In short
An in-house IT person gives you someone on site who knows your business. A managed IT provider gives you a whole team, wider skills and cover for holidays and out-of-hours. Co-managed IT combines the two.
The in-house option
Hiring your own IT person means someone in the office who knows your people and systems. The downsides: one person can't be expert in everything, they take holidays and get ill, and when they leave a lot of knowledge can leave with them. You also pay salary, pension, training and tools.
The managed option
A managed IT provider gives you access to a team with a spread of skills, including networking, Microsoft 365, security and backup. Monitoring tools spot problems early, and there's cover when one engineer is off. Costs are predictable and scale with your headcount.
The trade-off is that your provider isn't sitting in your office full-time, so good communication and clear response times matter.
Co-managed: the middle ground
If you already have an IT person, co-managed IT support lets them focus on the work only an insider can do while the provider handles monitoring, patching, security, out-of-hours cover or specialist projects. It's often the best of both.
Questions to help you decide
How much downtime can you tolerate? Who covers IT when your person is on holiday? Do you need specialist security skills? Is your IT person spending their time on firefighting rather than improving things?
Talk it through with us
Nexa SecureIT offers both fully managed and co-managed IT support to businesses in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Paisley, Edinburgh and across the Central Belt.