You're a founder, HR manager, or office manager. At some point, IT attached itself to you — not because you applied for it, but because there was nobody else. Now you're answering Slack messages about printer problems, setting up laptops for new team members, and trying to do your actual job at the same time. We call this the Accidental IT Owner — the de facto IT department in most SMBs. The good news: you don't need to become an IT expert. You need the right stack of five tool categories that cover the essentials — and a partner who handles the rest.

Why SMBs Without an IT Team Often Have Too Many Tools

Before we get to the right tools, it's worth taking an honest look at the most common problem: SMBs use an average of 87 SaaS applications, 34% of which are unused or barely active — and 47% of SMBs name this SaaS sprawl as a growing budget problem.

This doesn't happen through bad decisions. A tool here for a project, another one there for a quarter, a free trial that gets forgotten. Then someone leaves the company and their account stays open. Then a department independently buys a new tool because the approval process is too slow.

The result: uncontrolled costs, open security gaps, and nobody with a complete overview. SMBs spend an average of $156 per user per month on SaaS subscriptions. For a 30-person company that's over $55,000 a year — on software alone.

The solution isn't more software. It's fewer tools, used properly.

The 5 Tool Categories Every SMB Really Needs

1. Workspace platform: the foundation for communication and collaboration

There's no avoiding this decision: Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. This isn't a technical question, it's a strategic one. Both cover email, calendar, video calls, document editing, and cloud storage.

Google Workspace works better for cloud-native teams, startups, and companies that are growing quickly and need low onboarding friction. Real-time collaboration is strong and the learning curve is flat.

Microsoft 365 is the right choice when your team works intensively with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, or when you're deeply embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem (Teams, SharePoint, Azure).

What neither of them does: automate IT onboarding. When someone new starts, you still have to manually create the account, configure permissions, and install software. That's where most companies lose hours.

Read more: Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365 – which fits your SMB better?

2. Device management (MDM): control over all devices without an IT department

MDM stands for Mobile Device Management — which sounds more technical than it is. In practice it means: from a single dashboard, you can see which devices are active in your company, which software is running on them, whether all updates are installed, and whether every device is encrypted.

Without MDM, you don't know any of that. And if a laptop is lost or stolen, you have no way to lock it remotely or wipe the data.

The average cost of a data breach for companies with fewer than 500 employees is $3.31 million. That's not the ransom — that's the total cost including downtime, recovery, customer loss, and regulatory fines.

What you should expect from an MDM:

• Central inventory of all devices with user assignment and update status
• Automatic patch installation without manual intervention
• Remote lock or wipe when a device is lost
• Enforced disk encryption across all devices
• Security policies that are automatically enforced

The catch for SMBs: Traditional MDM tools like Microsoft Intune or Jamf are powerful but require technical expertise to set up and operate. A misconfigured MDM creates new security gaps rather than closing them.

Read more: MDM software comparison – which solution is right for SMBs?

3. Endpoint protection and backup: the safety net against the worst case

88% of SMB data breaches in 2025 involved ransomware — compared with just 39% at large enterprises. Small companies aren't more interesting to attackers. They're easier targets.

Complete endpoint protection for SMBs has two parts:

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): Active threat detection on every device — not just a traditional antivirus scanner, but a system that detects and blocks suspicious behaviour in real time. Leading solutions for the SMB space include SentinelOne and WithSecure.

Backup: Prevention costs €5,000–15,000 per year. Recovery after an attack costs an average of €120,000. A solid backup following the 3-2-1 rule (three copies, two media types, one offsite) is the cheapest insurance available. Acronis is a proven choice for SMBs in this category.

Patch management: Software vulnerabilities became the most common initial infection method in 2025, responsible for 31% of all data breaches. When updates aren't applied automatically, every unpatched gap is an open entry point.

4. Password manager: the easiest security upgrade there is

More than 80% of all security incidents have weak or reused passwords as the entry point. The colleague who uses the same password for Slack, HubSpot, and their personal Gmail. Shared credentials in a Slack channel. The admin account without two-factor authentication.

A business password manager solves all three problems at once:

• Automatically generates strong, unique passwords for every service
• Stores credentials securely in department-level vaults following the least-privilege principle
• Immediately revokes access on offboarding — without anyone having to manually change every password

Recommended options for SMBs: 1Password Teams (from €4/user/month) and Bitwarden Business (open-source foundation, very transparent) are the most reliable options. Important: the password manager must be combined with MFA (multi-factor authentication). The manager secures the credentials; MFA secures the login process itself.

Read more: Rolling out a password manager across your team

5. IT support: who helps when nothing works?

This is the question that gets underestimated the most. When a team member's laptop crashes, when nobody can access a critical system, when a security incident is discovered — who takes over?

In most SMBs without an IT department, the answer is: whoever happens to know a bit about computers tries to fix it. Or it waits until tomorrow. Or it costs four hours of lost productivity.

Good IT support for SMBs has four characteristics:

• Defined response times — not "we'll get back to you soon," but concrete SLAs
• Human support — real IT experts, not chatbot-first systems
• No ticket limits — flat rate, not per request
• Proactive monitoring — identifying problems before they happen, not reacting after

The key decision: buying tools vs. having IT managed for you

This is the biggest decision. You can assemble all five categories individually: Google Workspace here, Intune there, SentinelOne, 1Password, and an IT provider for support. That works — but it requires someone who manages the integration, keeps track of updates, runs the right onboarding steps in the right order, and doesn't forget anything during offboarding.

Or you choose a provider that combines everything in one.

See how deeploi takes over IT for SMBs from a single source

What deeploi offers compared to individual tools

deeploi is an All-in-One IT Management Platform that connects all five categories in a single system — and takes over the entire operation, so you need no IT knowledge in your team.

What this means in practice: at HOLY Energy, the People Ops Manager handled more than 50 onboardings and 15 offboardings without delays and without significant IT effort. The Female Company reduced their IT workload from 30 hours per month to under 60 minutes — and saved 62% of their IT costs. Instaffo achieved 75% lower IT costs and 97% less manual IT effort.

That doesn't come from better individual tools. It comes from an integrated process.

Which approach suits which company?

Not every company needs an all-in-one platform. Here's an honest breakdown:

Assembling individual tools yourself — makes sense when:

• You have a technically capable team that can handle setup and maintenance
• You have very specific requirements that a platform doesn't cover
• You're under 15 employees and the IT volume is still manageable

All-in-one platform like deeploi — makes sense when:

• Nobody on the team is or should be dedicated to IT
• You regularly hire or offboard employees
• Remote team members or multiple locations are involved
• You want a predictable, transparent IT cost structure
• Compliance requirements (GDPR, NIS2, ISO 27001) are becoming relevant

Read more: IT costs at SMBs: what IT really costs and how to save

Conclusion

Five categories. One clear decision about self-management vs. managed service. That's the complete IT stack an SMB without its own IT team needs.

You don't need 87 SaaS applications. You need a workspace platform, device management, endpoint protection with backup, a password manager, and reliable IT support. Anyone who has these five areas properly set up sleeps better, onboards faster, and spends less than most companies with three times the tool chaos.

Book a demo and see how deeploi takes over all five areas

Frequently asked questions

How much does an SMB spend per employee on IT tools on average?

‍SMBs with 20–100 employees spend an average of $2,000–5,000 per person per year on IT, including $156 per user per month on SaaS subscriptions alone. A large portion of that is wasted: 34% of subscribed tools are barely used. Structured IT asset management and automatic licence reharvesting on offboarding can recover 20–30% of those costs.

From what size does a professional IT solution make sense for an SMB?

‍From around 15–20 employees, or as soon as remote team members are added, manual IT management breaks down regularly — not because the technology fails, but because nobody has the time and knowledge to keep everything in view. That's exactly when a structured solution pays off, because the time investment grows exponentially while the IT cost grows linearly.

Do I have to replace all my tools to switch to deeploi?

‍No. deeploi integrates with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, HR systems like Personio, HiBob, and BambooHR, and the tools your team already uses. You keep what works; we add the layer that connects and automates everything. Migration typically takes 1–2 weeks without disrupting ongoing operations.

What's the difference between an MDM tool and a managed IT platform like deeploi?

‍An MDM tool manages devices — but you or someone on your team has to configure, maintain, and operate it. A managed IT platform handles not just device management but also onboarding, offboarding, software licence management, security, and support. The difference: you buy the tool, or someone runs the operation for you.

How does deeploi cover GDPR and NIS2 requirements?

‍deeploi is ISO 27001 certified, GDPR compliant, and hosts all data within the EU. Technically, the platform automates the core measures that GDPR and NIS2 require: device encryption, patch management, access controls, immediate offboarding, and audit logging. The governance layer of compliance sits with the company itself.