Managed IT vs. In-House IT
What's Right for Your St. Louis Business?
Every growing St. Louis business eventually faces the same decision: hire an internal IT person, bring in a managed IT provider, or blend the two. This page lays out the real costs and tradeoffs of each path, built for owners across the greater St. Louis region.
| WHAT TO COMPARE | IN-HOUSE HIRE | NOC MANAGED IT | CO-MANAGED |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical annual cost (25 people) | $81,250 to $133,000 salary plus benefits | $37,500 per year at published pricing | Internal salary plus a lower per-seat fee |
| Coverage and time-off gaps | One person, one set of PTO | Team coverage with built in redundancy | Internal hours covered, nights and weekends added |
| Bench depth and escalation | None. One skill set, no backup | Full technician bench with escalation tiers | Internal knowledge plus NOC's full bench |
| Tooling included | Licensed separately by the business | Monitoring, security, backup,and helpdesk included | NOC tooling extended to the internal hire |
| What is committed in writing | An offer letter and job description only | Published resolution SLAs and a signed agreement | Same published SLAs,scoped to shared duties |
| Security and compliance depth | Depends entirely on one person's expertise | Dedicated security stack,CMMC informed leadership | NOC's security depth layered on internal control |
| Scales with headcount | Poorly, another hire needed at a threshold | Yes, per seat pricing scales cleanly | Yes, fee scales as internal role focuses |
| Institutional knowledge | Deep, lives with one individual | Documented and shared across the team | Retained internally, strengthened by NOC documentation |
| Best for | Larger teams, heavy OT, all-day deskside | Most small and mid sized businesses | Businesses keeping an internal IT champion |
ONLY AT NOC
How Silent Success works
One of the hardest things for a single internal hire to deliver is prevention, because daily tickets fill the day. Silent Success is our name for the work behind the scenes that ultimately lowers your ticket count.
Prevention.
We watch for the conditions that cause outages and correct them before they reach your team.
Root cause analysis.
When something does break, we find and fix the cause, so the same problem stops coming back.
After-action reports.
After a significant incident you get a written account: what happened, what we changed, and what it prevents.
The results are found in your ticket count.
Support calls go down over time, which means less downtime and issues that stay solved. Behind the scenes, roughly half of all tickets are resolved by automation with human quality review, which helps us scale prevention without adding delay.
The real cost of an in-house IT hire in St. Louis
A mid level IT systems administrator in the St. Louis market typically runs $86,000 in base salary. That number is the starting point for the conversation, not the total cost of the hire. Benefits, payroll taxes, workman's comp— they all add up.
Salary and benefits are only part of the picture. The business also has to license the tooling an IT hire needs to do the job well, including remote monitoring, endpoint protection, backup, patching, and helpdesk software. Those licenses are billed separately from payroll and often surprise a business the first time it budgets for the hire.
Then there are the coverage gaps that have nothing to do with your staff's skills. One person means one set of paid time off. One person means one skill set, with gaps in whatever they have not yet learned. One person means limited coverage for nights, weekends, or a family emergency. One person means a single point of failure for the whole business. One person means no built-in escalation when a problem is bigger than their experience.
Put together, a single in-house IT hire in St. Louis typically runs up to $133,000 a year in salary and benefits alone, before tooling licenses and before the coverage gaps above are factored in.
Compare that with managed IT at NOC's
published pricing, starting at $125/user per month. For a 25-person office, that works out to $3,125 per month, which is $37,500 per year. Even at the
low end of the in-house range,
a single hire typically costs more than double what managed IT costs for a similarly sized team, and that comparison is before tooling and coverage gaps enter the picture.
What managed IT includes
NOC's published pricing is built to cover the full scope of IT support: a staffed helpdesk for day-to-day issues, ongoing monitoring of the systems that keep a business running, a full security stack, and forward-looking planning.
At NOC, roughly half of all tickets are resolved by automation augmented by human quality review, which means routine issues get handled quickly and consistently, and our technicians spend their time on the work that actually needs human judgment.
Additional technology guidance
Managed IT also includes strategic planning, budgeting guidance, and a technology roadmap, the kind of forward-looking work a single in-house hire rarely has time for once daily tickets fill their schedule.
The middle ground: co-managed IT
Co-managed IT is the true middle path for a business that already has an internal IT person worth keeping. The internal hire retains ownership of daily priorities and the institutional knowledge that comes from working inside the business every day. NOC adds what a single hire cannot provide alone: a full technician bench for escalation, enterprise grade tooling, after hours and weekend coverage, and a second set of eyes on security and compliance.
Co-managed IT strengthens the internal IT person's role. Routine and after hours work moves to NOC, freeing the internal hire to focus on the projects and relationships that need someone who already knows the business inside and out. For many St. Louis companies in the growth range between a single hire and a full internal team, this arrangement keeps both strengths and covers both gaps.
Curious how this looks? Talk to one of our experts.
When hiring in-house IT is the right call
Larger organizations with enough headcount to support a full internal team, so coverage and skill gaps are naturally covered by the group.
Businesses running heavy proprietary or operational technology, where deep day to day familiarity with custom systems matters more than broad coverage.
Companies that need all day, on site deskside support for hands on work that cannot wait for a scheduled visit.
When NOC Technology is the better fit
Managed IT is the right call for most small and mid sized St. Louis businesses, particularly these situations.
Businesses below roughly 50 to 75 employees, where a single IT hire is structurally fragile and the all in cost typically exceeds managed IT.
Businesses that want issue resolution,, security depth, and planning without adding a full-time salary and benefits.
Businesses in regulated or client sensitive fields who need to meet compliance regulations.
Businesses that want support to scale nimbly, growing or contracting without a hiring or layoff decision.
Our guarantee
Every new client also gets our full written guarantee:
Try us risk-free for 90 days. Not happy? We'll refund your previous month's service costs, facilitate your move to another MSP, and hand over every piece of documentation we've compiled.
See the work
Curious what this looks like in practice? Our case study walks through how a St. Louis area business moved to a documented, proactive IT plan working alongside NOC, and was able to grow and expand as a result. It covers the planning process, the systems put in place, and the results the client saw over the following year, real detail behind the comparison above.
FAQs
At what size does it make sense to hire IT staff internally?
There is no single cutoff, but a helpful rule of thumb is roughly 50 to 75 employees. Below that range, a single IT hire is structurally fragile: one person means one set of paid time off, one skill set, and no escalation bench if a problem is bigger than their experience. Above that range, or in businesses with heavy proprietary systems or constant deskside needs, a dedicated internal team often makes sense. Many businesses in between do best with co-managed IT, keeping an internal IT person while adding bench depth and after hours coverage.
Can we keep our IT person and still work with an MSP?
Yes. That is exactly what co-managed IT is built for. Your internal IT person keeps ownership of daily priorities and the institutional knowledge that comes from working inside the business. NOC adds a full technician bench, enterprise tooling, after hours and weekend coverage, and a second set of eyes on security. Co-managed IT gives your IT person backup for escalation and routine work, letting them focus on the higher value projects that need someone who already knows the business.
What happens to coverage at night and on weekends with one IT person?
With a single in-house hire, nights and weekends typically depend on that one person being reachable, which creates a real single point of failure over time. Managed IT and co-managed IT both add structured after hours coverage backed by a technician bench, so an issue at 9pm or on a Saturday gets a response without depending on one individual's personal availability.
How does managed IT pricing work?
NOC uses published pricing, starting at $125 per user, per month.
The published starting price covers helpdesk support, monitoring, the security stack, and planning for a standard seat. Engagements run on a 12 month agreement, with the right to renew for an additional 24 months, and terms are discussed at proposal, so a business knows exactly what it is signing before work begins. Get an Instant Estimate for a number specific to your headcount.
