In-House IT vs Managed IT Cost Calculator

How this calculator works

This tool puts the full cost of hiring your own IT person next to the cost of a managed IT provider, year by year, for three years. It adds up the things that are easy to forget when you compare a salary to a monthly fee: benefits and payroll taxes, recruiting, training, the software tools an IT person needs to do the job, and who covers IT when that person is on vacation or out sick.

Every number is editable. The salary defaults come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Everything else is a placeholder estimate so the calculator works out of the box — replace them with your own figures. On the managed side there is deliberately no default price: enter the quotes you've received, because what's included varies a lot from one provider to the next.

Where the default numbers come from

Salary. The role menu fills in national median annual wages from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (May 2025 figures, pages updated August 2026). A median means half of people in that job earn more and half earn less; pay in your area and for someone with security or healthcare experience may be higher.

Sources: BLS, Computer Support Specialists and Network and Computer Systems Administrators.

Benefits and payroll taxes. The BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release for June 2026 found that, for private-industry workers, wages were 70.0% of employer costs and benefits were 30.0%. Benefits here include health insurance, paid leave, retirement contributions and legally required payments like Social Security and Medicare. Thirty percent of the total works out to about 43% on top of wages (30 ÷ 70), which is the default. If you know your own benefits load, use it.

Recruiting, training, tools and time-off cover are estimates. Recruiting includes job ads, any recruiter fee and the hours you and your staff spend interviewing. Tools covers the software a single IT person needs to manage an office properly — remote management and patching, security software, backup, a password manager, a ticketing system. A managed provider usually brings these with the service, so ask what's included.

What the results mean

• Year 1 includes one-time costs: recruiting on the in-house side, onboarding on the managed side.
• Year 2 is closer to your ongoing yearly cost. Raises and contract price increases are applied in years 2 and 3.
• 3-year total is the fairest comparison, because it spreads the one-time costs out.
• Cost per user per month lets you compare the in-house option directly with per-user quotes.

If you check "Add a second IT hire", the calculator assumes the two people cover each other's time off, so the outside-cover cost drops to zero. With one person, it also tells you how many working days a year nobody is covering IT. For a medical or dental office that's worth thinking about: the day the front desk can't check patients in is rarely the day your IT person is in the office.

Costs the calculator can't put a number on

Money is only part of the decision. Weigh these too:

• Breadth of skills. One person rarely knows help desk, networking, Microsoft 365, security and HIPAA documentation equally well. A provider has several people.
• Continuity. If your IT person leaves, the passwords, setup knowledge and history can leave with them. Make sure everything is documented either way.
• Response time and after-hours. Check what a provider actually commits to. Many offer 24/7 monitoring and alerts, which is not the same as 24/7 staffed support — read the agreement.
• On-site presence. An employee is down the hall. A provider may be remote for most issues and on site for some. Decide what you need.
• Downtime. Slow fixes cost money too. Our downtime cost calculator estimates what an hour of outage costs your office.

How to compare managed IT quotes fairly

Two quotes with the same per-user price can be very different services. Before you enter a number, check each quote against this list:

• Is help desk support unlimited, or capped at a number of hours?
• Are security tools (endpoint protection, email filtering) and backup storage included, or extra?
• Is Microsoft 365 licensing included, or billed separately? (Usually separate.)
• Who handles vendors like your internet provider, phone system, or practice-management/EHR software?
• What's the onboarding fee, contract length, and notice period?
• How are projects — new computers, office moves, migrations — priced?
• Will they sign a business associate agreement if you handle patient data? (See our guide to business associate agreements.)

Put anything the quote leaves out into "Tools/licenses not in the quote" or "Projects billed separately" so the comparison is honest. Our article on what managed IT services cost explains pricing models in more detail, and how to choose a managed IT provider has more questions to ask.

A worked example

Say a 15-person office compares one help-desk hire against a managed service. The default help-desk median of $61,860 plus 43% for benefits is about $88,500 before recruiting, training or tools. Add the tools and some outside cover for time off, and the first year is comfortably above $100,000. Divide that across 15 people and 12 months to see the per-user figure, then compare it with the per-user price in the quotes you've collected. The answer for your office depends entirely on those quotes and your own pay rates — which is why you should type them in rather than trust anyone's rule of thumb, including ours.

Next steps

Print or save the comparison as a PDF and take it to your partners or practice owner. If you'd like a second opinion on a quote — or a quote from us to put in the calculator — see what our managed IT service covers or book a free call. We'll go through your numbers with you, no obligation.