Replacing an internal IT function is the one purchase in this market where the comparison is a salary rather than another quote, and almost nothing published makes that comparison possible. Of the 29 IT providers read for this record on 10 September 2026, seven publish any figure at all, and six of those seven price per user, which prices a seat and not a department. Exactly one prices the whole business.
The cost to outsource IT department work, held against a salary
XL.net publishes "between $500 and $2,000 per month for basic managed IT services" for small businesses of 1-20 users, and it is the only amount in this record stated for a whole business rather than per seat. Every other published figure is per head: Ntiva's "Starting at $99 per user", Electric's "$10/user/mo", and a per-seat median across the seven priced providers of $99.50. To compare a contract with a hire, multiply the per-seat figure by your actual headcount first, then read what the fee excludes, because a salary excludes nothing and a monthly fee excludes projects, hardware and licences nearly everywhere.
The four IT outsourcing models, and which question each one answers
Fully outsourced means the provider is the function: the desk, patching, monitoring, backups and user administration, with nobody internal. Co-managed sits beside one internal person and takes the out-of-hours, the tooling and the depth that one person cannot hold. Project-only is bounded work with a deliverable and an end, priced as a project. Break-fix is an hourly relationship with no commitment either way. A business with modern laptops, cloud identity and no server can be well served by the last of these, and a business whose day runs through one application cannot.
The one-person IT department, and where IT outsourced services stop
Replacing a single internal hire with a contract buys coverage and loses context. Coverage is the gain that is easy to see: holidays, illness, a second opinion, out-of-hours, and a monitoring platform no single employee would be given the budget for. The loss is quieter. Nobody outside the business knows that the finance system cannot be touched in the last week of the month, or which director will ring rather than raise a ticket. Co-managed is the shape built for exactly that trade: keep the person who knows the business, buy the depth and the hours around them.
What an IT support outsource does not transfer, so the contract has to name it
An outsourced department cannot hold institutional memory about your business, cannot make a commercial decision, and cannot care on a Friday afternoon the way somebody whose desk is in the building does. None of that is a reason not to buy it; it is a reason to write down who decides. Name the person inside the business who approves change and spend, name the provider's escalation contact, and set the review that reads what happened last quarter. Where a decision has no owner, an outsourced function will wait for one, correctly and expensively.
The credential question, and the GB gap
The real switching cost of a contract is not the notice period, it is who holds global administrator on your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenancy. Ask, in writing, whether the tenancy is registered to your domain and your billing, whether your own named account holds that role, and what the process and price are for handing it back. On the British side there is a second gap: of the four GB providers in this record, Akita, Zenzero, Primary Technology and AAG IT Services, not one publishes a rate anywhere, so a UK buyer gets no number without a call.
Questions people ask about outsourced IT department
How does a contract compare with employing somebody?
Only one figure in this record is stated per business rather than per seat: XL.net's "between $500 and $2,000 per month for basic managed IT services" for 1-20 users. For every other provider, multiply the per-seat rate by your headcount, then list what sits outside the fee.
Which model suits a business that already has one IT person?
Co-managed. It keeps the person who knows your business and buys the out-of-hours cover, tooling and specialist depth one employee cannot hold, which is the gap that fully outsourcing creates.
What can an outsourced IT department not do?
Hold institutional memory, make a commercial decision, or own a priority. Name the internal person who approves change and spend in the contract, or the provider will correctly wait to be told.
IT outsourcing companies, UK: do they publish prices?
Not in this record. The four GB providers read on 10 September 2026, Akita, Zenzero, Primary Technology and AAG IT Services, publish no rate at all, so a British buyer starts from a call.
What should we secure before signing an outsourced IT managed contract?
Named ownership of the identity tenancy with your own global administrator account, estate documentation that belongs to you, and a written price for handover assistance at the end of the term.
Which IT outsource companies can take the whole function?
Most will say they can; the test is whether they will name it in the schedule. Ask which of the four models the proposal is, who approves spend and change inside your business, and what the quarterly review reads. A function with no named decision owner waits.