Written by the engineers at Galaxy IT Solutions — a Conroe, TX-based MSP serving Montgomery County and Greater Houston. We’ve built this page to be useful whether you end up hiring us or not. Below: real cost math, an interactive calculator, and an honest take on when in-house IT is the right call.
The short version, if you’re skimming.
An MSP is a company that runs your IT for you — proactively, on a flat monthly fee. Instead of paying a help desk hourly when something breaks, you pay a predictable per-user-per-month rate and the MSP keeps everything running: patching, monitoring, security, backups, helpdesk, and infrastructure.
A good MSP behaves like an outsourced IT department, not a break-fix vendor. Galaxy IT Solutions is structured exactly that way — every client has assigned engineers who know their environment, with 24×7 monitoring and a real human to call when something matters.
The shorthand: in-house IT is one or two generalists trying to do everything. An MSP is a team of specialists (network, security, M365, cloud, helpdesk) you share with other clients.
The numbers below assume a 50-user company hiring two mid-level IT engineers in the Houston market.
| Factor | In-House IT (2 engineers) | Galaxy IT MSP |
|---|---|---|
| Loaded annual cost (50 users) | ~$232,000 | ~$89,400 |
| Coverage window | Business hours, sick days excepted | 24×7 monitoring & on-call |
| Depth of expertise | 2 generalists | Network, security, M365, cloud, helpdesk specialists |
| If someone quits | Knowledge walks out the door | Continuity guaranteed by contract |
| Tooling (RMM, MDR, backup) | You buy & manage licenses | Included |
| Patching & vulnerability mgmt | Manual / often skipped | Automated & SLA-backed |
| Compliance reporting (HIPAA, PCI, CMMC) | DIY | Built-in evidence collection |
| Cost scaling | Step function (new hire) | Linear per-user |
| Best fit | 200+ employees, niche workloads | 10–200 employees, mainstream stack |
Adjust the sliders. See where your company lands.
Plug in your numbers. We'll show you the all-in annual cost of running IT in-house versus partnering with Galaxy IT Solutions. No email required.
Estimates use national averages adjusted for the Houston / Conroe market. Your exact MSP price depends on services chosen (managed security, M365 licensing, on-site SLAs). Ask us for a tailored proposal.
The calculator above captures the obvious math. These are the things spreadsheets miss:
One flat per-user-per-month fee covers all of this. No surprise invoices when something breaks.
If you're in the middle (one IT person, growing fast, security on your mind) — that's the exact spot where Galaxy IT delivers the most value. Talk to one of our engineers and we'll tell you honestly whether MSP, co-managed, or staying in-house is the right call.
Most MSPs in the Houston market charge between $125 and $185 per user per month for fully-managed service (helpdesk, security, patching, backup, M365). Galaxy IT’s standard managed bundle is $149 per user per month, with discounts at scale. Specialized services (advanced compliance, dedicated engineers, after-hours on-site) are quoted separately.
Break-fix is hourly — you pay when something is already broken. An MSP is proactive — they monitor 24×7, patch and harden continuously, and have an incentive to prevent issues because their cost goes up when they have to fix them. MSPs almost always work out cheaper across a 12-month window once you include downtime cost.
Often, no — many of our clients run a co-managed model where Galaxy IT handles 24×7 monitoring, security, patching, and tier-1/2 helpdesk while their internal person focuses on strategic projects and on-site support. We’re explicit about this in onboarding: the goal is to make your internal team look great, not to compete with them.
Galaxy IT offers month-to-month and 12/24/36-month terms. Longer commitments come with reduced per-user pricing. There’s no termination penalty if we’re not meeting our SLAs — we’d rather you leave than stay unhappy.
Standard onboarding is 2–4 weeks for a 50-user environment: documentation discovery, RMM and EDR deployment, M365 hardening, backup validation, and helpdesk cut-over. Emergency takeovers (e.g. your IT person walked out) can be compressed to 5–7 days.
Yes — as a Microsoft Partner, Galaxy IT can be your Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) for M365 licensing. We typically save clients 10–18% versus retail pricing while consolidating billing and support.
Every Galaxy IT MSP plan includes managed EDR/MDR, DNS filtering, phishing simulation, and patch management as a baseline. For regulated industries (HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST 800-171/CMMC, GLBA) we add evidence collection and quarterly compliance reporting. We’ve taken multiple clients through SOC 2 and CMMC L2 audits.
That’s our wheelhouse. Galaxy IT runs a private datacenter in the Houston area for clients who want colocation or fully-managed IaaS, and we manage on-prem hypervisors (VMware, Hyper-V, Proxmox) for clients who prefer to keep hardware in their own building. See our Solutions page for the full stack.
Yes — we have an incident response retainer option and can engage same-day for active ransomware, business email compromise, or data breaches. Reach an engineer immediately if this is you.
Two things. First, you’ll know our engineers by name — every account has an assigned lead architect, and our owners still take after-hours escalations. Second, we’re Houston-local: when a site visit is needed, we’re a 30-minute drive from most of Montgomery County, not a flight away.
Reach a real engineer — not a sales rep. We’ll review your current setup, give you an honest read on whether MSP is the right move, and quote a number based on your actual environment.
