Managed IT support or an in-house IT person?

For most small and medium-sized businesses, the honest answer is that one in-house IT person can’t cover everything, and a managed IT provider won’t know your business as well as someone who works in it, at least at first. Which matters more depends on how many people you have, how complicated your systems are and how much rests on one person.

If you have no IT staff, managed IT support is usually the practical choice: you get a team rather than one person, and a monthly cost you can plan for. If you already employ someone, you don’t have to choose. Co-managed support adds an outside team to the one you have.

Here’s how the options compare, the signs it’s time for a change, and what to ask a provider before you sign.

What an in-house IT person gives you

An employee who looks after your IT is part of the business. They sit with the people they support and learn how your team really works.

• They know your business. Your systems, your people and your workarounds, which saves time on every problem.
• They’re in the building. They can walk over to a desk, swap a cable or set up a new starter in person.
• Their time is yours. You set their priorities, and you can move them onto whatever matters most this week.

The catch is that they’re one person. Almost all workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday a year, so a one-person IT team can be away for more than five weeks a year before you count sickness and training. And when they leave, what they know about your set-up can leave with them, unless it’s written down.

What managed IT support gives you

With managed IT support, an outside company (a managed service provider, or MSP) looks after your IT for a monthly fee. Your staff contact a help desk, and engineers fix problems remotely or come on site when needed.

• A team, not a person. Holidays and sickness don’t leave you without cover.
• A wider range of skills. Networks, security, backup, cloud and hardware rarely all sit in one person’s head.
• A process, not a memory. Requests are logged and tracked, so nothing depends on someone remembering it.
• A cost that grows with you. Fees are usually per user or per device, so they follow the size of your team.

The trade-offs are real too. A provider has to learn your business, and that takes time at the start. Much of the help happens remotely, so site visits need arranging. And you’re giving an outside company access to your systems, so you need to know how they protect it.

How they compare, point by point

• Cover. An in-house person is a single point of failure. A provider has a team behind the help desk.
• Skills. One person, however good, has gaps. A provider can bring in the right specialist for jobs you rarely need, like moving a server or reviewing your security.
• Cost. An employee costs the same in a busy month or a quiet one: a salary plus the other costs of employing someone, such as employer’s National Insurance and a workplace pension, along with training and tools. A managed service is a monthly fee you can budget for, though projects and new equipment may cost extra.
• Response. An in-house person is quick when they’re in and free, and unavailable when they’re not. A provider’s help desk doesn’t depend on one person being in, but ask for its response times in writing.
• Knowledge of your business. In-house wins at first. A good provider closes the gap by documenting your set-up, so it isn’t stored in one person’s memory.

The middle ground: co-managed IT support

With co-managed IT support, your IT person or team stays in charge, and an outside provider takes on the work they’d rather hand over. That might be the everyday requests that fill their day, cover while they’re away, or specialist jobs like a migration. It also means your IT person no longer works alone.

Our co-managed IT support works this way. You decide what to hand over, and every request is tracked in one place, so your people and ours always know where things stand.

Signs you’ve outgrown your current set-up

• The same problems keep coming back, because nobody has time to fix the cause.
• Everything depends on one person, and nobody else knows the passwords or how things are set up.
• IT falls to someone with a different job, because they’re “good with computers”.
• Your IT person spends their days on password resets and printers, and projects never start.
• You’ve added people, sites or home workers, and your IT hasn’t kept up.
• You’re not sure when your backups were last tested, or whether your security is up to date. Our guide to cyber security basics is a good place to start.

Questions to ask a managed IT provider

The NCSC, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, publishes a guide to choosing a managed service provider for small and medium-sized organisations. These questions draw on it.

1. What does the monthly fee include, and what costs extra, such as site visits, projects and new equipment?
2. How do we raise a request, and what response times will you commit to in writing?
3. How will you learn our set-up, and will we get a copy of the documentation?
4. How do you protect your own access to our systems? Ask about two-step verification (a code or prompt on top of a password) and whether they limit their access to what each job needs.
5. Which security certifications do you hold? The NCSC gives Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO 27001 (the international standard for managing information security) as examples. Cyber Essentials is the government’s recommended minimum standard of cyber security, and Plus adds independent testing.
6. How are our backups made, where are they kept, and how often do you test restoring them?
7. What happens if we leave? Check the notice period, and how passwords and documentation come back to you.
8. Can you work alongside our own IT person, if we have one?

Where to start

Whichever way you lean, start with a clear picture of what you have now. Our free IT audit reviews your set-up, security and network, and you get a report on how to get the best from your systems. If managed support suits you, our IT support plans start from £30 per workstation per month.