Managed IT services in Vancouver

Most Vancouver businesses do not need more IT. They need the IT they already have to stop surprising them.

The pattern is familiar. A server that nobody has patched since the last person left. Backups that report success every night and have never once been restored from. A firewall configured by a contractor in 2019 whose rules nobody can now explain. None of it is on fire, so none of it gets budget, right up until the morning it stops and takes the week with it.

Managed IT is the arrangement that prevents that. You pay a flat monthly rate per device, and keeping those devices healthy, patched, backed up and monitored becomes our problem rather than a job that sits on somebody's list until it becomes an emergency.

What the monthly rate covers

One rate per workstation and per server, covering all of the following. No setup fees, no per-ticket charges, and contracts run 30-day rolling so the relationship has to keep earning itself.

• Endpoints and compute. Laptops and desktops monitored, patched, encrypted and protected, with the help desk your staff actually call.
• Servers and Active Directory. Patching, health monitoring, capacity planning and identity management, on-premises or in the cloud.
• Microsoft 365. Tenant administration, licence hygiene, mail flow, security baselines and the settings most tenants ship without.
• Firewalls and security. Rule review, firmware currency, endpoint protection and the boring maintenance that decides whether a breach is an incident or a catastrophe.
• Networking and connectivity. Switching, Wi-Fi, VPN and the circuits underneath, including the meeting room that has never worked properly.
• Backup and continuity. Off-site backups with restores that get tested and timed, because the number that matters in a crisis is how many hours until people can work again.

Proactive is a claim, so here is the test

Every managed IT company in Vancouver describes itself as proactive. The word costs nothing. What separates the claim from the practice is whether anything is genuinely being watched and whether an alert reaches a named human being rather than a shared mailbox.

We publish exactly what we monitor, what escalates and what does not, on our monitoring page, including the limits we will not pretend away. If a provider cannot tell you which four layers they watch and what happens at 3am when one of them fails, the proactive claim is decoration.

Where we work

We support businesses across Greater Vancouver and the Lower Mainland: Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Richmond, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Langley, Delta, New Westminster, North Vancouver, Maple Ridge, White Rock and Abbotsford. Most work happens remotely and on-site attendance is included when a problem needs hands on the hardware rather than a remote session. Our office is in Surrey, so businesses south of the Fraser may want managed IT services in Surrey instead.

Common questions

What is the difference between IT services and managed services?

Traditional IT services are reactive and billed by the hour or the project: something breaks, you call, you get an invoice. Managed services are a fixed monthly fee for continuous responsibility. The practical difference is not the work, it is the incentive. When you pay by the hour, your IT provider earns more the more things break. When you pay a flat rate per device, every prevented outage is money we keep, so the monitoring and patching actually gets done.

What do managed IT services include?

At TrustWiseIT, one rate per device covers 24/7 monitoring and proactive maintenance, unlimited help-desk support, operating system and application patching, endpoint security and encryption, backups with tested restores, and Microsoft 365 and Active Directory administration. Servers carry the same plus OS patching, backup verification and round-the-clock health monitoring. There are no setup fees and no per-ticket charges.

How much should managed IT services cost?

Canadian managed IT is commonly quoted between roughly $100 and $400 per user per month, or $50 to $125 per device per month, depending on what sits inside the number. That spread is wide because providers include wildly different things: some exclude security tooling, some exclude Microsoft 365 licences, some bill projects separately. We charge $100 CAD per workstation and $200 CAD per server per month, all-in, and price per device rather than per user because a business with shared workstations should not pay the same as one where everybody has a laptop and a desktop. Full breakdown on the pricing page. Ask any provider what is not in the monthly figure, and get the answer in writing.

What kind of company is an MSP?

A managed service provider is a company that takes ongoing, contracted responsibility for another company's IT rather than being called in per incident. That normally covers the network and servers, cybersecurity and backups, cloud and Microsoft 365 administration, and an outsourced help desk for staff. The defining feature is the contract: a fixed scope, a fixed fee and agreed response expectations, instead of an hourly rate and a phone number.

Do you only work in the City of Vancouver?

No. We support businesses across Greater Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, including Burnaby, Surrey, Richmond, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Langley, Delta, New Westminster, North Vancouver, Maple Ridge, White Rock and Abbotsford. Most work is done remotely, and on-site attendance is included where a problem genuinely needs hands on the hardware.

How long does it take to switch providers?

From assessment to fully managed is usually inside two weeks. The first phase is documentation and monitoring, which we can put in place without touching your existing arrangement, so you can see what is actually happening on your network before you commit to anything. Contracts are 30-day rolling, so leaving is a notice period rather than a negotiation.

If you want to know what is actually running on your network today, that is what the free assessment is for. We document what is there, what is unpatched, what is unmonitored and what is not backed up, and you get that document whether or not you engage us. See how this has gone for other Lower Mainland businesses, or read what an hour of downtime actually costs.