Written by the Nostra team · Reviewed October 2026
Every provider promises "fast, friendly support". The question that separates them is: who answers the phone, and where do they sit? An in-house service desk in Ireland means the person fixing your problem works for the company you pay, knows your environment, and can walk to a colleague's desk to escalate. Outsourced or offshore desks can be fine for simple password resets, but they struggle the moment a problem crosses systems. Ask directly: "Is any part of your support outsourced?" and "Can we visit the desk?" A provider proud of its support team will say yes to the visit.
ISO/IEC 27001 is the serious one for a managed service provider: it means an external auditor checks the provider's own security controls every year. Vendor partnerships (Microsoft Solutions Partner, SonicWall, HP) show real technical depth with the platforms you'll run on. Be more sceptical of badges that are bought rather than audited. And verify: a certified provider can show you the certificate, its scope and its expiry date without hesitation.
The single most revealing statistic an MSP holds is client retention. Churn means service problems — no marketing can hide it. Nostra's is 98%, and any provider should be able to tell you theirs within a day. Pair it with a satisfaction measure (we publish a 4.9/5 CSAT) and two references from organisations roughly your size and sector.
Cheap IT support fixes things when they break. Good IT management stops them breaking, and ties technology to where your business is going. The tell: does the provider offer a named account manager, quarterly service reviews, and a 12–24 month technology roadmap with budget estimates? If the answer is a ticket queue and nothing else, you're buying break-fix with a monthly fee.
The fear of switching keeps businesses with the wrong provider for years. In practice a competent MSP runs a structured transition: a health check of your environment, documentation and credential handover with the outgoing provider, secure access cutover on day one, and a 90-day stabilisation plan. Typically the move takes 30–60 days and your staff notice only that support got faster. You don't need to wait for your contract to end to start planning it.
Written by the Nostra team | Reviewed October 2026
An MSP takes ongoing responsibility for running your IT — helpdesk, devices, servers, cloud, security and strategy — for a monthly fee, instead of charging you per incident.
From around 10 staff, an MSP usually costs less than ad-hoc IT help and far less than hiring in-house. Larger organisations often use a co-managed model alongside their own IT team.
No verifiable certifications, vague answers on retention, outsourced support they won't discuss, no roadmap or account management, and contracts that make leaving difficult.
Thirty minutes with a Nostra specialist answers more than an afternoon of reading.
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