Free tool
In-house vs outsourced IT cost calculator
The salary is about 70% of what an internal IT hire actually costs, and one person covers about a quarter of the week. This works out the fully loaded number, including burden, the tool stack, licensing, and what it costs to hire in the first place, then puts it next to flat per-user managed IT. Every assumption is editable, and if in-house wins for your situation the calculator will say so.
Benchmarks verified August 3, 2026. Salary bands are Phoenix market midpoints. Tool pricing is vendor list price. Sources are at the bottom of the page.
Your environment
Coverage you need
Your in-house team
Phoenix bands below.
Tax, benefits, PTO.
Edit the in-house tool stack
Vendor list prices. An internal team buys all of this separately; it is bundled into managed services. Set any line to 0 to drop it.
Phoenix salary bands
Base salary before burden. Midpoints, not ceilings.
Running IT in-house
Managed IT from Desert Lakes
Flat per user, volume discount applied, Microsoft 365 licensing included.
Planning estimate, not a quote. In-house figures are market ranges. Desert Lakes figures come from our published catalog and are confirmed in writing after a short scoping call.
What the salary line leaves out
These are the costs that never show up in a headcount budget, and the reason a per-seat comparison on salary alone is misleading in both directions.
Coverage, not headcount
One hire buys 40 hours a week out of 168. Nights, weekends, PTO, and the notice period after they resign are all uncovered unless you staff for them.
A pair of hands, not a system
Without monitoring, automated patching, and real ticketing, an internal hire only sees problems that have already become your problem. You pay a full salary to stay reactive.
The tool stack is not optional
RMM, EDR, backup, email security, ticketing, and documentation run one to three thousand a month for a small business. Skipping them does not save money, it moves the cost to downtime.
Marginal cost per ticket
Every internal ticket carries a real loaded cost of roughly $15 to $40. Flat per-user pricing means a bad month costs the same as a quiet one.
Key-person risk
One person holding the passwords, the vendor relationships, and the undocumented history is a business continuity problem, not just an IT one.
Security is a separate discipline
A help desk hire is support. Threat detection, identity, and response are a different skill set and a different budget line, and they are the ones that get audited.
When in-house is the right answer
Two things flip this comparison toward in-house, and both are legitimate. The first is staffing leaner than the benchmark. The calculator assumes one technician per 50 users, and a team running at 80 or 100 users per person will beat per-seat managed pricing on labor. The second is a genuine business-hours-only requirement, which removes the coverage cost that usually decides it. Set the staff count to what you would really hire, and if the calculator says in-house wins, take it at face value. A tool that always produces the same answer is not a tool, it is an advert.
What a lean ratio buys you is a cheaper desk, not a better one. Ticket queues get longer, project work stops, and patching slips first. That is a trade worth making in some businesses and a serious risk in others, and it is the part worth arguing about rather than the monthly number.
The more common outcome for a team that already has IT staff is neither one nor the other. Co-managed IT keeps your person and puts the desk, the monitoring, and the security stack behind them. Set the staff count to what you have today and read the managed figure as a supplement.
Read the full cost breakdownQuestions about IT cost
How much does an in-house IT person actually cost?
Take the base salary and add about 30 percent for payroll tax, benefits, and PTO. A $52,000 help desk hire in Phoenix costs about $67,600 fully loaded, or roughly $5,600 a month. Then add the tool stack they need to do the job, about $1,000 to $2,500 a month for a small business, plus training and the roughly $15,000 it costs to recruit and onboard them in the first place.
When is in-house IT cheaper than outsourcing?
Usually somewhere past 150 to 200 users, and only if you are comparing business-hours-only coverage. A lean internal team spread across more users brings the per-seat labor cost down. What it does not bring down is the cost of nights, weekends, PTO, turnover, and the monitoring and security tooling, which is where the comparison usually flips back. This calculator shows in-house winning when it genuinely wins.
How many IT staff do we need?
A well-tooled help desk supports roughly 50 users per technician. Without monitoring, automated patching, and real ticketing behind them, that drops closer to 30. Coverage sets a floor independent of headcount: one person covers business hours, two covers extended hours, and genuine 24/7 needs five once you account for PTO and turnover.
Does this include Microsoft 365 licensing?
It can, and by default it does, because our managed IT bundles include Microsoft 365 licensing rather than billing it on top. If you run IT in-house you buy that licensing yourself, so leaving it out of one side and not the other would make the comparison dishonest. You can toggle it off if you want to compare labor and tooling only.
Are these numbers biased toward outsourcing?
Every assumption is on the page and every one of them is editable. The salary bands, the burden rate, the users-per-technician ratio, and each line of the tool stack can be changed to your real figures. If in-house comes out cheaper for your situation, the calculator says so.
What if we already have an IT person?
Most of our clients keep theirs. Co-managed IT takes the password resets and printer tickets off their plate so they can do project work, and gives them monitoring, patching, and security tooling no single person can run alone. Set the in-house staff count to what you have today and compare it against the managed figure as a supplement rather than a replacement.
Where these numbers come from
In-house costs are market ranges, not point estimates, verified August 3, 2026. Desert Lakes pricing comes from our published catalog.
- IT salary bands
- Robert Half Technology Salary Guide, Salary.com, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, Indeed (Phoenix, AZ)
- Labor burden rate
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC)
- Recruiting and onboarding cost
- SHRM average cost-per-hire, adjusted for technical roles
- Users per technician and cost per ticket
- MetricNet and HDI service-desk benchmarks
- Tool stack pricing
- Published list pricing for the RMM, EDR and MDR, backup, security awareness, remote access, and documentation tools an in-house desk buys
- Microsoft 365 licensing
- Microsoft published list prices, verified quarterly
Licensing is the other half of this number. The Microsoft 365 licensing calculator works out whether you are on the right plan, and our pricing page publishes every rate used here.
Let us run your actual numbers
Tell us your team size and what your IT looks like today. We will show you the real side-by-side and a written quote, with no obligation.
Call (855) 737-9500 / (480) 573-3349
Email [email protected]
15-minute response on critical issues, 24/7. Onboarding in two to three weeks.