One of the most common questions we get when talking with prospective customers is: Why doesn’t Vista IT Group offer an “all‑you‑can‑eat” support model like so many other managed service providers?
It’s a fair question. On the surface, all‑you‑can‑eat (AYCE) sounds attractive. A fixed monthly fee. Unlimited support. Easy budgeting. What’s not to like?
Our Approach
Before getting into the differences, it is important to clarify how we approach managed services. While we have a standard recommended bundle of operational and security products, our services are customizable to fit your needs. We believe there are foundational tools and practices that create a stable and secure environment, but we also know every organization is different. The goal is alignment, not forcing a one‑size‑fits‑all model.
At Vista IT Group, we intentionally separate managed services from support and project services. Our managed services focus on proactive monitoring, security, standards, and long‑term operational maturity. Support and projects are exactly that. They are reactive support and intentional improvement work, scoped and priced transparently.
Downsides of All-You-Can-Eat Support
Many Managed Services Providers combine “all‑you‑can‑eat” support into a fixed per‑user bundle with their managed services, but still charge separately for moves, adds, changes, and projects. So, while the marketing message is “unlimited support,” the fine print often tells a different story.
AYCE pricing does make budgeting easier. There’s no denying that. You know exactly what your monthly bill will be. But there’s a tradeoff that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Here’s the issue we see with AYCE models: when a provider recommends a project to improve security, stability, or bring your environment up to best practices (and you move forward with that project) your support demand should go down. Fewer tickets. Fewer emergencies. Fewer disruptions. But with AYCE, your bill doesn’t change.
You have paid for the project, your users are happier, but you’re not seeing a reduction in support costs. The incentive structure is broken. The provider gets paid the same whether your environment is noisy or quiet.
Over time, this can create tension. We’ve seen AYCE relationships where the provider does the minimum required to satisfy the contract, while the customer tries to get the maximum value out of “unlimited” support. Neither side is wrong, but the model itself can encourage friction instead of partnership. That is not how we want to work.
The Vista Difference
At Vista, our goal is to partner with customers to identify and implement projects that materially improve their IT environment with better security, better reliability, and better usability for their users. And just as importantly, we want our customers to see the benefit of those improvements: reduced support hours.
It is also important to set expectations during onboarding. When customers first come to Vista, it’s common for support ticket volume and support costs to increase initially. That surprises some people, but it shouldn’t. We’re uncovering issues that may have been ignored or undocumented, and we’re learning the environment in detail.
What matters is what happens next.
On average, we see support hours decrease year over year, with roughly a 15% reduction in support hours after three years on Vista IT Group’s managed services. We see continued reductions beyond that as standards mature and environments stabilize. When you factor in that most customers are adding users over that same period, the support hours per user per month decrease even more. That’s the outcome we’re aiming for!
We know switching vendors can be uncomfortable. It introduces risk. But when risk is managed thoughtfully the reward can be meaningful: fewer support hours, lower overall costs, and happier users.
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