Are your services more expensive than hiring an in-house IT team?

For most small and medium-sized businesses, outsourced IT support costs less than employing one in-house IT person, and you get a whole team rather than one individual.

A worked example

UK job-market data for 2026 puts the typical IT support technician salary at around £26,000 to £29,500. Taking £28,500 as an example:

• Salary: £28,500
• Employer National Insurance (15% above £5,000): about £3,500
• Minimum workplace pension contribution (3%): about £700
• Total: roughly £32,700 a year, before recruitment, training, tools, software and cover for holidays or sickness

By comparison, ABCOM’s Core managed support is £65 per user per month (excluding VAT). For a 20-person business, that’s £15,600 a year, covering helpdesk, monitoring, patching, Microsoft 365 administration and a team of engineers with different specialisms.

Figures are illustrative. Small employers may be able to claim Employment Allowance against National Insurance.

What in-house can’t easily match

• Cover when your IT person is on holiday, ill or leaves
• Specialist skills in security, networking, cloud and telecoms
• Enterprise-grade monitoring and security tools included in the fee

When in-house makes sense

Larger organisations often keep an in-house person for day-to-day needs and use a provider for specialist work and cover. We support that co-managed model too.

Get an instant estimate with the price calculator on our Managed IT Support page, or read why businesses outsource IT.