Quick answer (July 2026): below about 50 staff, outsourcing IT support nearly always wins the maths. One qualified technician really costs £41k-£46k a year once employer National Insurance, pension, recruitment and training land - more than per-user support for a whole 25-person team, with 24/7 security included. From around 50 users the in-house question genuinely opens; 50-75 is the grey zone where co-managed wins; past 100, an internal team plus a specialist backstop is often right. Take the 2-minute checker for your own answer.
Written for UK owners and directors deciding whether the IT bill should become a salary - or the salary should become a per-user bill.
Should you hire IT staff or outsource IT support? We pulled apart thirteen pages ranking for this question in July 2026, and the pattern was the same on every one: quote a salary, wave at "overheads", recommend whatever the author sells. The only two that showed employer costs both still used the National Insurance rate that ended in April 2025.
So this guide does the maths properly - itemised, sourced and argued in both directions, including the cases where hiring genuinely wins and what happens to your existing IT person if you switch.
What does "outsourcing IT support" actually mean?
Outsourcing IT support means paying a specialist company - usually called a managed service provider, or MSP - a monthly per-user fee to run your business IT: helpdesk, devices, updates, backup, security and monitoring.
In the UK this normally means a UK-based team working in your systems under your ownership. It is not offshoring a call centre, and it's a different decision from outsourcing a software build - this article is about the day-to-day IT operation.
Most guides present two options. There are really four states a UK business sits in:
- The accidental IT manager. Nobody owns IT; the office manager, a director or "the one who's good with computers" absorbs it. This is where most sub-25-user businesses actually are - and the comparison that matters isn't hire-vs-outsource, it's this-vs-either. The hidden cost is senior time: hours of fee-earning or leadership work lost to printer drivers and password resets, with nobody watching security at all.
- Fully outsourced. A provider runs the lot for a per-user monthly fee. The norm below 50 users.
- Co-managed. Your IT person or small team handles the day-to-day; a provider supplies the tooling, escalation, security operations and absence cover behind them. The grey-zone answer - more below.
- In-house team. Your own department, usually with specialists bought in per project. Earns its keep at scale - when, exactly, is below.
What a good provider actually does day to day - the tooling stack, the baseline, what your money buys - is a guide in itself: what is managed IT support (and what's actually included). Here we stick to the decision maths.
The real cost of in-house IT in 2026
Every comparison you'll read starts with a salary. Almost none of them finish the sum. Here it is, line by line, for the two hires UK businesses actually make - a support technician and an IT manager - at 2026 rates, with sources.
| Cost line | IT support technician | IT manager | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salary (UK median) | £34,314 | £55,000 | ONS ASHE 2025 (SOC 3132); ITJobsWatch, July 2026 |
| Employer National Insurance 15% above £5,000 since April 2025 |
£4,397 | £7,500 | HMRC - rate and threshold unchanged from 2025-26 into 2026-27; worked in full below |
| Employer pension 3% of qualifying earnings (auto-enrolment minimum) |
~£840 | ~£1,320 | The Pensions Regulator - qualifying band held for 2026-27 |
| Recruitment, spread over a typical stay agency fees run 15-20% of salary |
~£1,700/yr | ~£3,300/yr | UK agency fee norms; amortised over ~3 years |
| Training and certification allowance | £1,000-£2,000 | £1,000-£2,000 | Allowance, in line with the ~£1,700 UK average training spend (Employer Skills Survey 2024) |
| True annual cost | £41k-£46k | £66k-£74k | Before tooling, kit or any cover for absence |
The National Insurance line deserves a moment, because it's where almost every published comparison is now wrong. Since 6th April 2025, employers pay 15% on everything above £5,000 a year - up from 13.8% above roughly £9,100, and confirmed unchanged into 2026-27. On the £34,314 technician that's (£34,314 − £5,000) × 15% = £4,397.
Comparison guides still circulating - including ones updated this month - quote around £5.2k of employer NI on a £45,000 hire. The answer under the rules in force since April 2025 is £6,000. That's £800 adrift, across two tax years and counting - if a guide can't keep up with payroll, treat its conclusion accordingly.
Fair's fair - the Employment Allowance. Most smaller employers can claim the Employment Allowance, worth up to £10,500 a year off the total employer NI bill. If you have headroom left, a first IT hire's NI line shrinks accordingly. The table shows the full loaded cost; knock off whatever your allowance genuinely covers. That's the kind of adjustment a comparison written by a provider usually forgets to mention.
And none of that includes the software. An in-house person still needs the professional stack a provider would bring: remote monitoring and management, endpoint detection and response, backup, a ticketing system, documentation tooling.
Bought at single-company scale that stack runs £20-£25 per user per month before anyone answers a ticket - at 25 users, another £6k-£7.5k a year. Providers spread the same licences across thousands of endpoints; it's baked into the per-user fee.
What one hire actually covers
Cost is half the comparison. The other half is what you get for it - and this is where the one-person model quietly falls apart, through no fault of the person.
Start with time. A full-time hire works 40 of the week's 168 hours - 24% of the week.
Take the year: 261 weekdays, minus 28 days' statutory holiday, minus the ONS-average 4.4 sickness days, leaves roughly 228 days at a desk. Your IT cover is absent for about one working day in eight - entirely legitimately - and every one of those days is a coin-toss against your server having opinions.
Then breadth. Modern SME IT touches networking, Microsoft 365 administration, endpoint security, backup and recovery, compliance evidence, supplier wrangling and user support - eight-plus specialisms.
A good generalist covers most of them to a sensible depth; nobody covers all of them to the depth a specialist team reaches, because nobody can. The comparison isn't one person versus another person. It's one person versus a bench.
Then the risk nobody budgets: the resignation. One person holds the admin credentials, the undocumented fixes and the knowledge of why the warehouse switch is plugged in like that. When they hand in their notice, you have weeks to capture years - while recruiting a replacement, which is rarely quick for IT roles.
And if you need out-of-hours cover, the arithmetic turns brutal. Staffing 168 hours a week at 37.5 hours per person is 4.5 heads before holiday and sickness cover - call it five salaries to keep one seat warm around the clock. That's why genuine 24/7 is essentially always bought, not built, below enterprise scale.
The real cost of outsourced IT support
The short version, because we've published the long one: UK managed IT support runs £30-£150 per user per month in 2026, with £45-£85 the realistic mid-market band and security-led packages at £85-£150. Be suspicious below £40-£45 - the tooling alone costs a provider £20-£25 per user, so something in a cheaper quote is missing or reactive.
Our own packages run £69-£160 per user per month ex VAT with 24/7 managed detection and response in every tier, on rolling monthly terms. The full anatomy - what drives price, the hidden extras, a calculator that resolves to buyable prices - is in our IT support cost guide.
Two notes to keep the comparison fair. First, per-user fees usually exclude projects - office moves, migrations, big rollouts - and hardware; decent providers say so upfront.
Second, the fee includes things the salary column doesn't: the £20-£25/user tooling stack, the security operation and absence-proof cover. When you line the models up, make sure both columns describe the same job.
The break-even maths, size by size
Here's the whole decision in one table. In-house figures use the true loaded costs from above; outsourced figures show the market mid-band and our own Core tier exactly (£69/user/month rolling, ex VAT). All annual, ex VAT.
| Team size | In-house (true cost) | Outsourced, market mid-band £45-£85/user/month |
Outsourced, our Core tier | The bottom line |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 users | £41k-£46k (one technician) | £5.4k-£10.2k | £8,280 | No contest - a hire costs four to five times the per-user bill and covers less |
| 25 users | £41k-£46k (one technician) | £13.5k-£25.5k | £20,700 | Still roughly half the loaded hire - and it's a team, not a person |
| 50 users | £41k-£46k (one busy technician) | £27k-£51k | £41,400 | The crossover: costs converge and there's now a day's IT work most days - the question becomes coverage and depth, not price |
| 75 users | £108k-£120k (manager + technician) | £40.5k-£76.5k | £62,100 | Grey zone - a two-person team costs double the fee, one person can't cover absence: co-managed usually wins here |
| 100+ users | £120k-£190k (2-3 heads) | £54k-£102k | £82,800 | A real choice: internal team + specialist backstop vs full outsource - context and culture decide, not price alone |
Assumptions, in the open: salaries at the medians above, with employer costs at the rates in force since April 2025 (confirmed unchanged for 2026-27); no London weighting (add 15-30% inside the M25); the in-house column excludes the £20-£25/user tooling stack an internal person still needs, while per-user fees include it; projects and hardware sit outside both columns. Over a three-year view the gap widens - salaries inflate and attract NI at 15%, while a rolling per-user fee scales down as well as up.
Now you've seen the maths - see the prices. Our full price list is public: every package, every per-user price, ex VAT, monthly rolling, with enterprise security in every tier. Compare the packages against those salary numbers - and if outsourcing wins your maths, you can buy online in minutes.
Which model fits your business? The 2-minute checker
Eight questions, no email address, no "book a discovery call". Answer as things really are and it'll tell you which of the three models the evidence points to - including when the answer is to hire, not to buy from us. The static version of this advice is further down if you'd rather read it.
Answer the eight questions above and your verdict appears here.
Your answers point to: fully outsourced support
A managed provider gives you a whole team, enterprise tooling and round-the-clock security for a predictable per-user fee - at your size and shape, that beats a hire on cost, coverage and depth.
Your answers point to: co-managed IT
Keep the person (or team) who knows your business - and put a provider's tooling, escalation, security operation and absence cover behind them, from roughly £23 per user per month alongside their salary. The grey-zone answer that beats both pure options.
Your answers point to: in-house, with a backstop
At your scale and shape, your own team earns its keep - proximity, context and hands-on depth that no external contract fully matches. The sensible add-on is a backstop: specialist security cover and escalation behind your team, so one resignation or one 3am incident doesn't stand the business down.
How we worked this out
Each answer adds weight towards one or more of the three models - the weights follow the decision factors every serious UK comparison uses (headcount, existing staff, coverage hours, compliance, response need, growth, bespoke systems, management appetite), anchored to the break-even maths above. Ties resolve to co-managed, because a genuine tie is the definition of the grey zone. Two overrides: over 100 staff with an existing team always reads in-house with a backstop, and under 15 staff with no IT person always reads fully outsourced.
It's deliberately capable of not recommending us. The maths section above is the justification; this just personalises it. The verdict is illustrative guidance rather than tailored advice.
The interactive checker didn't load, but you don't need it: what we'd advise at each size covers the same ground.
The benefits of outsourcing IT support - and the counter-cases
You've read the ten-reasons listicles; every one was written by a provider, and none mentions a downside. Here are the five that survive contact with the maths - each with its counter-case, because a benefit without one is an advert.
The benefit: networking, Microsoft 365, security, backup - you get whichever specialist the ticket needs instead of whoever you hired.
The counter-case: nobody on that bench knows your warehouse switch's history like a five-year veteran would. Context takes months to build.
The benefit: the provider's rota absorbs leave, sickness and resignations invisibly; 24/7 security operations come with the fee instead of five salaries.
The counter-case: response is remote-first. If your problems are mostly physical - hardware, machinery, premises - remote-first works less well.
The benefit: managed detection and response, ransomware-grade backup and compliance evidence are pooled across hundreds of clients - the stack alone would cost you more than the fee. Every one of our tiers includes 24/7 MDR run by CrowdStrike's threat-hunting team; the pillar guide names the whole stack. Buying this in is now the norm: 48% of UK businesses - and 70% of medium-sized ones - already use an external cyber security provider (Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/26).
The counter-case: a shared provider is itself a target - supply-chain attacks on MSPs are real, so vet a provider's own security like a regulator would.
The benefit: per-user fees track headcount down as well as up - a salary doesn't, and in 2026 every salary carries 15% NI on top.
The counter-case: per-user fees never stop. An in-house team's marginal cost per extra user falls as you grow; past 100 users that curve matters.
The benefit: no agency fees, no drawn-out time-to-fill, no betting £45k on one interview performance.
The counter-case: you also skip building internal capability. If IT is strategic to your product - not just your operations - you eventually want some of that knowledge on payroll.
When in-house genuinely wins
A provider that can't tell you when not to buy from it isn't advising you, it's marketing at you. So, plainly - in-house IT wins when:
- You're past about 100 users. There's a full role or more of daily work, the per-user arithmetic converges with salaries and an internal team's context starts compounding.
- Your IT is physical. Manufacturing lines, laboratory instruments, warehouse automation, site machinery - kit that needs hands on it within minutes rewards someone in the building in a way no SLA matches.
- You run deep bespoke systems. A five-year veteran of your custom stack holds context no external engineer can absorb from documentation - if that describes your core systems, keep that knowledge on payroll and buy the rest.
- Data can't leave the building. Genuine sovereignty constraints - defence work, certain research - can rule out third-party administration outright. Rarer than vendors pretend, real when real.
- IT is your product. If technology is what you sell, some of it belongs in-house as a capability, not a cost centre.
And the question providers dodge: what happens to your current IT person? Two things are true at once. First, if you outsource an activity your own staff perform, TUPE can apply - the transfer rules can move those employees to the provider with their terms protected, and you should take advice before assuming otherwise.
Second, in practice the better outcome is usually that nobody goes anywhere: the person who knows your business moves up the stack - projects, improvements, vendor management - while a provider takes the ticket queue and the 3am pager. That's the co-managed model, and it's next.
The middle path: co-managed IT
Between roughly 50 and 75 users, neither pure model quite works: a one-person IT department is a single point of failure with a 228-day year, while full outsourcing wastes the context your person has spent years building.
Co-managed IT splits the difference properly. Your person keeps the local knowledge, the walk-up help and the day-to-day; the provider brings the professional tooling stack, the security operation, escalation depth and cover for every holiday, sickness and resignation.
The maths works because you stop paying twice: the provider's tooling replaces the £20-£25/user stack you'd otherwise licence alone, and the rota replaces the second hire you'd otherwise need for resilience.
From roughly £23 per user per month alongside your person's salary, a 60-user business gets team-depth cover for less than half the cost of a second technician - and your IT person gets to take a holiday without their phone.
Got an IT person you want to keep? Good - so do we, that's the point. Talk to us about a co-managed arrangement: we'll put the tooling, security operation and cover behind them, and they keep doing what they're best at.
The risks of outsourcing (and how to remove them)
Outsourcing has real failure modes - all contract problems rather than model problems, and all removable before you sign.
- "Do we lose control?" The most common worry, and the easiest to fix: you keep ownership of every account, licence, domain and admin credential, with the provider working in your tenancy. You delegate the labour, never the keys. Put data ownership and admin-access terms in writing; a provider who resists is telling you how leaving would go.
- Lock-in. Three-year terms with auto-renewal clauses are still common, and they exist for the provider's benefit, not yours. The fix is simple: buy rolling monthly. (Ours is rolling monthly with free onboarding and free exit - if we're not earning the fee, leaving should be easy.)
- The reactive provider in proactive clothing. Some "managed" services are a helpdesk with a marketing budget. Test it: ask for the patching schedule, the monitoring dashboard and last month's response-time stats. A genuinely proactive provider has all three to hand.
- The provider as attack surface. MSPs are high-value targets because one breach opens many doors - the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and its allied agencies issued a joint advisory on exactly this back in 2022. Vet the provider's own security: certifications, MDR on their own estate and alignment with the NCSC's Choosing a managed service provider guidance (published November 2025). Regulation is heading the same way: the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill - through the Commons and before the Lords as of July 2026 - is set to bring medium and large MSPs into scope.
- Exit terms. Before signing, agree in writing what leaving looks like: data handback format, documentation ownership, notice period, final-month cooperation. The best time to negotiate an exit is when nobody wants one.
The de-risk shortlist: rolling monthly terms, written data ownership and admin access, published response stats, the provider's own security credentials and exit terms agreed before you sign. Five lines in a contract; most of the risk gone.
How the move actually works
Whichever direction you're moving - from the accidental IT manager, from a departing hire or from another provider - the shape is the same three steps, and your team keeps working throughout.
- Discovery and audit (week 1-2). The provider maps what exists: devices, licences, credentials, backup state, the undocumented oddities. If your documentation is thin, this is where it finally gets written.
- Tooling and parallel running (weeks 2-6). Monitoring, security and backup agents roll out alongside whatever exists today; nothing is switched off until its replacement is proven. Issues start flowing to the new helpdesk.
- Cutover and bedding in (weeks 4-8). Old arrangements wind down, response expectations are measured against the contract and the first monthly review sets the improvement list.
Published industry timelines run from a fortnight to three months (the slowest stretch to twenty weeks); the real variable is the state of your documentation - size barely moves it. If existing IT staff are affected, take TUPE advice at the start - and remember the co-managed route usually makes the question moot.
We onboard and offboard free, including inheriting mid-contract messes, because the biggest real barrier to fixing bad IT support is the fear of the move itself.
What we'd advise at each size
The checker above personalises this; here's the static version, which is also what we tell people who phone up and ask.
- Under 15 users: outsource. There isn't a role's worth of work, and the accidental IT manager you're currently using has a better job to do. A per-user plan (or a VIP single-seat package) costs a fraction of anyone's salary.
- 15-49 users: outsource, almost always. The loaded cost of even a junior hire exceeds the whole team's per-user bill, and one person can't match a bench for breadth or cover. The exception is heavy on-site or bespoke kit - then consider a hybrid early.
- 50-75 users: the grey zone - co-managed usually wins. There's now real daily work, so keep (or make) the internal hire for context and presence, and put a provider's tooling, security and cover behind them.
- 75-100 users: co-managed or a small team with a backstop, decided by how physical and how bespoke your IT is. Pure outsourcing still works; pure in-house still doesn't, because two people can't cover 168 hours.
- 100+ users: a genuine choice. An internal team with specialist backstop (security operations, major projects, escalation) is often right; so is full outsourcing with strong governance. Price stops deciding; context, culture and your appetite for managing people decide.
Frequently asked questions
Below about 50 staff, outsourcing is almost always cheaper. One qualified IT technician really costs £41k-£46k a year in 2026 once employer National Insurance at 15%, pension, recruitment and training land - more than per-user support for a whole 25-person team. The maths only genuinely opens up for in-house from around 50 users.
UK managed IT support runs roughly £30-£150 per user per month in 2026, with £45-£85 the realistic mid-market band. Red Eagle Tech packages are £69-£160 per user per month ex VAT with 24/7 managed detection and response included in every tier. Our full cost guide breaks down the bands, the price drivers and the hidden extras.
Far more than the salary. A UK IT support technician on the £34,314 median costs £41k-£46k a year once you add employer National Insurance (15% above £5,000 since April 2025), pension contributions, recruitment fees and training. An IT manager on £55k costs £66k-£74k all-in - before any of the software tooling they need to do the job.
The in-house question genuinely starts around 50 computer-using staff - that's where daily IT work approaches a full role and the loaded cost of a hire stops looking absurd against a per-user bill. Between 50 and 75 users, co-managed IT (your person plus a provider behind them) usually beats both pure options. Below 50, a hire rarely wins on any measure.
The real ones: long lock-in contracts, response times that live in the small print, providers who quietly stay reactive and exit terms that hold your data hostage. All four are contract problems rather than model problems - avoidable with rolling monthly terms, published response targets and written exit provisions. The NCSC publishes guidance on choosing a provider well.
Yes - that's co-managed IT, and between 50 and 75 users it's often the best answer available. Your person keeps the local knowledge and the day-to-day; the provider supplies enterprise tooling, escalation, security operations and cover for holidays and sickness, from roughly £23 per user per month alongside their salary.
Not if the contract is right. You should retain ownership of every account, licence and admin credential, with the provider working in your tenancy rather than theirs. What you delegate is the labour, not the keys. Anyone who resists written data-ownership and exit terms is telling you something useful about how leaving would go.
Take advice early, because TUPE can apply: outsourcing an activity your own staff currently perform can count as a service provision change, transferring those employees to the provider with their terms protected. In practice many businesses keep their IT person and move to co-managed support instead - often the better outcome for everyone.
No. UK outsourced IT support normally means a UK-based managed service provider - a local team, UK data handling and someone who can be on site when it matters. That's a different thing from offshoring a call centre. If you're outsourcing a software build rather than IT operations, that's a separate decision with its own guide.
Typical UK onboarding runs 2 to 8 weeks depending on the state of your documentation and how much needs untangling - the industry's slower published timelines stretch to 20. The move is mostly discovery, tooling deployment and credential handover; your team keeps working throughout. We onboard free, including taking over mid-contract messes.
A proper managed package includes helpdesk, device management, patching, backup, security tooling and monitoring. The classic extras are projects (office moves, migrations), hardware and sometimes new-starter setups - decent providers list these openly. Ask for the inclusions list in writing and compare quotes against it; our cost guide shows exactly what to check.
At scale, sometimes. In-house wins on physical presence, deep context on bespoke systems and instant walk-up help - which is why past 100 users many businesses run an internal team with a provider as backstop. Below about 50 users it loses on cost, coverage and breadth: one person can't out-know a team or work 168 hours a week.
Sources
- ONS, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2025, published 23rd October 2025 - SOC 3132 IT user support technicians median pay
- ITJobsWatch, UK IT Manager median salary, six months to July 2026
- HMRC, rates and thresholds for employers - employer Class 1 National Insurance 15%, secondary threshold £5,000, Employment Allowance £10,500; confirmed unchanged for 2026 to 2027 - gov.uk
- The Pensions Regulator and DWP, automatic enrolment minimum contributions and the qualifying earnings band, held for 2026-27 (review published 18th December 2025)
- ONS, sickness absence in the UK labour market: 2025, released 1st May 2026 - 4.4 days lost per worker
- gov.uk, statutory annual leave entitlement (5.6 weeks including bank holidays)
- Department for Education, Employer Skills Survey 2024 - average UK training spend per employee
- gov.uk and Acas, TUPE transfers of undertakings guidance - service provision changes
- DSIT and Home Office, Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026, published 30th April 2026
- DSIT, research on the UK managed service provider market (12,867 MSPs), published 12th November 2025
- NCSC, Choosing a managed service provider (MSP) guidance, published November 2025
- NCSC, CISA and allied agencies, joint advisory: Protecting Against Cyber Threats to Managed Service Providers and their Customers, May 2022
- Red Eagle Tech provider survey, 15 UK MSPs, July 2026
