What an in-house technician really costs
Salary is only part of it. Loaded cost adds UIF, leave, equipment, training and a desk.
- One in-house technician: R32,000 to R45,000 a month loaded. One person, one skill set, 21 days leave, sick days, resignations.
- One senior or network engineer: R55,000 to R80,000 a month loaded. Same single point of failure, at twice the price.
What managed IT costs by comparison
A Managed plan with 20 workstations, 2 servers and 4 infrastructure devices is R22,169 a month ex VAT. That includes monitoring, patching, remote support, a named account manager and a quarterly roadmap, from a team rather than one person.
The single point of failure problem
One technician has one skill set. They take leave, get sick and resign, and sometimes they leave with the passwords. A managed provider puts seniors, juniors, network and software specialists behind every ticket.
When an in-house technician still makes sense
If you have a large site with constant hands-on needs, a person on the floor is valuable. Many businesses keep one in-house person for day-to-day requests and use a monitoring plan such as Watch so someone is looking at the servers around the clock. That is a common and sensible split.