Remote IT support versus hiring in-house IT

What an in-house hire actually costs

The salary is the part everyone budgets. The rest is what makes the comparison misleading when it is left out.

1. 1Salary, plus employment taxes, benefits and equipment.
2. 2Recruitment, and the cost of the vacancy while you look.
3. 3Holiday and sick cover. One person means one point of failure, and IT problems do not wait for them to come back.
4. 4Training, because the field moves and a person who stops learning becomes a liability.
5. 5The opportunity cost of an underused role: a good technician bored for half the week tends to leave.

What outside support actually costs

Outside support converts a fixed cost into a variable one. You pay for the hours you use, and there is no cover problem when one person is away.

1. 1Hourly when things break: cheapest if your systems are stable.
2. 2A monthly plan with included hours: more predictable, cheaper once you are calling most weeks.
3. 3No recruitment, no cover gap, no training cost.
4. 4The trade: nobody is sitting in your office noticing problems before you do.

Where the line usually falls

1. 1Under 15 people: outside support, almost without exception. There is not enough work for a role.
2. 215 to 30 people: still usually outside support, unless your systems are unusually demanding.
3. 330 to 50 people: the point where one internal person plus outside help for specialised work starts to win.
4. 4Over 50, or heavily regulated, or systems-dependent: in-house, with outside help for what a generalist should not be doing alone.

The question that decides it better than headcount

Headcount is a rough proxy. The sharper question is how often IT stops someone working. Count the incidents over the last three months, including the ones absorbed by whoever is unofficially the "computer person" — that is real cost, just hidden in someone else’s salary.

A few hours a month is a support relationship. Something every day is a role. And if the answer is "constantly, and it is always the same thing", neither option fixes it — the underlying problem needs solving first.