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Managed IT vs in-house IT

One IT person can’t be your helpdesk, security team and holiday cover.

An in-house hire costs more than a salary. There is super, leave, recruitment, after-hours calls and the tools they need to do the job. Set your seat count below and see a year of each.

Compare the costs See plans and pricing

By the CCP team · Updated

An empty IT desk by a window, with a monitor, an open laptop, two spare laptops, a charger, a label printer and a network cable.

At a glance

Salaries
SEEK averages, Perth, September 2026
Leave
4 weeks annual, 10 days sick and carer’s
Recruitment
15% to 30% of salary through an agency
Your data
Stays in your browser

In-house IT cost vs managed IT cost

A year of each, for your seat count.

Move the slider and pick a plan. The in-house team grows with the plan, because compliance controls are extra hands-on work.

Plan to compare against

In-house IT team

For 25 seats, to match + Services.

A year $153,948
1 systems administrator, salary and super
$123,200
After-hours emergency callouts, 2 a year each for 1 person
$748
Tools and licences at $100 a seat a month
$30,000

46 of 52 weeks at work

Each IT person takes 4 weeks’ annual leave and up to 2 weeks’ sick and carer’s leave a year. Nobody covers those weeks, and nights and weekends are paid callouts.

CCP + Services

$230 a seat a month, for 25 seats.

A year $69,000

Save $84,948 a year compared with in-house, before recruitment and training costs

  • A named team of Perth engineers, remote and onsiteIncluded
  • The plan’s security tools and licencesIncluded

52 of 52 weeks covered

A team covers leave and sick days, so support does not stop. We monitor your devices 24 hours a day. In an emergency, call us at night or at the weekend.

We buy the same tools for every client we look after, so we pay volume prices a single business can’t get. That saving is already in the plan rate.

See how this is calculated

Salaries are SEEK’s average advertised Perth salaries for September 2026, for an IT support engineer and a systems administrator. Some ads include super. Super is the ATO super guarantee of 12%, from 1 July 2025.

The team size assumes one IT person for every 50 seats for day-to-day support. On + Compliance and Complete, the compliance controls are extra hands-on work: application control, faster patching, fixing scan results, log review and audit evidence. So above 30 seats we add one more systems administrator, and one more for every 50 seats after that.

Each IT person takes 2 emergency calls a year at night or at the weekend, paid at double time for 3 hours each. The tools and licences figure is what a single business pays to buy the plan’s tools itself. These are our estimates.

+ Compliance and Complete include a virtual CIO from 30 seats. For those, the in-house side adds a part-time IT manager for one day a fortnight. That is a tenth of SEEK’s average advertised Perth IT manager salary, plus super.

Weeks at work use the minimum paid leave for a full-time employee: 4 weeks’ annual leave and 10 days’ sick and carer’s leave. Public holidays are left out on both sides.

Prices are in AUD, ex GST. Microsoft 365 licences are extra either way.

Already have an IT person?

Keep them. Co-managed IT gives your IT person a team behind them for monitoring, security, projects and holiday cover. It supports them rather than replacing them.

How managed IT works

Hidden costs of in-house IT staff

What the salary doesn’t show.

Each of these costs money or leaves a gap. Most don’t appear in a job ad.

Sources: Experis Australia, recruitment agency fees, March 2026; Fair Work Ombudsman, annual leave; Fair Work Ombudsman, sick and carer’s leave; ASIC 26-021MR, FIIG Securities, 13 February 2026

  • 01

    Recruitment

    Agencies charge 15% to 30% or more of the first year’s salary, usually with a three to six-month replacement guarantee. Then there is the time to interview and train.

  • 02

    Leave with no cover

    Each full-time employee gets 4 weeks’ annual leave and 10 days’ sick and carer’s leave. With one IT person, nobody covers those weeks: they are at work 46 weeks of 52.

  • 03

    Too many skills for one person

    Security, Microsoft 365, networks, phones, backups and compliance each need different skills. In a 2026 cyber case, the Federal Court listed qualified IT staff to monitor threat alerts among the controls the firm lacked.

  • 04

    Nights and weekends

    An outage at 1am needs someone to answer. With staff, that means paid call-outs or an on-call allowance, and a person who is available.

  • 05

    Tools at one-business prices

    Endpoint detection, a security operations centre, backups, patching and a password manager. One business pays list price for each. We buy them for every client, at volume.

  • 06

    Knowledge that walks out

    When your IT person resigns, what they knew goes with them unless it is written down. A managed team keeps the documentation and hands it over if you leave.

Questions to ask before you choose a provider

Comparing a hire with a provider? Ask these first.

Nineteen questions on cover, security, price and leaving. Download them blank, or with our answers filled in.

Free, with no email needed. See all 19 questions

When in-house IT is the better choice

Where in-house wins, and where we do.

In-house IT is the right call for some businesses. Here is how to tell.

  • In-house makes sense when

    • You have enough work to keep a team busy, usually well over 300 staff.
    • You need someone on site every day, for example on a factory floor.
    • Your systems are specialised and only your own staff should touch them.
    • You can pay for cover when your IT staff are on leave.

  • Managed IT makes sense when

    • You have 10 to 300 staff and one person can’t cover every skill.
    • An insurer, client or regulator asks about your security.
    • You want one fee that includes the tools and the cover.
    • You don’t want to recruit, train and manage IT staff.

Managed IT vs in-house IT questions

Straight answers.

Something not covered? Call (08) 9467 2269 and ask an engineer.
Is managed IT cheaper than hiring an IT person?
At 25 seats, one systems administrator with super, callouts and the tools costs about $154,000 a year. Our + Services plan for 25 seats costs $69,000. At 60 seats on Complete, the in-house team costs about $502,000 against $237,600. Use the slider above for your own numbers.
Where do the salary figures come from?
SEEK’s average advertised salaries in Perth for September 2026: systems administrator, IT support engineer and IT manager. We add the 12% super guarantee. Open “See how this is calculated” under the cost cards for the links.
Why does the in-house team grow on + Compliance and Complete?
Those plans run extra controls: application control, faster patching, fixing scan results, log review and audit evidence. That is hands-on weekly work. So from 31 seats we add a systems administrator to run them, and one more for every 50 seats after that.
Can we keep our IT person and use CCP as well?
Yes. Co-managed IT gives your IT person our tools, monitoring and a team for leave cover and projects. It supports them rather than replacing them.
How long is the agreement?
Our standard agreement is a three-year term, with no onboarding fees. We spend the first three months onboarding you. Full alignment with every security recommendation usually takes the whole term, because the work is incremental. A month-to-month arrangement is available on request, at a higher rate. If you leave, we hand over full documentation and credentials. Some clients have stayed 20+ years.

See what a year would cost you.

Book a free IT review with a Perth engineer. We look at what you run today and what it costs, and you get a written summary to keep.

Or call (08) 9467 2269

How you run IT today
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A Perth engineer, not a salesperson, replies within one business day.

We hold ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification from BSI, certificate IS 840964.

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