Managed IT Support

In-house vs outsourced IT support: which is right for a UK business of up to 250 people?

In-house IT versus outsourced managed support for UK SMEs: a salary-versus-MSP cost table, the co-managed middle ground and the signs it is time to outsource.

By Dig IT SolutionsUpdated 8 September 20267 min read

Short answer

For most UK businesses under about 100 staff, outsourced managed IT support costs less than one in-house engineer's salary and on-costs, covers holidays and sickness, and brings specialist depth in security, networking and Microsoft 365 that a single hire cannot. In-house IT makes sense above that size, with heavy bespoke systems, or as a co-managed lead backed by a provider.

The choice is usually framed as control versus cost. In practice it is about coverage: who is watching your systems on a Tuesday afternoon, who answers when the one engineer is on holiday, and who knows enough about EDR, firewalls, Microsoft 365 and backup to do all four properly. This guide compares the two honestly, puts UK numbers side by side, and describes the co-managed middle ground that suits many growing firms.

The two models, briefly

In-house IT means employing one or more people whose job is your technology. They sit in your office, know your staff and your applications, and are available during their working hours.

Outsourced IT support means contracting a managed service provider (MSP) to monitor, maintain, secure and support your systems for a monthly fee, usually per user or per device. The provider's engineers work remotely most of the time and visit when needed. See what is managed IT support? for what a contract covers.

Co-managed IT is both: an internal lead backed by an external provider for monitoring, security, escalation and cover. We come back to it below.

In-house IT: strengths and limits

Strengths. Immediate physical presence. Deep familiarity with your people and your line-of-business software. Direct control over priorities. Good for businesses with bespoke or unusual systems, heavy on-site hardware, or a culture that wants IT at the desk.

Limits. One person covers one person's hours. Holidays, sickness and resignations leave gaps. Nobody can be expert in everything, and a generalist engineer will be stronger on some of security, networking, cloud, backup and telephony than others. Monitoring, EDR, email filtering and RMM tools still have to be bought and run. And the engineer needs managing, training and a career path, or they leave, taking undocumented knowledge with them.

The failure mode we see most often is the single in-house engineer who is excellent, overworked, and the only person who knows how anything works. When that person resigns, the business discovers that the network diagram, the licence logins and the reasoning behind every configuration choice were never written down, and the incoming provider spends its first month reconstructing them.

Outsourced IT support: strengths and limits

Strengths. Predictable monthly cost. A team rather than a person, so cover is built in. Specialist depth across security, Microsoft 365, networking and backup because the provider does those jobs every day for many clients. Monitoring and security tooling included in the fee. Documentation as a by-product of the service. Scales up and down with headcount without recruitment.

Limits. You are one of many clients, so responsiveness depends on the SLA in your contract rather than proximity. On-site presence has to be scoped. A provider that does not know your sector's applications will be slower on those. And a badly written contract can leave you dependent on the provider for credentials and documentation. All of these are contract questions, which is why what to look for in an IT support contract matters.

The cost comparison: salary versus managed contract

The table below compares one in-house engineer with a managed contract for a 30-person business. The salary figures are indicative of ranges commonly seen in job adverts for support engineers in Hertfordshire and outer London, not survey statistics, and you should check current adverts for your area. The managed figures use our indicative per-device rates (reviewed October 2026, confirmed in a written quote).

Cost line	In-house: one IT support engineer	Outsourced: managed contract, 30 staff
Base	Salary, commonly advertised around £30,000 to £40,000 in Hertfordshire, higher in central London	30 laptops at £17.50 = £525 per month
On-costs	Employer National Insurance and pension, plus holiday and sick cover, commonly adding a fifth or more to salary as a rule of thumb	1 server at £150, 1 firewall at £25, 2 printers at £20 = £195 per month
Tools	RMM, EDR, email filtering, ticketing, backup software: bought and licensed separately	Included in the per-device fee
Training and certification	Days out of the business plus course fees	Provider's responsibility
Cover	None when on leave or sick	Team-based, continuous
Management time	Recruitment, reviews, one-to-ones	An account review a few times a year
Indicative annual total	Roughly £40,000 to £55,000 all-in for one person, before tools	£720 per month, about £8,640 per year

Add 20 desk phones at £16.50 and the managed figure rises to about £1,050 per month, still a fraction of one salary. Even if you double the managed figure to allow for on-site visits and projects, the gap remains wide. The IT support cost calculator will run this for your own headcount, and how much IT support costs in the UK explains what moves the price.

Two caveats. First, the in-house engineer gives you hours on site that the contract does not, and if you genuinely need a body in the building every day, that has value. Second, at 100+ staff with complex systems, one engineer becomes two or three and the sums start to favour a hybrid.

Comparison on the things that matter to a director

Factor	In-house	Outsourced managed	Co-managed
Cost predictability	Fixed salary, variable tooling and project spend	Fixed monthly, projects quoted	Fixed salary plus fixed contract
Cover for absence	None	Built in	Built in for the external part
Specialist depth (security, networking, cloud)	Depends on the individual	Team of specialists	Best of both
On-site presence	Constant	On request, scoped	Constant, with backup
Response commitment	Informal	SLA by priority	SLA for escalations
Knowledge of your applications	Deep	Grows through onboarding	Deep
Documentation	Often in one person's head	Required by the model	Shared
Scaling with growth	Recruit	Add users to the contract	Add users, keep the lead
Risk if the person leaves	High	Low	Medium

Signs it is time to outsource

If you currently rely on an informal arrangement, an over-stretched in-house person, or a break-fix engineer, these are the signals we hear most often from businesses that go on to switch.

IT spend is unpredictable. Quiet months, then a large invoice after a failure, with no way to budget.
Staff are distracted by IT. The office manager, or the owner, spends hours a week on printers, passwords and Wi-Fi.
Downtime is frequent or unexplained. The same problems come back and nobody finds the root cause.
Growth has outrun the setup. Joiners wait days for a laptop, permissions are guesswork, shared drives are chaos.
Security is a worry. No MFA, no EDR, no email filtering, staff have never been trained, and phishing emails are getting through.
There is no tested recovery plan. Backups exist, probably, but nobody has restored from them.
Remote working was improvised. Home networks, personal laptops and VPNs nobody manages.
An outsider has asked. Cyber insurance renewal, a client's supplier questionnaire, or a Cyber Essentials requirement wants evidence.
You want to focus on the business. Technology should be something you decide about, not something you fix.

Two or more of these and the question is not whether, but how. Our outsourced IT support page describes how we take that on.

The co-managed middle ground

For businesses of roughly 50 to 200 staff, the choice is often not binary. An internal IT lead who knows the business, the applications and the people is genuinely valuable. What they lack is depth, tooling and cover.

Co-managed IT keeps that person and adds an external provider for monitoring, patching, endpoint security, backup checks, complex escalations, project capacity and holiday cover. The internal lead stops being a single point of failure and gets a team behind them. Responsibilities are written down so nothing falls between the two. See co-managed IT support.

This is also a sensible route for a business whose in-house engineer is about to retire or leave: the provider onboards while they are still there, documentation is captured properly, and the business does not have to recruit a replacement under pressure.

Which businesses benefit most from each

In-house wins for larger organisations with bespoke systems, heavy manufacturing or warehouse hardware that needs constant hands-on attention, or regulatory settings that require named internal roles.

Outsourced wins for professional services, healthcare practices, construction and plant hire, estate agents, leisure businesses and most firms of up to 250 people that run on Microsoft 365, a network, a few servers and standard applications. The Hertfordshire Golf & Country Club, for example, needed a complete network built from nothing across a 16th-century Grade II listed mansion, guest Wi-Fi with bandwidth controls and UniFi Protect cameras, none of which justifies a full-time hire. Read the case study.

Co-managed wins where there is already a capable internal person and the business is growing past what one person can carry.

What to do next

If you are weighing an in-house hire against a contract, get a real number for the contract side first. The IT support cost calculator produces an indicative monthly figure from your headcount and equipment in a couple of minutes, using the per-device rates above. Put it next to the fully loaded cost of the hire and the decision usually becomes clear.

Frequently asked questions

Is it cheaper to outsource IT support or hire in-house?

For businesses under roughly 100 staff, outsourcing is usually cheaper. One in-house engineer costs salary plus employer National Insurance, pension, holiday, training, tools and management time, and covers one person's hours. A managed contract for 30 users on indicative per-device rates is typically well under half that, includes monitoring and security tooling, and is covered when someone is on holiday. Above 100 staff the comparison narrows.

What are the disadvantages of outsourcing IT support?

You are one client among many, so you need an SLA rather than an assumption of priority. An engineer is not sitting in your office, so on-site needs must be scoped. A generic provider may not understand your line-of-business software. And a poor contract can leave documentation and credentials in the provider's hands on exit. All four are managed by choosing carefully and reading the agreement.

What is co-managed IT support?

Co-managed IT is a shared arrangement: your internal IT person or small team handles day-to-day requests and knows the business, while an external provider supplies monitoring, patching, security tooling, escalation for complex problems and cover for holidays and sickness. It suits businesses of roughly 50 to 200 staff that have outgrown one engineer but do not want to build a department.

When is it time to outsource your IT?

Common triggers are unpredictable IT spend, staff or the owner spending hours a week on technical problems, repeated downtime, growth outpacing informal arrangements, a security scare, no tested disaster recovery plan, or an insurer or client asking for evidence of controls. If two or more apply, the informal approach is already costing more than a contract would.

Will an outsourced provider understand our business?

A good one will, because onboarding is built around it. Expect an audit of your systems, a conversation about which applications matter most, documentation of your environment and a named contact. Ask prospective providers about clients in your sector. Ours include a multi-depot plant hire company and a golf and country club, which are very different environments with different priorities.

Can we outsource IT and keep control of our data?

Yes. You remain the owner of every account, licence, domain and file. The provider holds administrative access to do the work, and the contract should say that documentation and credentials are handed back on exit. Ask for that clause specifically. Control is not about who does the patching. It is about who owns the keys, and that should always be you.