In short
Choose an Irish MSP on twelve criteria across four dimensions. Service: response SLA, escalation, hours, vertical experience. Security: baseline tooling, NIS2/ISO 27001 capability, EDR, identity. Commercial: pricing model, contract length, exit clauses, data ownership. Fit: Cork/Kilkenny presence vs Dublin-only, client size match, cultural alignment.
Choose an Irish MSP on twelve criteria across four dimensions. Service: response SLA, escalation, hours, vertical experience. Security: baseline tooling, NIS2/ISO 27001 capability, EDR, identity. Commercial: pricing model, contract length, exit clauses, data ownership. Fit: Cork/Kilkenny presence vs Dublin-only, client size match, cultural alignment.
Choosing a managed IT provider is one of the most consequential decisions a growing Irish SME makes. Get it right and IT recedes into the background of the business. Get it wrong and it becomes a recurring drag on productivity, security and budget. Ireland has dozens of MSPs spanning Dublin-centric providers, regional specialists, and smaller break/fix businesses dressing up as MSPs. They're not interchangeable.
This guide is a vendor-neutral 12-criteria framework. It applies to any Irish MSP, Panoptic included. Use it to interrogate every provider on your shortlist with the same questions, in writing, before you sign.
The 12 criteria sit across four dimensions: service (what they commit to delivering day-to-day), security (what sits in the baseline), commercial (how the contract is structured), and fit (whether this MSP suits your business shape and location).
Service criteria: what the MSP commits to delivering
Get four things in writing under service: the response SLA banded by priority, escalation paths when first-line can't resolve, support hours (business-hours, 24/7 or hybrid), and vertical experience for your sector. If any of these are vague, push back. Vague service commitments at sales stage predict vague service in a real incident.
Response SLAs should be priority-banded: P1 (critical), P2 (high), P3 (medium), P4 (low), with target first-response and resolution windows for each band. Asking "what's your response time" without specifying priority is meaningless. The answer needs structure.
Support hours matter more than they look. "Business-hours support with 24/7 monitoring" is the most common Irish MSP setup and works for most SMEs. It won't help if your operations run 24/7 (hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare). Ask what happens at 2 a.m. on a Sunday before you assume coverage exists.
Vertical experience is the fourth criterion. An MSP that has never supported a dental practice will struggle with Software of Excellence EXACT. One that has never supported a wholesaler will struggle with Sage X3 EDI flows. Ask for references in your sector.
Security criteria: the baseline
The security baseline is the easiest dimension to get wrong, because "security included" means very different things at different MSPs. The baseline you want includes EDR on every endpoint, MFA enforcement on every account, patching with reporting, encrypted backup with weekly restore tests, email security, security awareness training, and dark-web credential monitoring.
Ask for the baseline as a written list, not a marketing slide. Then ask which items are included in the headline price and which are paid add-ons. The variance between MSPs on this single question is large. Some include all of the above for one fee. Others include managed antivirus and little else for the same price.
If you have customer security questionnaire pressure, cyber-insurance prerequisites or NIS2 supply-chain pull-through, the baseline needs to be wide enough to evidence those obligations. Ask the MSP whether their baseline maps to the controls an IE supply-chain questionnaire asks for. Most can answer this directly.
Commercial criteria: contract structure
Four commercial criteria: pricing model (per-user, per-device, or all-inclusive), contract length, break clauses for material service failure, and ownership of tooling licences and data at end of contract. Per-user pricing is the common pattern for office-based Irish SMEs. Per-device fits better when devices outnumber users (manufacturing, retail).
Contract length is a trade-off. Shorter (12 months) gives flexibility but skips onboarding amortisation. Longer (24-36 months) gets discounted rates but locks you in. Whatever the length, insist on a defined exit process, data-portability commitments, and a notice period for material service failure. Read the exit clause before you sign.
Ownership at end of contract is the criterion most often overlooked. Who owns the RMM agent installations, the EDR licences, the password vault data, the backup repositories? If the answer is "the MSP", switching providers becomes much more painful. Get this in writing.
Fit criteria: is this MSP right for your business
Fit is harder to quantify than the other three dimensions, and it's the criterion that breaks contracts in year two when everything else is holding. Three checks: geographic presence (Cork/Kilkenny vs Dublin-only matters when you need on-site support in Munster or the South East), client-size match (do you sit in the middle of their book of clients or at the edge), and cultural alignment (response style, escalation tone, willingness to push back).
The geographic check is practical. If your office is in Cork and the MSP is Dublin-only, every on-site visit costs travel time. Most MSPs will quote remote-only support to start. Ask what happens when remote isn't enough.
Client-size match matters for attention. If you're a 30-person SME and the MSP's typical client is 200+, you'll be a low-priority account and feel it within months. If you're a 200-person business and their typical client is 15, they may struggle to scale the relationship as you grow.
Cultural fit you assess in the sales process. If the MSP pushes back on requests that don't make sense, asks good questions about your business, and is willing to say "no" to features that won't help, that's the same posture you want operating your environment.
Sector notes: what changes by industry
Vertical experience is the fourth service criterion, and it is the one where the twelve-criteria framework stops being generic. What a good answer looks like depends on what you do.
Solicitors and accountancy practices. The differences are the practice management system, the client confidentiality obligations, and the volume of client security questionnaires arriving from corporate clients. Ask the MSP whether they have supported your practice management system specifically, and how they handle a questionnaire on your behalf. See IT support for accountants and solicitors.
Financial services and insurance. DORA changes the shape of the conversation entirely: your provider becomes an ICT third-party service provider with contractual obligations of its own, including exit planning and audit rights. Ask whether they have read DORA and what their contract says about register of information reporting. See IT support for financial services and what DORA covers.
Dental and veterinary practices. Clinical software, imaging storage, and a working day where an hour of downtime is an hour of cancelled appointments. Ask about experience with your specific clinical system, and about on-site response time rather than remote. See dental and veterinary.
Wholesale and distribution. ERP and EDI integrations, warehouse devices and scanners, and a network that has to reach the yard. Ask who supports the integration layer when it breaks at 6 a.m. See IT support for wholesale and distribution.
Hospitality. Property management systems, card payment scope, guest Wi-Fi segregation, and 24/7 operating hours that most business-hours support contracts do not cover. Ask what happens at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. See IT support for hospitality.
Creative agencies. Large-file workflows, Mac fleets, and freelancers who need access without being on the payroll. Ask how they handle contractor identity. See IT support for creative agencies.
If your sector is not listed, the question stands anyway: ask for a reference in your industry, and call it.
Related guides
- What's the difference between a holistic managed IT provider and a break/fix IT business in Ireland?
- How do I switch IT support providers in Ireland without downtime or losing data?
- Does NIS2 apply to my Irish business, and what does it require?
Related services
Ready to talk to a holistic MSP?
15-minute discovery call to scope managed IT, cyber security, or compliance for your business. Cork and Kilkenny offices, serving SMEs across Ireland.
How many IT providers should an Irish SME shortlist?
Shortlist three. Send each one the same written questions across the four dimensions (service, security, commercial, and fit), and compare the written answers side by side. With more than three, the comparison takes longer than the decision is worth. With fewer, you have no reference point for what a normal answer looks like.
What response time should the SLA promise?
Ask for a table with four priority bands. A typical Irish MSP commits to a first response within 15 to 30 minutes for a P1 outage and within one business day for a P4 request. A single number with no priority attached is not an SLA. Ask for the resolution target for each band as well, because a fast first response on its own is not a fix.
Should the MSP own the security tooling or should we?
You must own the data in it. The MSP can hold the licences for endpoint protection, monitoring, and backup, because it buys them at scale, but the contract must state that your backup repositories, password vault, and Microsoft 365 tenant belong to you and are handed over at the end of the contract. If the answer is that the MSP keeps them, moving provider later becomes a rebuild.
Does it matter whether the MSP has an office near us?
It matters when you need someone on site. Most support is remote, so a provider in another county can handle day-to-day tickets. A failed switch, a new office fit-out, or a server that will not boot needs an engineer in the building, and travel time from Dublin to Cork or Kilkenny is a half day each way. Ask the provider where its engineers are based, and how quickly one can reach you.