Eleven questions to ask before signing a managed IT contract
Response time promises mean little without definitions. Use these questions to compare providers honestly.
2026-06-12 · 5 min read · Triforce Technology Desk
Managed IT proposals look interchangeable until you interrogate the detail. These questions surface the differences quickly.
Ask how response time is defined — is it a human reply, or an automated ticket acknowledgement? Ask what happens when a target is missed, and whether there is any service credit attached.
Ask who owns your documentation and administrative credentials. If a provider will not hand over your own tenant admin details on exit, that is a red flag, not a security policy.
Ask how often backups are test-restored, and request the last restore report. Ask what is explicitly out of scope, because that is where unexpected invoices come from.
Ask for the named engineers who will hold your account and their escalation path. Continuity of people matters more than the size of the support floor.
Finally, ask for a client with a similar estate to yours and speak to them directly. A confident provider will make the introduction the same week.