Managed IT vs. In-House: What Growing Innisfil Businesses Should Know

The question usually arrives at a specific moment. The office manager who’s good with computers is now losing most of every Friday to password resets and printer problems. Or the business just crossed 20 people, and someone at the leadership table says, “Shouldn’t we just hire an IT person?”

It’s a fair question, and the honest answer depends more on the kind of IT work you have than on your headcount. I run the technical side of ACT360, so I’ll give you the numbers we use when Innisfil owners ask us this, including the cases where hiring is the right call. If you want to see how we work in town first, our page on managed IT services in Innisfil lays it out.

In-house IT means you employ the people who run your technology. Managed IT means an outside provider takes over monitoring, help desk, security, backups and planning for a monthly fee. Co-managed IT sits between the two: you keep your IT person and a provider backs them up.

For an Innisfil business, this decision often lands during a growth spurt. The Town of Innisfil puts its population at more than 44,000 after 55% growth over the last 3 census periods, and counts more than 4,000 businesses, from advanced manufacturers like Tempo Flexible Packaging to hospitality at Friday Harbour and early-stage tech companies working out of DMZ Innisfil. Plenty of them started with a laptop, a Microsoft 365 account and a nephew who “set it up.” That holds for a while, then the business grows past it.

An in-house IT specialist in the Innisfil area costs about $97,760 a year in salary at the regional median, before benefits, payroll costs, training and tools. That’s based on Job Bank’s wage data for the Kitchener-Waterloo-Barrie economic region, which includes Simcoe County.

Job Bank lists IT specialist wages (NOC 21222) in that region at $28.59 an hour at the low end, $47.00 at the median and $72.60 at the high end, using 2023 to 2024 data. Here’s how those wages compare with ACT360’s published managed IT pricing over a full year.

Salaries are calculated at 2,080 hours a year. Managed IT figures use ACT360’s full-service range of $80 to $150 per user per month, with Microsoft licences billed separately in both cases. Our guide to what managed IT costs in Innisfil breaks those ranges down further.

The salary is only the visible part. An employee also brings CPP and EI contributions, benefits, a laptop and software licences of their own, training to keep current, and the time it takes you to recruit and manage them. Those vary too much by business to put a single number on, so add your own.

One good IT person can keep a small office running day to day. What they can’t do is be an expert in everything, be available every hour of the year, and plan ahead while they’re putting out fires.

Think about the range of work involved. Help desk requests, Microsoft 365 administration, networking and Wi-Fi, firewalls, endpoint security, backups and test restores, vendor and licence management, onboarding and offboarding staff, and longer-term planning. Most people are strong in 2 or 3 of those areas and competent in a few more.

Coverage gaps

Your IT person takes vacation, gets sick and eventually moves on. If they’re the only one who knows the admin passwords, every one of those moments is a risk. I’ve walked into more than one business where the only copy of the firewall password left with the last IT employee.

Security work that never gets to the top of the list

Security is usually what slips when one person is busy. That matters more each year. Statistics Canada’s survey of cyber security and cybercrime found that 16% of Canadian businesses were impacted by a cyber security incident in 2023, and that recovery spending doubled to $1.2 billion from about $600 million in 2021. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security’s baseline controls for small and medium organizations are a useful test. Ask whether your current setup, whoever runs it, covers them.

Planning

When the same person handles today’s tickets and next year’s budget, today’s tickets win. That’s not a criticism of the person. It’s what happens when there’s only one of them.

In-house IT makes sense when there’s a full day of hands-on technology work every day, when systems need someone physically present most of the time, or when custom software needs a person who knows it inside out. Headcount alone isn’t the trigger.

Here’s how the decision usually breaks down for the kinds of businesses we see in Innisfil.

Notice that in-house and managed aren’t really opposites. A lot of growing businesses end up with both. If you already have someone on staff, our page on co-managed IT in Innisfil explains how that split works, and what co-managed IT looks like day to day walks through a typical week.

Growth makes a single hire age quickly. The person you bring on at 15 employees is doing a different job at 35, often without the time to learn the new parts of it. A managed agreement priced per user moves with you, and you aren’t rewriting a job description every year.

Hiring itself is also harder than it looks. An Innisfil business recruiting an IT specialist is competing with employers across Barrie and the GTA for the same people, often on salary. That’s not a reason to never hire. It’s a reason to be sure the role is a full-time one before you post it.

Distance matters less than people expect. Most support happens remotely, and when someone does need to be in the room, our Barrie office is right next door to Alcona, Stroud, Lefroy and Cookstown. If you’re wondering whether your current arrangement has already fallen behind your growth, our post on why small businesses outgrow their first IT provider covers the warning signs.

Before you post a job ad or sign with a provider, answer these 6 questions honestly. They usually point clearly to one model.

1. How many hours of IT work happen each week? Ask whoever is doing it now. If it’s under 20, a full-time hire will be underused.
2. What needs hands on it? Servers, shop-floor equipment and network gear tip things toward local presence. Laptops and cloud apps don’t.
3. Who covers when that person is away? If the answer is “nobody,” that’s a risk you’re carrying today.
4. Who holds the admin passwords? They should belong to the company, documented and stored securely, not to one person.
5. Who plans next year’s technology spending? If nobody does, that gap costs more than any monthly fee.
6. What would leaving cost? An employee has notice periods and severance. A provider has contract terms. Read both.

We’d rather tell you to hire someone than sell you something that doesn’t fit, so every engagement starts with an assessment, the first step of our ACTION methodology. We look at how your team actually works, how much IT work there really is, and where the business is going.

• If managed IT fits, you get a named contact, either me or Adam Bowles, rather than a rotating help desk, at a published rate of $80 to $150 per user per month for full service, or $75 to $120 remote-only.
• Every Managed IT agreement includes a 90-day exit clause, because you shouldn’t have to stay locked in if it isn’t working.
• If you already have an IT person, co-managed IT keeps them in charge and adds our tools and team behind them.

For the full picture of what we include, see our Managed IT Services overview.

Hiring an IT person feels like the grown-up move once a business gets past a certain size. Sometimes it is. More often, especially for Innisfil businesses under about 50 people, it buys one person’s skills at a team’s price, and leaves you exposed the week they’re on holiday.

If you’re weighing it up, book a free IT Readiness Assessment. We’ll tell you plainly which model fits, even if the answer is a hire. You can also call 705-739-2281 or email [email protected].