My company currently uses a managed print service, and I’m fairly new to the organization. I came from the MSP world, so I have quite a bit of experience with our current print vendor from my previous role. Let’s just say I’m not particularly impressed with them.

They’re quoting us over $40k per year to lease four printers, which seems insane to me. I’ve started looking into purchasing some higher-end HP printers instead. Obviously, there’s a larger upfront cost, and we’d be taking on more of the maintenance ourselves, but even accounting for that, purchasing looks significantly cheaper over the long term.

Has anyone here moved away from a managed print/lease agreement and purchased their printers outright instead? How did it work out? Were there any hidden costs or headaches that made you regret it?

I feel like I must be missing something, because the numbers on the managed service just don’t seem to make sense.

Leaders at my company are saying DLP is too strict and keep complaining about how their reports are now creating much riskier workarounds so they're not also sacrificing productivity. How do we balance this so everyone is (somewhat) happy and our data remains secure?