IT outsourcing for small businesses: costs, the cost of downtime and the decision

In a business with a dozen or so people, the IT person is usually someone who is "good with computers". Often a salesperson or the owner. Most months this works, until the day that person is out visiting a client, the network printer in the office stops printing invoices and nobody knows where the router password is. This cost does not appear on any invoice, which is why it is easy to miss.

The person who signs off payments in a business with 5-30 people needs three pieces of information to decide: what the subscription costs, what downtime costs and how long the change will take. We have described the definition, billing models and scope of the service separately in the article IT outsourcing: what it is. Here we deal with the money and the decision, using the amounts from the price list of our IT outsourcing for companies.

IT support for small businesses: who does it today

According to Eurostat, in 2024 14.04% of small enterprises in the European Union employed IT specialists. In the rest, someone handles IT "on the side" or an outside company does it. In practice we see three set-ups, often all at once:

• an employee who knows a bit: does what they can, in time they should be spending on their own job;
• an IT person you know, on call: comes when they have time, charges per visit, and the documentation is in their head;
• a repair service called out when something fails: fixes what broke, and has no reason to make sure it does not happen again.

Each of these set-ups is cheap as long as nothing happens. The problem is that nobody in them is responsible for the things that break quietly: backups that stopped running six months ago, former employees' accounts with access to e-mail, hardware without updates.

How much IT support costs for a small business

A subscription for a small business depends on the number of workstations, servers, the support window and the response time. For reference, here are our packages from the price list (net amounts per month):

Package	Workstations	Price from	Hours of work per month	Response to a critical ticket	Support window
START IT	1-5	PLN 1,190	4 h	4 working hours	Mon-Fri 9:00-17:00
BUSINESS IT	6-20	PLN 2,490	8 h	1 working hour	Mon-Fri 8:00-18:00
PROFESSIONAL IT	21-50	PLN 5,490	16 h	30 minutes	Mon-Fri 8:00-18:00 plus weekend on-call cover for critical tickets

Response time means picking up the ticket and starting diagnosis, counted within the support window. It is not the time to fix the failure, and no honest offer should present it that way. We have described this difference in detail in our article on response time and fix time in an SLA.

Outside the subscription you pay for:

• taking over the environment: a one-off fee equal to one monthly subscription, waived with a contract of 24 months or longer;
• licences and hardware, bought in the business's name;
• endpoint protection: from PLN 19 net per workstation per month in the basic package;
• projects, such as an e-mail migration, new Wi-Fi or a server replacement, quoted separately;
• travel: a flat PLN 80 net within 30 km of Świebodzin, beyond that PLN 1.50 net per kilometre there and back.

You will find the full price list and how to compare offers from different companies in the article how much does IT outsourcing cost. When comparing offers, add up the cost for the year including the one-off items. The difference in the subscription is often smaller than the difference in what each provider treats as a separately paid project.

The downtime calculation: what an hour without IT costs you

The subscription decision comes down to one comparison: how much downtime costs you over a year and how much of it a subscription will actually reduce. You can calculate the first number yourselves. It is made up of three elements:

1. People's time: the number of people who cannot work, together with the hourly cost of their work (salary with on-costs divided by the number of working hours in a month), multiplied by the length of the downtime.
2. Lost margin: sales you did not make because the ordering or invoicing system was down. What counts is the margin, not the revenue.
3. Additional costs: overtime to catch up on the backlog, contractual penalties, an urgent weekend repair, a lost customer.

An example without amounts, to show the scale. The server with the warehouse software does not come up on Monday morning, and 8 of 12 people wait until noon. That is 32 working hours of people's time alone, before you count the orders that did not go out. If this happens a few times a year, the result usually exceeds the cost of several months of subscription.

For this calculation we have prepared a downtime cost calculator, which calculates people's time, lost margin and additional costs in three scenarios. Enter your own numbers, because it is your downtime and your margin.

The other half of the calculation is the risk of rare and expensive events. In its guide for small organisations, the UK National Cyber Security Centre states that one in two small businesses in the UK experiences a cyber security incident in a year. These are UK figures and we quote them as a reference point, because the mechanism of attacks such as ransomware or a mailbox takeover is the same. A subscription will not eliminate such events, but it should ensure that a backup exists and that account access is secured with two-step login.

When IT outsourcing pays off for a small business

A subscription is justified when you meet at least two of the following conditions:

• at least a few of your people work on computers all day;
• you have a server, a NAS or a system (ERP, warehouse, practice software) without which the business cannot issue documents;
• failures happen more often than once a quarter;
• nobody can show when something was last restored from a backup;
• one person knows the administrator passwords and the domain access;
• downtime at a deadline (VAT, shipments, peak season) costs you more than a monthly subscription.

When hourly help is enough

A business with one to three people that works in the cloud and has no server usually does not need a subscription. With us, hourly billing costs PLN 220 net per hour of helpdesk. If you have a few tickets a quarter, you can buy a block of 10 hours for PLN 2,090 net, valid for 3 months. The condition for this to work: someone sets up the accounts, two-step login and cloud data backup properly once.

Where the line falls depends on what a standstill costs you. A three-person accounting office in the week tax returns are filed may need a response time set out in the contract more than a fifteen-person construction company whose people work on building sites.

What subscription IT support for a small business covers

From the owner's point of view, a subscription changes three things. Staff report problems through one channel, from an agent on their computer, instead of calling whoever is around. Someone regularly checks backups and updates, without waiting for a ticket. Once a month you get a report: what happened, what was done and what needs a decision or a budget.

We have described the full scope on the page permanent IT support. Three obligations remain on your side: name a contact person, make purchasing decisions within a reasonable time and do not change the configuration without the provider knowing. The last point sounds obvious, yet in small businesses someone regularly changes the router settings "just for a moment".

The NCSC guidance for businesses choosing a managed service provider suggests what to require in the contract: patching critical vulnerabilities within 14 days, automatic off-site backups with regular restore tests, and two-step login for administrator accounts. This is a good reference point for a small business too.

Small business owners' concerns about IT outsourcing

"The IT company is far away, and the failure is here." Most tickets in a small business can be resolved remotely: passwords, e-mail, printers, applications, permissions. A visit is needed for hardware and the network. We cover Świebodzin, Sulechów, Zielona Góra and Gorzów Wielkopolski on site, and Wrocław, Poznań and Nysa remotely with planned visits. Ask every provider directly what they do when someone is needed at the router cabinet.

"We will lose control over our passwords." It should be the other way round. After the takeover, the documentation and administrator passwords should be kept in a place the business has its own access to. If the provider processes personal data in your systems, a data processing agreement is also needed.

"We will be tied in for years." The minimum contract term depends on the package: with us, 3 months in START IT, 6 in BUSINESS IT and 12 in PROFESSIONAL IT. A longer contract gives a discount and waives the takeover fee, but it is not a condition of working together.

How long the move to IT outsourcing takes

Taking over support usually takes 2 to 4 weeks. The business works normally during this time. In the first week we inventory the hardware, accounts and licences and formally take over the passwords. In the second we install the monitoring and ticketing agent and check the backups. In the third and fourth we produce the initial documentation and a prioritised list of risks.

We need little from you, but it has to be specific:

• a contact person who has an hour or two in the first week;
• access to invoices for licences, the domain and hosting;
• information on who the domain is registered to and who holds the e-mail administrator account;
• a short message to staff about the new way of reporting problems.

The one thing that most often drags out a takeover is a domain or administrator account registered to the private address of someone who no longer works with the business. It is better to check this before talking to any provider.

How to make the decision

Work out the cost of downtime over the last year, even roughly. Set it against the annual cost of the subscription including the takeover. Check whether you can answer three questions: when was something last restored from a backup, who knows the administrator passwords and who blocks the account of an employee who leaves. If the answer to two of them is "I don't know", the risk is on your side regardless of what the calculator shows.

If you want to do this calculation with someone who asks the technical questions, book a free IT review. It is 60 minutes online, after which you know whether hourly help is enough or a subscription is justified.

Sources

• Eurostat, ICT specialists - statistics on hard-to-fill vacancies in enterprises, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=ICT_specialists_-_statistics_on_hard-to-fill_vacancies_in_enterprises (accessed 02/10/2026)
• National Cyber Security Centre, Small organisations guide to cyber security, published 9 April 2026, reviewed 21 July 2026, https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/small-business-guide (accessed 02/10/2026)
• National Cyber Security Centre, Choosing a Managed Service Provider (MSP), published 24/11/2025, reviewed 24/06/2026, https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/choosing-a-managed-service-provider-msp (accessed 02/10/2026)

As of 2 October 2026.