Every growing company reaches the same point: there are more computers, more users, more cloud tools, and someone has to keep it all running. The question then is how to organize it. Hire an IT person, build a small team, or use a managed IT provider?
The price tag is only part of the answer. This article shows what each option really includes, which costs are easy to miss, and how to decide without guessing. We do not quote numbers here because they depend heavily on company size and complexity. What we show is how to calculate your own.
What an in-house IT person really costs
The salary is the visible cost. Around it sit several others:
- Taxes and contributions on top of the gross salary, paid leave, sick leave and bonuses.
- Coverage. When that one person is on holiday or ill, who answers the call at 8 a.m. on a Monday?
- Breadth of skills. One person rarely masters networks, security, cloud, backup, telephony and user support equally well.
- Tools. Monitoring, remote support, backup, security and ticketing software are usually not included in a salary.
- Training and certifications to stay current.
- Key person risk. If they leave, their knowledge of your systems often leaves with them.
How managed IT services are priced
Providers typically use one of these models:
| Model | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Per user | A monthly fee for each person using company IT | Office-based companies with clear headcount |
| Per device | A monthly fee per server, workstation or network device | Companies with many devices and few users per device |
| Fixed package | A set monthly amount covering a defined scope and response times | Companies that want predictable budgets |
| Hours / on demand | You pay for time as needed | Small or stable setups with rare issues |
What matters more than the model is the scope: what is covered, how fast the provider responds, and what is billed separately, such as projects, hardware or after-hours work.
Questions that make the comparison honest
- How many hours per month do we really spend on IT problems, including the time of employees who “help a bit”?
- What does one hour of downtime cost us in lost work or lost sales?
- Do we need 24/7 monitoring, or is business-hours support enough?
- How many different skills do we need: networks, security, cloud, backup, user support?
- What happens to our IT if our one specialist leaves tomorrow?
Rule of thumb: managed services usually win when you need broad skills, around-the-clock coverage and predictable costs. A dedicated in-house person makes sense when you have a large, complex, constantly changing environment that needs someone on site every day, and even then a hybrid model often works best.
The hybrid option
Many companies keep one internal person for daily, on-site matters and hire a provider for monitoring, security, backup, projects and as a backup for holidays. The internal person gets a team behind them, and the company avoids dependence on one individual.
What to look for in a provider
- A clear written scope and response times.
- Proactive work: monitoring and maintenance, not only fixing things after they break.
- Regular reporting in language you understand.
- Documentation of your environment that belongs to you.
- Security as part of the service, not an extra afterthought.
- An easy way out: no lock-in through undocumented systems.
How we can help
Alficom provides managed IT services with infrastructure monitoring, helpdesk support and security, and we back them with proactive system monitoring so problems are found before users notice them. If you are weighing the options, we can look at how you work today and prepare a comparison for your company.
