A fractional CIO alternative priced per decision
Most mid-market companies need three real IT decisions a year, not a $180K retainer. Heartwood gives you senior IT advisory on demand, as a written brief, not a calendar full of calls.
The short answer
A fractional CIO is a part-time hire. Heartwood is a per-decision service. If you have enough ongoing IT complexity to justify 20+ hours a month of senior IT leadership, hire a fractional CIO. If you have two or three big decisions a year that could cost you a million dollars to get wrong, Heartwood is built for that exact shape.
| Fractional CIO | Heartwood | |
|---|---|---|
| Engagement model | Monthly retainer; part-time embedded advisor | Per-brief or subscription; no standing commitment |
| Typical cost | $5,000–$20,000 per month ($60K–$240K/year) | $99 per Deep Research Brief · $99/mo Pro (2 DR credits included) |
| Hours per month | 10–40, depending on retainer | As many briefs as you need; no calendars |
| Breadth of experience | One person's career, one industry bias | A panel: infrastructure, growth CTO, risk, plus industry specialists |
| Delivery | Meetings, Slack, occasional memo | Written Decision Brief; Deep Research PDF on request |
| Turnaround on a new decision | 1–3 weeks (discovery, meetings, synthesis) | 90 seconds for standard; 10–15 min for Deep Research |
| Owns execution? | Usually. Picks vendors, manages implementations. | No. You own execution; the brief informs it. |
Hire a fractional CIO when…
You have a full-blown IT strategy problem: an aging infrastructure, a team that needs to grow from two people to ten, a cybersecurity program that has never existed. You need someone to own the roadmap, sit in leadership meetings, hire the staff, and make trade-offs week after week. That is a fractional CIO engagement and nothing less will do.
Fractional CIOs also earn their cost when you have a specific transition (a divestiture, an acquisition, a carve-out) that demands tens of decisions over months, with each one informed by the last. The continuity of a single advisor who learns your business is the value.
When you only need the decision
Most mid-market companies have a working IT setup and an internal IT manager who handles day-to-day operations. What they're missing is senior advisory for the two or three decisions a year that matter: ERP replacement, MSP selection, cybersecurity insurance renewal, a major cloud migration, the first CIO hire.
For those decisions, a Decision Brief gives you 80% of what a fractional CIO would deliver on that specific question, at 1% of the cost, in minutes instead of weeks. The value of the fractional CIO (continuity, relationships, execution ownership) isn't in play for a single decision. You're paying for it anyway.
The common stack
A common pattern: keep a lightweight fractional CIO on a 10-hour-a-month retainer for continuity, and use Heartwood for the specific decisions where you want a second opinion or a faster turnaround. Fractional CIOs use Heartwood this way themselves. It lets them punch above their weight on questions outside their industry without having to fake expertise they don't have.
If you have no IT leadership at all, start with a fractional CIO. If you have internal IT leadership but no senior advisor, start with Heartwood.
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