Outsourced IT Support in London: A 2026 Buyer's Guide

At some point most growing firms have the same conversation: the office manager is drowning in password resets, the directors are making security decisions by gut feel, and somebody says “should we just outsource the IT?”

Usually yes — though working out what you would actually be buying, and from whom, takes more digging than it should. So here is the whole picture in one place: what outsourced IT support costs in London in 2026, the three models on offer, and what to look for in a provider.

What It Costs, Side by Side

Start with the alternative. A capable in-house IT manager in London costs £55,000–75,000 a year before employer’s NI, pension, training and holiday cover — call it £70,000–90,000 all-in. They will be excellent at some things, unavailable when they are ill, and one person deep on a discipline that now spans networking, cloud, security and compliance.

Outsourced support for a typical 10–50 person firm runs £60–150 per user per month depending on depth — from helpdesk-only at the bottom to fully managed with security, compliance evidence and strategic input at the top. A 20-person firm therefore pays roughly £14,000–36,000 a year — a fraction of one salary, for a whole team’s coverage.

That is the arithmetic. The complication is that three very different products share the same phrase, so it is worth knowing which one you are being offered.

The Three Models (and Who Each Suits)

1. Break-fix. You call when something breaks; they bill by the hour. It is the cheapest option month to month, though it pays the provider for hours spent rather than for problems avoided. That can work for a five-person firm with simple needs. Beyond that, the hours usually add up to more than a fixed fee would have cost.

2. Fully managed. A fixed monthly retainer covers support, monitoring, patching, security and regular service reviews. The provider is responsible for reducing problems as well as resolving them. This is what most people mean by managed IT support, and it suits many businesses that do not want to build a complete internal IT function.

3. Co-managed. You keep an internal IT person or team; the provider supplies the helpdesk overflow, the specialist security work, and the out-of-hours cover. Common from ~75 seats up, or in regulated firms where an internal lead owns the relationship with a fractional CTO layered on top for strategy.

Ten Questions That Sort the Field

Proposals tend to look alike, so it is the answers that tell you the most. Ask every shortlisted provider:

1. What response and resolution targets will be written into our service? Ask how they are measured, reported and prioritised when work stops.
2. Where is the helpdesk, and who picks up out of hours? A UK helpdesk usually costs more, and it earns that when your team is losing billable hours waiting. Ask who covers nights and weekends, and under what terms.
3. How does the support team keep context, and who covers when our usual contacts are unavailable?
4. What is in the fixed fee, precisely? On-site visits? Projects? Out-of-hours? A low headline fee is worth checking carefully, because the interesting work is sometimes billed on top.
5. What is the contract term, and what does leaving look like? A provider confident in its service will talk openly about the term and about what leaving involves, and will set both out in writing.
6. Are you certified in what you sell us? A provider recommending Cyber Essentials should hold it themselves.
7. Which sectors do you actually know? Support for a law firm or a hedge fund involves regulatory context that takes time to learn, and it helps enormously if your provider already has it.
8. What happens out of hours? An emergency line can mean an on-call engineer or a voicemail box. Ask who answers it at 6:47am, and what happens next.
9. How do you report? You should see response times, patch status and open risks quarterly, explained clearly enough to take to your board, and sent without you having to ask.
10. Can we speak to two clients our size? A provider with settled, long-standing clients will usually be glad to arrange it.

Signs Worth Pausing On

• Onboarding is free and instant. Proper onboarding — documenting your environment, fixing inherited risks, setting baselines — takes weeks. An instant start usually means the provider gets to know your environment as it goes, rather than before it takes responsibility for it.
• Everything is possible, nothing is written down. If a provider will not put the scope in the contract, ask why. A scope that is easy to describe in a meeting should be just as easy to write down, and having it in the document protects both sides.
• Security is an upsell menu. Patching, MFA and backup checks belong inside a managed service, not on a bolt-on price list. (Genuinely advanced needs — a 24/7 SOC, penetration testing — are fairly priced separately.)
• They never say “that is not worth paying for.” A good provider will sometimes talk you out of spending, so it is worth noticing whether any of the recommendations ever point that way.

Making the Switch Without the Drama

What keeps most firms where they are is the thought of the migration, and that is a fair concern, because a badly run handover is genuinely disruptive. Run properly, the incumbent hands over documentation and admin credentials, the new provider shadows for a settling-in period, and your staff notice nothing except that tickets started getting answered. We wrote a step-by-step guide to switching IT provider covering notice periods, data handover and the questions to ask on both sides.

The Bottom Line

Outsourced IT in London is a buyer’s market if you know what to ask. The arithmetic favours outsourcing well before the 20-seat mark; the model should almost always be fully managed on a fixed fee; and the ten questions above will tell you a great deal about a provider in a single meeting.

If you would like to hear how we answer them, book a free 30-minute chat or read what is included in our London IT support service. Bring your current contract and we will go through it with you, including whether it already does what you need.