Ask five IT providers what support costs and you’ll get five different answers. Ask what an in-house hire costs and you’ll usually get one number that’s missing half the bill.
So here are the actual numbers, line by line, for a 30-person UK business. Not which model to choose, because we’ve covered that decision in our guide to in-house vs outsourced IT support. Just what each option costs, and where the extra costs hide.
What an in-house IT hire costs, line by line
There are really two hires here, and they’re priced very differently. A support technician handles the helpdesk. The median advertised salary is £28,500 according to IT Jobs Watch. An IT manager also owns security, infrastructure and suppliers. The median advertised salary is £55,000 according to IT Jobs Watch, and Robert Half puts the range at about £46,000 to £63,000.
One person covering helpdesk, security, cloud and suppliers for 30 users is doing the manager’s job, so a lone hire at this size usually ends up priced at the manager end. Here’s what a £55,000 manager becomes once the employer costs go on:
- Salary: £55,000
- Employer National Insurance: £7,500 (15% of everything above £5,000, per GOV.UK’s 2026/27 rates)
- Employer pension: about £1,320 (the 3% minimum on qualifying earnings)
- Running total: about £63,800
Run the same sums on a £28,500 technician and you get about £32,700. That’s the floor, not the estimate. Still to add:
- A laptop, licences and the tools they need to do the job
- Training and certifications, because IT moves faster than most job descriptions
- Recruitment costs, and again if they leave
- Cover for at least 5.6 weeks of statutory holiday a year, plus sickness
None of those are exotic. They’re just rarely in the number people quote.
What managed IT support costs, line by line
Managed IT support is priced per user, per month, so the sum is simpler. What varies is what the price includes. Quotes run from around £30 to £70 per user per month at the lower end, and past £100 for comprehensive, security-led packages. Our own fully managed support starts from around £47 per user per month, with a £500 monthly minimum (full details on our IT support cost page).
For 30 users, that works out at:
- £30 per user: £10,800 a year
- £47 per user (our starting price): £16,920 a year
- £70 per user: £25,200 a year
- £100 per user: £36,000 a year
Set that beside the in-house figures and the gap is obvious. But it only means something if both quotes cover the same ground. A £10 quote and a £100 quote can both be called “IT support”. They aren’t the same product. Check what’s inside the fee:
- Support hours: is anything covered outside 9 to 5?
- On-site work: included, or billed by the hour plus travel?
- Security: monitoring, MFA and incident response, or just a helpdesk?
- Projects: new starters, moves and upgrades, or extra?
And remember the fee is only the support element of your IT bill. Depending on the provider, Microsoft 365 licences and backups can sit on top, and cyber security often does too.
The line nobody puts in the spreadsheet: what it costs when it goes wrong
Neither total includes the cost of an incident. 65% of medium-sized UK businesses reported a breach or attack in the past year, against 43% of all businesses (Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026). The government puts the average cost of a significant attack on a UK business at nearly £195,000.
That’s more than any of the annual figures above. It’s why the useful question isn’t only what each option costs, but what each one does to make an incident less likely and less expensive: monitoring outside office hours, someone who can act on an alert, cover when your one IT person is away. And that’s before you count the real cost of downtime while everyone waits for a fix.
How to price your own
Do this before you talk to anyone:
- Count your users. Everything on the managed side is priced per head.
- Price the in-house hire at the tier you’d genuinely need, using the sums above, then add your own figures for kit, training, recruitment and cover.
- Get managed quotes for the same scope, and ask what each one leaves out.
- Ask what a day of downtime costs you. It’s the number most spreadsheets skip.
If you want a starting point for the managed side, our IT support cost calculator gives an indicative price for your headcount.
Once you have the numbers, the decision itself is a separate question. It turns on more than cost: coverage, skills and where the business is heading. That’s what our in-house vs outsourced guide is for.
Get the numbers on the table first. The decision gets a lot easier once they’re honest.