Monthly maintenance is your vehicle inspection

Why should I pay a monthly fee to an IT provider when my previous one just charged me by the hour when he intervened?

It's the most common question, and it's a good question. The answer is simple: because your IT in 2026 looks nothing like your IT in 2010.

In 2010, your computer broke down, you called someone, they came, they fixed it, you paid a bill. Today, your computer is permanently connected to the internet, to your email, to your clients, to your suppliers, to your bank. Every day, hundreds of intrusion attempts are automatically blocked by systems you don't see. Every week, security patches are published and need to be applied. Every month, backups need to be tested to make sure they'll work when you need them.

An hourly model typically doesn't cover any of this. The intervention happens when there's a problem. The monthly fee pays for exactly this invisible work that prevents problems from happening. It's like the vehicle inspection: you pay 200 francs every two years even though your car runs perfectly fine, because that's what guarantees it will keep running.

The difference with time-and-materials billing

With a flat fee, you know what you pay each month. With time-and-materials, you pay less when everything is fine — but much more the month there's a problem. Over three years, factoring in the probability of a serious incident, the flat fee is almost always cheaper. And above all, it's predictable, which changes everything for running your SME.