What to ask an IT provider before you sign.
IT service contracts look much alike at first glance, but the differences that matter show up in exactly the details few people check before signing. Over 15 years, we have seen both solid contracts and contracts clients barely managed to escape, and along the way we have gathered the questions that genuinely make the difference. Put these questions to any prospective provider, including us.
“What’s included, and what’s billed separately?”
The most common source of friction between a company and its IT provider isn’t the technical quality of the work; it’s the surprise on the invoice: the call-out the contract doesn’t cover, the site visit charged on top, the weekend support billed at an overtime rate.
That’s why the first question is also the most important: what does the monthly subscription actually cover, and what gets billed separately? Ask for the list in writing, and pay particular attention to how call-outs are handled. Are they genuinely unlimited, or is there a cap of included hours, after which every request costs extra?
Just as important is knowing what falls outside the subscription. Extra costs will always exist (for new equipment, servers, or network infrastructure, for instance, which are billed separately). There’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is finding out only after you’ve signed.
“How fast do you respond, and where is that committed in the contract?”
Most providers promise a fast response. The right approach isn’t to ask how fast, but where that commitment is set down. Response times belong in the contract, stated clearly in hours and tiered by severity. With us, for example, critical incidents carry a guaranteed response time of one hour at most, and standard ones four at most. Precisely because they’re written down (SLA), these times no longer depend on anyone’s availability or goodwill.
At this same stage, ask about monitoring. Does the provider learn of a fault from your staff, once work is already at a standstill, or spot it first through its own systems? That’s the difference between a provider that only repairs and one that prevents.
“Why aren’t your prices public?”
If a provider avoids publishing its rates, it’s fair to ask why. The standard explanation is that price varies with the complexity of the infrastructure, which is only partly true. Per-user pricing makes full transparency possible: a company with 10 employees can work out its own monthly cost in advance.
That’s why our prices are public and start at €25 per user. We want the conversation to begin with the technical solutions you need, not with vague budget estimates.
Check the commitment terms too. Is a long-term contract required? If so, what do you get in return? A discount for a 12-month contract is ordinary business practice; an obligation to sign for a fixed term with no financial benefit in return is not.
“How does handover work when the engagement ends?”
This is the question few people ask at signing, yet everyone regrets at termination: what happens when the engagement ends? Who holds control over the passwords, the documentation, the configurations, and the intervention history?
A professional provider documents these details continuously and hands everything over on departure, because that information belongs to your company. A less rigorous provider keeps the information keeps it all in-house. Often not out of bad faith, but because the absence of documentation is the easier path. As a result, your company becomes the hostage of a single specialist who “knows it all.”
How a provider handles a potential parting says everything about how the whole engagement will run. If you want to see what it looks like to have things set out clearly from day one, our free audit starts exactly there: with a written inventory of your entire IT infrastructure, one that stays with you, whatever you decide next.