Managed IT Services vs In-House IT: Which Should You Choose?
Managed IT services means entrusting the monitoring, maintenance and support of your IT to a provider, for a flat monthly fee. Compared with hiring an IT employee or the do-it-yourself approach, managed IT services often give an SME the best balance between cost and peace of mind. Let’s compare.
Once a company passes about ten workstations, the same question always comes up: who takes care of IT? There are three options.
Option 1: an in-house IT employee
An in-house technician costs between €45,000 and €60,000 a year, including payroll taxes. They know your company inside out, but they are on their own: vacations, sick leave, resignation. It is a good choice beyond 80 to 100 workstations.
Option 2: the do-it-yourself approach
This is the “colleague who knows about computers.” It works until the first real problem: unchecked backups, postponed updates, no security at all. Apparent cost: zero. Real risk: maximum. That colleague also has a real job, and IT always comes after their own urgent tasks.
Option 3: managed IT services, the flat fee that keeps watch over everything
- Continuous monitoring: failures detected before you notice them
- A range of skills without depending on a single person
- Predictable cost: a monthly fee instead of a salary
- Written commitments: response times guaranteed by contract
A concrete example: an SME with 25 workstations
Take a company with 25 employees, two servers and an online store. Let’s compare over one year.
- Hiring a technician: about €50,000 a year, on site 5 days a week during office hours. Five weeks of vacation during which nobody takes over. They will be excellent at what they know, and alone with what they do not.
- Managed IT services: around €6,000 to €9,000 a year for this setup. Round-the-clock monitoring, several areas of expertise behind the contract (network, security, backup), written response times.
The gap is not only financial. With 25 workstations, a full-time employee does not have enough work to be usefully busy all year, yet they are alone when a real failure hits. This is exactly the tipping point where managed IT services make the most sense.
The right questions to ask a provider
- What exactly does the flat fee cover, and what does anything outside it cost?
- Who holds the access credentials and the documentation? Insist on reversibility
- Are backups tested, and how often?
- What is the contractual response time for a failure that brings work to a halt?
The right provider is one that is willing to leave: up-to-date documentation, access handed over, no technical lock-in.
Warning signs to watch for
A provider who refuses to give you your own passwords, an “all-inclusive” package whose scope is written down nowhere, hourly billing for call-outs that come back every month for the same failure. In all three cases, you are not paying for peace of mind, you are paying for dependence.
Frequently asked questions
How many workstations before managed IT services become worthwhile?
In practice, from about ten workstations, as soon as a failure costs you a day of work. Below that, occasional support is often enough. Beyond 80 to 100 workstations, an in-house IT person backed by a provider becomes the right setup.
What happens if I want to change providers?
With a proper contract, nothing dramatic: you get back the access credentials, the documentation and your data. That is precisely why you need to ask about reversibility before signing, not on the day you want to leave.
Do managed IT services replace a CIO?
No, these are two different roles. Managed services keep the existing systems running. Strategic direction (which tools, which investments, which roadmap) remains a management decision, possibly with outside support.
What if I already have an in-house IT person?
The two complement each other very well. The provider handles monitoring, on-call duty and specialized topics, while your in-house person stays close to the teams and keeps the knowledge of your business. It is the most common setup once a company reaches a certain size.
411bit offers managed IT services contracts starting at €350/month excl. VAT, with continuous monitoring, a monthly report and guaranteed reversibility. Let’s review your IT setup together.
See also: cybersecurity for small business without holding back growth.
