At some point most growing businesses hit the same wall: the tech is taking up too much of someone's day, but it's not quite enough to justify a full-time hire. So do you bring someone on, or hand it to an outside team? Here's how we'd think about it.
The case for in-house
Having your own IT person means someone who's there, knows your business inside out, and can wander over when something breaks. For larger operations (say 40-plus staff, or anywhere tech is the core of what you do), that on-site presence is worth a lot.
The catch is cost and cover. A good IT hire in Auckland isn't cheap once you add salary, KiwiSaver, holidays and training. And one person can't be across everything (networks, security, cloud, phones), or answer the phone when they're on leave.
The case for managed support
Managed IT support means a team looks after your systems for a fixed monthly fee. Instead of one person’s knowledge, you get a few specialists, monitoring that runs around the clock, and cover that doesn’t disappear when someone’s away. For most small and mid-sized Auckland businesses, it works out cheaper than a full-time hire and far less of a gap when things go wrong.
- Predictable monthly cost instead of a salary plus overheads
- A team’s worth of knowledge, not a single point of failure
- Monitoring and maintenance happening in the background
- Someone to call who already knows your setup
A common middle ground
Plenty of businesses do both. They keep an internal person for the day-to-day and hands-on stuff, and bring in a managed provider for the heavy lifting, like security, backups, after-hours monitoring, and a second opinion when something big comes up. It takes the pressure off your one IT person and means there's always backup.
How to decide
As a rough rule, if tech is central to your business or you're past about 40 staff, an in-house person (often backed by a provider) starts to make sense. Below that, managed support usually gives you more for your money. If you're not sure where you sit, we're happy to talk it through honestly, even if the answer is that you don't need us yet. Take a look at our managed IT support and get in touch for a no-pressure chat.
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Frequently asked questions
Is managed IT cheaper than hiring an IT person?
Below roughly twenty-five staff, managed IT is almost always cheaper. One in-house technician in Auckland costs $75,000 to $95,000 a year plus tools, leave and cover, while a managed plan for the same number of users typically runs $1,500 to $3,500 a month. Above about forty staff the maths starts to favour a hybrid: someone in-house for day-to-day, a provider for servers, security and after-hours.
What does a managed IT plan usually include?
Helpdesk support for staff, monitoring and patching of computers and servers, antivirus and security tooling, backup monitoring, and vendor management when something breaks at your internet or phone provider. Hardware, software licences and project work are normally quoted separately. Always check whether on-site visits and after-hours calls are included or billed.
How fast should an IT provider respond?
Ask for response times in writing. Typical commitments are fifteen to thirty minutes for a whole-business outage, one to four hours for one person unable to work, and next business day for routine requests. A provider that will not put numbers in the agreement is telling you something.
Can we switch IT providers without downtime?
Yes, if the handover is planned. The work is mostly transferring admin access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, domain, firewall and backups, then installing the new provider's monitoring. Allow two to four weeks of overlap. Make sure you hold the top-level admin accounts yourself so a switch is never at a provider's discretion.