Ask the Right Question First: It’s Not “Whether to Have IT,” but “How to Fund IT”
Owners of companies with around 30 employees often ask me: “Should I hire an IT person, or outsource it?” Behind that question is really a 3-year total cost calculation. Today I’ll lay out both models and factor in both explicit and hidden costs, so you can compare them yourself and see clearly.
The conclusion first: for companies under 50 employees, outsourcing is more cost-effective in the vast majority of cases; but it depends on the complexity of your IT — there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Here’s the math.
Option One: Hire a Full-Time IT Engineer In-House
Many owners feel that “hiring someone is the most reassuring — they’re available on demand.” Let’s calculate what this person actually costs over 3 years.
Full-Time IT Engineer · 3-Year Total Cost (Beijing, able to independently support a 30–50 person company)
- Monthly salary RMB 12,000–18,000 (including social insurance and housing fund), calculated at RMB 15,000 = RMB 180,000/year
- 3 years of salary = RMB 540,000
- Recruiting costs, social insurance and housing fund, year-end bonus, training: about +RMB 60,000–100,000 over 3 years
- Equipment purchases are still separate (firewall/router/switch/server): +RMB 50,000–100,000
- 3-year total: about RMB 650,000–740,000
But money isn’t the biggest problem. The real risks of keeping IT in-house are these:
One person covering the whole company will inevitably have skill gaps. Networking, security, servers, office software, Office365, printers… no single person can master everything. When something falls outside their expertise, you still need outside support.
When they leave, you’re lost. The IT engineer job market has high turnover. Once they’re gone, a new hire has to relearn every system in your company from scratch, and the handover period often brings chaos.
For weekend, nighttime, and holiday issues, they can legally decline. If something really breaks down, you’ll have to pay overtime separately — or wait until Monday.
Option Two: Outsource to a Full-Stack IT Service Provider
This isn’t the piecemeal kind of outsourcing where you call someone to put out fires when something breaks. It’s a monthly subscription in which a single contract bundles operations + network equipment + response together. Here’s the math:
Full-Stack IT Outsourcing · 3-Year Total Cost (30-person company)
- Monthly payment of about RMB 3,999, annual fee about RMB 48,000
- 3 years = about RMB 144,000
- Network equipment (firewall/router/switch/AP) provided free of charge + free warranty for the contract term
- 7×14 response, unlimited service requests, remote-first with on-site support as a fallback
- Backed by a team (dedicated people for networking, security, and servers), not a single individual
RMB 144,000 over 3 years vs. RMB 650,000–740,000 in-house — a gap of more than RMB 500,000. And with outsourcing, you don’t buy the equipment, you don’t depreciate it, staff don’t resign, and there are no skill gaps.
The 3-Year Comparison at a Glance
30-Person Company · 3-Year Total IT Cost
- In-house full-time IT + self-purchased equipment: RMB 650,000–740,000, plus turnover/skill-gap/overtime risks
- Full-stack IT outsourcing: about RMB 144,000, with free equipment, team support, and unlimited requests
- Difference: more than RMB 500,000
So When Should You Build an In-House IT Team?
Outsourcing isn’t a cure-all. In these situations, we recommend building in-house, or combining in-house with outsourcing:
1. The company has more than 100–150 employees — IT needs are dense enough to require dedicated staff on site every day, and the marginal cost of an in-house team starts to pay off.
2. You have special core systems (in-house software, complex R&D environments, industry-specific systems) that require internal IT with deep business knowledge.
3. Compliance requirements are extremely high (finance, healthcare, classified work), and you need internal staff to control the data.
But even in these cases, the mainstream approach is a hybrid model of “1–2 internal core staff + outsourcing to cover basic IT operations” — internal staff focus on the core, while the outsourced team handles the odds and ends like broken printers and laggy networks, so your expensive people aren’t doing cheap work.
One-Line Advice for the Owner of a 30-Person Company
If your company has 30–50 people, no special core systems, and no extreme data compliance requirements — full-stack outsourcing will almost certainly be more cost-effective than keeping IT in-house. The RMB 500,000 you save over 3 years is enough to get a lot of real work done.
Hand off IT — something that “must be done well but generates no direct revenue” — to professionals, and focus on your core business. That’s the most rational choice for an SME.
— Siwenlide, 14 years of enterprise IT services in Beijing, having served 1,000+ SMEs. Want a tailored IT cost comparison assessment for your company? Contact us at 400-686-2011.
Further reading: what exactly a full package includes — see Beijing IT Operations Outsourcing — Siwenlide, 14 years, 1,000+ enterprise clients, operations + networking + security all bundled into one contract, on-site within 2 hours in the city.
