Is your IT being managed, or just billed?
These are the 27 questions our engineers ask every business that calls us after one too many quiet years with their provider. It takes about ten minutes, in plain English, and you'll know exactly where you stand and what to ask your provider next.
Free. Instant verdicts on screen, full written report in your inbox.
These are the questions we ask every business in a first conversation: support, security, backup, documentation, and what you pay. Your verdicts appear instantly, and the full written report goes straight to your inbox. Your answers are only sent to us if you request the report.
What good looks like, area by area
1.Support & responsiveness
You should never have to chase your own ticket. When you call, an engineer should pick up and start working (at ASG, that happens in about four rings), and everything else should get a first response in minutes. Watch for the quiet failure too: teams stop reporting problems when reporting them never helped. If everyone in the office knows which printer to walk past, you already have your answer.
2.Security
MFA on email alone is a locked front door with the garage wide open. The second-step sign-in code (that's all MFA is) belongs everywhere someone logs in: the desktop every morning, email checked from outside the office, and the VPN, the secure tunnel remote staff use to reach your network. And someone in your company will eventually click a bad link. What matters is whether your provider catches it and calls you inside the hour, or you find out from your bank.
3.Backup & recovery
Every provider says they back you up. Better question: when did anyone last restore something, and can they show you the result? Backup jobs fail quietly. Drives fill, agents stop, and nobody notices until the day the restore matters, which is the one day it can't fail. A provider doing this right tests restores on a schedule, sends you proof, and hands you a written list of what's covered and what isn't. That second list is the one that saves you.
4.Documentation & ownership
Your environment should be written down, kept current, and yours. The passwords, the licenses, how everything connects: if all of that lives in one technician's head or in files your provider won't hand over, leaving them gets a lot harder than it should be, and that's rarely an accident. There's a simple test, and it costs one email: ask for a copy of your documentation, and watch what happens.
5.Cost & strategy
Managed IT should be one number that includes protection. When security and backup show up as add-ons, every gap in your coverage doubles as a sales opportunity, and the recommendations never stop coming. The strategy side is just as concrete: a real partner knows what your business is trying to do this year, brings you ideas that save money without an invoice stapled to them, and calls you before you call them. At ASG that contact is in writing: risk audits quarterly for most clients, plus a rolling roadmap from a vCIO, your virtual chief information officer.
Questions, answered straight
Related: How switching IT providers worksManaged IT services
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