For most small businesses, managed IT support costs less than employing an IT person and covers more ground, because one person can’t know everything or be at work every day of the year. An in-house hire starts to make sense when you have enough hands-on IT work to fill a full-time role, or need someone physically on site every day. Plenty of businesses end up with a bit of both. Here’s an honest comparison, including the costs that don’t show up in a salary.
The short answer
- Cost: an employee costs their salary plus employer National Insurance, pension, recruitment, training and the tools they need to do the job.
- Cover: one person is away for at least 5.6 weeks of holiday a year, plus sickness and training. A team isn’t.
- Skills: business IT now covers Microsoft 365, security, networks, backups, phones and more. Few people are strong at all of it.
- In-house wins when there’s a full day’s IT work every day, or the job needs someone on site.
- The middle ground is to keep an in-house person and bring in an IT company for the tools, the cover and the specialist work.
What an in-house IT person really costs
Start with the salary. The National Careers Service puts typical pay for an IT support technician at £24,000 a year for a starter and £36,000 for someone experienced. Someone who can also plan projects and run your security is a more senior role, so check current adverts for the job you actually need.
Then add the costs of employing them. For the 2026 to 2027 tax year:
- Employer National Insurance is 15% of earnings above £5,000 a year.
- Workplace pension: under automatic enrolment you must pay at least 3% of their qualifying earnings, which for the legal minimum means earnings between £6,240 and £50,270 a year.
- Employment Allowance can cut an eligible employer’s National Insurance bill by up to £10,500 a year. If your existing payroll already uses the full allowance, a new hire’s National Insurance is paid in full.
As a worked example, take the National Careers Service’s experienced figure of £36,000. Employer National Insurance would be £4,650 and the minimum employer pension contribution £892.80, bringing the cost to about £41,500 a year before anything else. Then add:
- recruitment, whether that’s an agency fee or your own time;
- training and certifications to keep their skills current;
- a laptop, a phone and the software an IT person needs for monitoring, remote support, backup and security, which an IT company already pays for and shares across its clients;
- your time managing someone whose work you may not be able to judge.
Managed IT support, by comparison, is usually a fixed fee per user per month. Our guide to what IT support costs in Cardiff explains how that pricing works and what it should include. Be fair to both sides when you compare: an in-house person can take on projects within their salary, while a managed provider will usually quote for large projects separately.
Cover: who answers when they’re off?
Almost every worker in the UK is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, which is 28 days for someone working five days a week. Add sickness, training and the odd appointment, and your IT person will be unavailable for well over a month a year. Problems don’t wait for them to get back.
There’s also the risk when they leave. If one person holds every password and all the knowledge of how things are set up, their notice period becomes a scramble. A managed provider works as a team, keeps documentation, and doesn’t stop when one engineer goes on holiday.
Breadth of skills
A small business’s IT covers a lot of ground:
- Microsoft 365: email, Teams, SharePoint, licensing and the security settings behind them;
- cyber security, from multi-factor authentication to Cyber Essentials;
- laptops, phones and printers;
- networks, Wi-Fi and broadband;
- backups, and getting you running again after a problem;
- phone systems, specialist business software and, increasingly, AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot.
One person can be very good at several of these. It’s rare to find someone expert in all of them, and hard for them to keep up when they’re the only one. An IT company spreads that knowledge across a team and sees the same problems at many businesses, so it tends to recognise them sooner.
When an in-house IT person makes sense
Managed support isn’t always the answer, and we’d rather say so. An in-house hire is often right when:
- there’s genuinely a full day’s hands-on IT work every day, for example in a larger office or across several sites;
- you run specialist systems or equipment that need daily attention from someone who knows them inside out;
- the job needs someone physically present all day, such as in a workshop or lab;
- you want someone embedded in the business, improving how people work as well as fixing problems.
The middle ground: in-house and managed together
Many growing businesses don’t choose one or the other. They keep an in-house person for the day-to-day and onsite work they know best, and bring in an IT company for the rest: monitoring and security tools, holiday cover, specialist knowledge and larger projects. This is often called co-managed IT.
It works best when responsibilities are written down: who handles which requests, who holds which admin accounts, and who deals with what when something goes wrong. Done well, your IT person gets backup and better tools, and the business stops relying on one person for everything.
Questions to ask before you decide
- How many IT problems and requests do we really have in a typical week?
- What happens today when the person who sorts our IT is on holiday?
- Who holds our admin passwords, and is that written down anywhere?
- Do clients, tenders or our insurer ask about our security?
- What would a day without email or files cost us?
How we can help
Our managed IT support gives you a team on first-name terms with your staff, with unlimited support by phone, remotely and onsite, proactive monitoring, daily backups and security best practice enforced. It starts from £45 per user per month + VAT, and we give a fixed quote once we’ve seen your set-up; our pricing page shows what’s included. If you’re weighing up a hire, book a call and we’ll talk it through honestly, including if we think an in-house person would suit you better.
Sources
- Rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027, GOV.UK, updated 1 September 2026.
- Workplace pensions: what you, your employer and the government pay, GOV.UK.
- Employment Allowance, GOV.UK.
- Holiday entitlement, GOV.UK.
- IT support technician job profile, National Careers Service.