In-house IT technician or MSP: the real cost at 30 seats

Much more than the advertised salary. Portuguese law adds costs that never appear on the employee's payslip.

• Fourteen salary payments The twelve months are joined by the holiday and Christmas allowances.
• Social security (TSU) The company pays Social Security 23.75% on top of pay; the 11% deducted from the employee is a separate amount.
• Mandatory insurance Law no. 98/2009 requires workplace accident insurance, with a premium set by each insurer.
• Meal allowance A daily allowance for every working day.
• Training The Labour Code sets a minimum of 40 hours a year; in IT, networking, security and Microsoft certifications usually exceed it.
• Equipment and licences Laptop, phone, remote access, inventory and monitoring software, plus travel.

Two profiles, the same calculation method

*Assumptions: meals at €8 a day over 220 days; insurance, training and equipment estimated. TSU, holidays and minimum training derive from the law. Replace these figures with your company's own. Recruitment is excluded.

Reference point: INE records average total gross monthly pay of €1,694 in 2025. Divided over 14 months, it comes close to profile A. Profile B corresponds to someone with more experience.

All of it. There are 22 working days of holiday and around 5 of mandatory training: 27 working days, more than five weeks, with 30 workstations left to fend for themselves. Add sick leave. And on the day the technician resigns, the knowledge of the network walks out with them, and a recruitment process begins.

A server failure in August does not wait for anyone to come back. The company either stops or calls in an outsider to the infrastructure, who charges by the hour. We measured the impact of that downtime in the price of an hour without systems in a 20-workstation company.

Rarely. A 30-workstation SME today accumulates very different layers:

• Network infrastructure Switches, access points and firewall.
• Collaboration Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, with accounts, licences and security policies.
• Data A local or cloud server, with backups that someone has to test.
• Protection Endpoints, two-factor authentication, password rules.
• Mixed environment Printers, phones and Apple workstations living alongside Windows.

The pattern repeats itself: good at user support, weak in networking and cybersecurity. Precisely where a mistake costs the most. An MSP brings specialists in each area who have already solved the same problem at other companies.

Yes. Very specific internal applications, an operational need for someone always on site or the scale for a small team justify a dedicated resource. Even then, the most robust model pairs that person with an external partner for networks, security and absence cover. We describe that hybrid design for 50 to 200 workstations in in-house IT team or external partner.

Below that threshold, and without those requirements, the fixed-fee contract wins on three fronts: cover, specialisation and cost predictability.

1. Real cost: fill in the simulation with your company's salaries and costs.
2. A proposal based on an assessment: demand a fee calculated on your real infrastructure, not a list price per workstation. DataRoad only finalises an IT Unlimited proposal after analysing it.
3. Scope: confirm call-outs, security, monitoring and hours. Essential, from €395/month + VAT, is remote and telephone only; IT Unlimited Premium, from €750/month + VAT, includes unlimited on-site support.
4. Exit: annual contract, automatic renewal, no lock-in.

Market benchmarks in IT contract prices for businesses. Planning next year? Use the 2027 IT budget guide.

Pharmaceutical and healthcare consultancy PTR Pharma Consulting handed DataRoad full IT management, under an annual fixed-fee IT Unlimited contract. Workstations, wireless network, printers, servers, backups, internet, firewall and VPN are all in scope. Its corporate website and professional email run on DataRoad servers, with redundant backups and spam and phishing filtering.

Result: one team accountable for the entire environment and a single contract, instead of a lone technician. Details in the PTR Pharma Consulting success story.

We analyse your infrastructure, work out with you the cost of the in-house model and deliver a fixed-monthly-fee IT Unlimited proposal, with no commitment. You decide with both numbers in front of you.

More than 10 workstations · support contract · remote, on-site and telephone support. +351 211 459 950 * · sales@dataroad.pt

*Call to a Portuguese landline.

• PwC, Tax Guide 2026: Social Security contribution rates
• Diário da República, Law no. 7/2009: continuous training (Art. 131) and holidays (Art. 238)
• Government of Portugal, INE data on pay in 2025
• Law no. 98/2009 of 4 September: workplace accidents