fit when one or more of these is true:
- Nobody in the business does IT as their job. If IT falls to a partner or the operations lead in their spare hours, you need a provider who owns the whole job.
- Your IT person is leaving. A fully managed provider can take over before the knowledge walks out the door, instead of you rushing to hire.
- Leadership wants one accountable partner. Some executive teams would rather manage one relationship than manage technology.
- You've grown past ad hoc help. A break-fix technician who comes in when called is no longer enough once security, cloud systems and compliance requests all land on the same desk.
Picture a 40-person architecture firm where one of the partners has been handling IT on the side. The laptops get bought, but patches slip, backups go unchecked and nobody owns the firewall. That firm doesn't need help for an IT team. It needs an IT team. That's what fully managed IT services provide.
When Co-Managed IT is the better fit
Co-Managed IT tends to fit when you already have capable IT staff and the problem is capacity, coverage or one missing skill. At TEKConn, Co-Managed IT clients typically have 50 or more users and in-house IT staff.
Picture a 90-person accounting firm with an IT director and two technicians. Daily support runs well. But a move to the cloud has sat on the list for a year, and nobody on the team has deep security experience. The IT director doesn't need replacing. They need a bench: an outside team to take the migration and the specialist security work while the director keeps setting priorities. That's the job Co-Managed IT is built for.
If you're leaning this way, our guide on when Co-Managed IT makes sense and how to split the work covers the warning signs, the first piece of work to hand over and how to raise it with your IT lead.
Five questions that settle the choice
Work through these with your leadership team and, if you have one, your IT lead:
- Who in the business makes IT decisions today, and is that their actual job?
- If your IT person were out for two weeks, what would stop?
- Do you plan to keep building an internal IT team over the next few years?
- If you could hand off any part of IT next month, which part would it be?
- When there's a security incident, who should be accountable for the response?
If the answers to the first two are "nobody, really" and "almost everything," lean toward fully managed IT. If you have someone whose job is IT, you plan to keep them, and you can name the work you'd hand off, lean toward Co-Managed IT.
You can change models later
Neither choice is permanent. A business often starts with Co-Managed IT and moves to fully managed IT when its IT manager retires or moves on. Another hires its first IT director and shifts from fully managed to Co-Managed, so the new director has a bench behind them. A good provider should make either move a planned change.
What keeps both moves easy is owning the basics yourself. The business, not any one person or provider, should hold the documentation, the admin credentials and the vendor accounts. If you do decide to change providers, our checklist for switching IT providers walks through the handover.
What to put in writing, whichever model you choose
In both models, the contract should say who owns what. A 2022 joint advisory from CISA, the NSA and the FBI, with the UK, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand cyber agencies, advises customers of managed service providers to make sure the contract states whether the provider or the customer owns each responsibility, such as hardening, detection and incident response. The same advisory asks providers to explain the services a customer is not buying as clearly as the ones they are.
What that list looks like depends on the model:
- Fully managed: the provider owns nearly every line. The useful work is finding the exceptions, such as a business application its vendor supports directly, and making sure the contract names what the provider does not cover.
- Co-Managed: the list is split, so every line needs one named owner on one side. Our Co-Managed IT guide walks through how to draw those lines.
Whichever model you choose, also agree what the provider reports, how often and to whom, so leadership can see the work without chasing it.
Common questions
Is fully managed IT the same as outsourcing IT?
Mostly, yes. Fully managed IT is a way of outsourcing your IT function to a managed service provider who runs it on an ongoing basis. The difference from one-off outsourcing is that the provider takes ongoing responsibility for keeping things running, not just for finishing a single project.
Is Co-Managed IT cheaper than fully managed IT?
Not necessarily. The provider's bill is usually smaller, because your own team does part of the work, but your team's salaries sit on top of it. Add the two together, then set that against a fully managed proposal for the same scope.
Which model is more secure?
Neither, by default. Security depends on what's covered and who owns each control, which is why the written list of responsibilities matters more than the model you pick.
TEKConn offers both models, so the conversation can start with your situation rather than with a sales pitch. If you'd like help working out which fits your team, get in touch and we'll talk it through.