Most companies shopping for seat leasing in the Philippines start with one question: what's the price per seat? That instinct is understandable, but price alone tells you nothing about whether your team can actually work on day one. The gaps that cost you — downtime, compliance failures, security incidents — don't show up in a rate card. They show up after you've signed. This checklist covers the four infrastructure pillars that matter most: IT segmentation, backup power, redundant connectivity, and compliance documentation. Use it as a due-diligence tool before you commit to any provider.
Why Price Per Seat Is the Wrong Starting Point
Seat leasing in the Philippines is a commodity market. Dozens of providers quote similar per-seat rates, and on paper the differences look minor. The real cost gap appears later: an unplanned brownout that kills a shift, a failed client security audit because network documentation doesn't exist, or a data incident traced back to co-mingled tenant traffic.
Price reflects what a provider charges. It says nothing about what they've built or documented. The checklist below is a due-diligence tool — not a negotiation script. Its purpose is to surface operational maturity before you sign, not to drive the rate down.
The Seat Leasing Philippines Checklist
The checklist is organized into five categories. For each one, there are specific questions worth asking in writing before any contract is signed. If a provider answers vaguely, verbally only, or says the information isn't available, treat that as a red flag — not a minor inconvenience.
1. Power Infrastructure
Power reliability is the first thing to verify, particularly if your facility is outside Metro Manila. Davao and other regional hubs experience periodic brownouts. A provider who hasn't engineered around that reality creates shift-level risk for your team.
Ask these questions in writing:
- What is the UPS capacity and runtime per workstation during a grid outage?
- Is there a generator on-site, and what is its rated capacity and tested runtime?
- How quickly does the facility switch from grid to backup power — measured in milliseconds or seconds?
- Are generator test logs available for review?
A provider who can only say “we have a generator” without documented specs or test records is telling you something important: the infrastructure exists, but the operational discipline around it may not. Your SLA with your own clients doesn't pause for undocumented backup power failures. Your seat leasing provider's accountability shouldn't either.
2. Internet Connectivity and Redundancy
Bandwidth size is not the same as reliability. A single high-speed connection is still a single point of failure. Before signing, get specific answers on how the facility is built for continuity.
- How many ISPs serve the facility, and are they on separate physical infrastructure — for example, fiber from one carrier, fixed wireless from another?
- What is the committed information rate (CIR) per seat, and is it contended or uncontended?
- What is the automatic failover time between ISPs?
- Is there a separate out-of-band management connection for your IT team?
Single-ISP facilities are a structural risk regardless of how much bandwidth they provision. If that one connection goes down, your team goes down with it. Redundancy requires physically diverse paths — not just a backup contract with the same carrier running through the same conduit.
3. Network Segmentation and IT Security
This category matters most for FinTech and HealthTech clients, but it applies to any company with data handling obligations. Co-mingled network traffic between tenants on the same floor is a compliance and data breach risk that no rate card will warn you about.
- Are client environments logically and physically segmented from other tenants in the same building?
- Can the provider supply VLAN architecture documentation or a network topology diagram under NDA?
- Is there a dedicated firewall per client, or is it a shared perimeter?
- Who manages endpoint security — the provider, your team, or a shared model?
- Are USB ports and peripheral access controlled at the hardware or software level?
If a provider can't produce network documentation under NDA, assume the documentation doesn't exist. That means your client's data and your competitor's data may be traveling the same infrastructure. For regulated industries, that's not a theoretical risk — it's a vendor assessment failure waiting to happen.
4. Physical Security and Access Controls
Physical security documentation is frequently requested during client security audits and vendor assessments. Know what the provider has before your client asks.
- What access control system is in place — biometric, keycard, PIN, or a combination?
- Is CCTV coverage continuous, and how long is footage retained?
- Are clean-desk and no-personal-device policies enforced, and how is enforcement documented?
- How are visitor and contractor access events logged?
Physical controls are the last line of defense after network and endpoint security. A facility with strong IT segmentation but weak physical access controls has a gap that an audit — or an incident — will find.
5. Compliance Documentation and Certifications
Certifications matter, but they require verification. Ask to see current certificates, not just claims on a website.
- What certifications or accreditations does the facility hold, and can you review the current certificates?
- Is the provider registered with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) or any relevant regulatory body?
- What data privacy compliance posture does the provider maintain under the Philippine Data Privacy Act (DPA)?
- If you operate in a regulated industry, can the provider supply documentation suitable for your own compliance audits?
One important distinction: certifications in progress are not the same as certifications held. A provider pursuing ISO 27001, for example, is not yet ISO 27001 certified. Ask for a clear roadmap and ask what interim controls are in place during the pursuit period. A credible provider will answer that question directly. Splace holds CCAP accreditation. ISO 27001 and HIPAA compliance are currently in pursuit — and we'll tell you exactly where that process stands and what controls are active in the meantime.
How to Evaluate the Answers You Get
Good providers answer in writing, with documentation available under NDA. That's the standard. Providers who respond verbally only, or who ask you to trust their word without evidence, are signaling that the documentation doesn't exist — or that they've never been asked to produce it before.
Request a site walkthrough before signing. If you can't travel to the Philippines, a live video tour with a structured agenda is a reasonable alternative. Walk the floor. Ask to see the server room, the UPS units, the access control panels.
A provider's willingness to answer these questions thoroughly — and in writing — is itself a signal of operational maturity. The ones who push back on documentation requests are telling you something worth knowing before you sign.
What a Bundled Provider Changes About This Equation
A pure seat leasing provider gives you space and infrastructure. Everything else — HR, payroll, compliance, IT management — sits with you or with separate vendors. That means multiple audits, multiple SLAs, and multiple points of accountability when something goes wrong.
A bundled provider combines seat leasing with Employer of Record (EOR) services and managed team operations under a single SLA. Compliance documentation, workforce administration, and infrastructure accountability sit with one party. When your client asks for a vendor security assessment, you have one relationship to point to — not three.
That structure doesn't eliminate the checklist above. It concentrates the answers in one place, which makes due diligence faster and ongoing accountability cleaner.
Conclusion and Next Step
Infrastructure gaps are invisible until something breaks. By then, you've already absorbed the cost — in downtime, in failed audits, or in a security incident your own clients will ask about. This checklist exists so you find the gaps before you sign, not after.
If you want to ask these questions directly — and get documented answers — Splace offers a structured 20-minute Ops Audit. No sales pitch. A straightforward conversation about your requirements, followed by honest answers about what we can and can't provide.
