Do You Really Need Full-Time IT Staff? What Fractional IT Costs

Hiring one full-time IT person costs $96,000 to $268,000 a year. A fractional, managed IT plan gives you the whole bench for a fraction of that. Here's what businesses pay nationally, and how to tell what you actually need.

If you run a business with somewhere between five and 250 employees across one to ten locations, the first question isn't which IT provider to hire. It's this: do you need full-time IT staff?

Probably not.

I've been doing this for more than 30 years, and at nearly every one of our clients, the owner sits at the top of the food chain. I like working with owners. A CEO is an employee who can be fired. An owner is different. If an owner hands out a Christmas bonus, that came out of his own bank account. So when I talk about what IT should cost, I think about it the way an owner does: what do you actually need to be in business, and what's just spending?

The one-person trap

IT work runs from the simple to the serious. At the bottom, Microsoft Word gets corrupted and somebody has to reload it. That's entry-level work. At the top are the problems that need real experience, the kind you'd normally pay a senior consultant hundreds of dollars an hour to solve.

How often do you need that top-level experience? Over a 10- to 20-year relationship, maybe a handful of times.

Now say you can only have one IT person. You're forced to hire for the top, because you can't risk not having that person for those few big moments. So you overpay for everyday work. You can't dollar-cost average.

Or you go the other way. Hire a $60,000-to-$100,000 person, and that's what you get. When a $100,000-to-$200,000 problem shows up, they'll solve it with a $60,000 solution, and it won't be right.

The national numbers show how steep that ladder is. Every role below can be bought fractionally instead of as a salary. "Loaded" cost adds roughly 43% for benefits and payroll taxes, plus tools and recruiting.

Role (entry → executive)	Full-time median salary	Full-time loaded cost / year	Fractional option	Fractional cost
Help desk technician	$61,860	~$96,000	Outsourced help desk	$35–$60 per user / month
Network support specialist	$76,220	~$115,000 (est.)	Managed IT plan or block hours	Included in standard plans; $150–$250 / hour for projects
Systems / network administrator	$99,130	~$154,000	Managed or co-managed plan	$65–$120 per user / month (co-managed)
Information security analyst	$129,180	~$195,000 (est.)	Managed detection & response / SOC	+$25–$100 per user / month
IT manager / director	$175,140	~$268,000	Virtual CIO hours	$185–$275 / hour; 1–2 hrs / month per 25 users
Chief Information Officer	$175,000+	$250,000+	Fractional CIO	$4,000–$13,000 / month
Chief Information Security Officer	—	$250,000–$700,000 total comp	Virtual CISO	$3,000–$12,000 / month

Salary data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 medians; loaded-cost method per Flamingo's 2026 analysis; "est." rows apply the same method.

"You're getting $60,000 solutions for $100,000-to-$200,000 problems. Do they work to a point? Sure. But when you have an outage, will it be a week or an hour?"

What fractional IT gets you

Fractional IT gives a small business access to $100,000-to-$200,000-a-year talent for a fraction of the cost, because we average it out across our clients. A 40-person company typically pays $72,000 to $96,000 a year nationally for comprehensive managed IT. At Gemini's rates, the same company pays roughly $36,000 to $60,000.

You get the whole bench, not one person:

Pay for the level of the problem. A password reset goes to an entry-level technician; a firewall redesign to a senior engineer; a three-year technology budget to strategic leadership. You never pay senior rates for help desk work.
Coverage doesn't take vacation. One employee can't cover sick days, vacations and turnover. A team can.
It scales with you. Add or remove users each month instead of hiring, training or laying off.

Here's what that looks like in practice. One of our clients has eight stores, hundreds of devices and hundreds of users, and has been with us for decades. Their entire IT department is us: a few of our people, spending fewer than 10 hours a week there to look after all of that infrastructure.

Most businesses don't need deep IT knowledge in-house. One of our clients manufactures circuit boards. Could they plug in their own equipment? Of course. But do they know what a Windows domain controller is, or how identity threat detection works? No. And they don't need to.

The one skill you do need in-house

Our contracts spell out exactly what we require on your side: one person on staff who can plug a keyboard, mouse or monitor into a computer.

We work remotely most of the time, and we take tons of pictures at every site. Several times a week, I'll pull up one of those photos, circle a spot and say, "I need you to unplug that cable right there." If you can plug in a keyboard, you can do that.

It makes sense on cost, too. If we're the equivalent of a six-figure employee, you're not going to pay us to move furniture. Having someone who can move a computer from one desk to another is a good thing to have.

What businesses pay nationally

Most U.S. small and mid-size businesses pay $150 to $200 per user per month for comprehensive managed IT in 2026. Per-user pricing, one flat fee covering every device a person uses, is now the dominant model. Gemini's tiers come in well below the national range at every level.

National service level	Typical price (U.S., 2026)	What it buys	Gemini comparison
Break-fix / hourly (no contract)	$150–$250 per hour	Repair after something breaks; no prevention, no guaranteed response	On Gemini Tier 1, cleanup from an outside incident is billed by the hour
Basic / maintenance	$100–$150 per user / month	Help desk, patching, basic monitoring, antivirus	Gemini Tier 1 — Basic: starting at $75 per user / month
Standard / proactive	$150–$225 per user / month	Basic + endpoint detection & response, email security, managed backup, cloud admin, quarterly reviews	Gemini Tier 2 — Complete: starting at $125 per user / month, plus a BDR plan
Premium / strategic	$225–$350 per user / month	Standard + security operations center, virtual CIO/CISO, compliance, incident response, 24/7	Gemini Tier 3 — Enterprise: custom quote. Fractional CISO and compliance are a separate Security & Compliance offering (coming soon)
Co-managed (alongside internal IT staff)	$65–$120 per user / month	Tools, security, escalation and after-hours behind your own team	—
Per-device alternative	$50–$100 per workstation; $200–$500 per server	Where devices outnumber people (shop floors, kiosks, labs)	—

What moves the number

Compliance (HIPAA, CMMC, PCI, SOC 2) adds about $25–$100 per user per month.
True 24/7 support adds about $25–$50 per user per month.
Volume: a 200-person company typically negotiates 10–20% lower per-user rates than a 20-person company.

Too cheap can be a warning sign: the lowest-cost plans often skip real security monitoring and proactive maintenance. Gemini's Tier 1 includes routine maintenance, and 24/7 human threat response starts at Tier 2. We can come in under the national range because we spread senior expertise across our clients, not because we leave things out.

Maintenance vs. proactive: what each tier means

The difference between the tiers is how much we're watching out for you. (For a deeper look, read How Gemini Technical Supports Clients: Why Proactive IT Wins.)

Hourly is purely reactive. We don't know you have a problem until you call, and we get to it when we can. We don't sell hourly-only service anymore. If that's the model you want, a consultant or an hourly tech is probably a better fit.

Tier 1 — Basic is maintenance. Think of it like a floor-cleaning service. We'll come in and clean your floors. But if your floors look bad and you want them refinished, that's not part of cleaning. After years of cleaning, the floors wear down a little. We know how to refinish them, but that's a project, and so is cleanup after an outside incident.

Tier 2 — Complete is proactive. We keep the floors looking like this all the time. When your server needs replacing, we replace it. This is where 24/7 human threat response starts.

Tier 3 — Enterprise is quoted to fit larger or more complex environments.

Coming soon: Security & Compliance. Fractional CISO leadership and compliance (HIPAA, CMMC, PCI, SOC 2) will be their own offering, added on top of any tier rather than bundled into one. Not every business needs board-level security leadership or a compliance program, so you shouldn't pay for it inside your IT plan if you don't. Nationally, a virtual CISO runs $3,000 to $12,000 a month for most mid-market firms, and compliance adds about $25 to $100 per user per month. It's the next step we're building toward, and we'll publish pricing when it launches.

Tier 1 can be the right call for a young company still growing from its beginnings. For an established business that depends on its systems, Tier 2 is usually the better choice.

Managed backup is not optional

Whatever tier you pick, you need managed backup. You're going to get hit at some point, and backups are what you restore from. If you insist on maintenance only and skip managed backup, you're wasting your money with us. Frankly, we're probably not a good fit, and your money would be better spent somewhere else. (Every small business will get hit: here's what happens next.)

That's not a sales line. Our company is in great shape. We don't need to take money from people for a service that won't protect them.

Which fits your business?

For most companies under 250 employees, fully outsourced fractional IT plus one tech-capable employee is the right answer. Up to roughly 75 employees, a fully managed plan costs less than one in-house systems administrator (about $154,000 a year loaded), even at national rates.

Employees	Approx. endpoints	National typical rate	National monthly spend	Russ's guidance
1–15	up to ~40	$100–$150 / user	$500–$2,250	Fully outsourced; one person who can plug things in
16–50	~40–150	$150–$225 / user	$2,400–$11,250	Fully outsourced; an in-house IT hire would be overkill
51–75	~130–225	$150–$350 / user	$7,650–$26,250	Fully outsourced
76–250	~190–750	$65–$120 / user co-managed, plus internal staff	$5,000–$30,000 + salaries	Still fully outsourced for most; a single hire brings $60,000 solutions to six-figure problems
250+	625+	Varies	Varies	Some in-house staff makes sense; outsource specialties like cloud management and security

Endpoints assume two to three devices per person.

Industry guides often recommend a co-managed model, with an internal IT lead plus a provider, from about 75 employees up. I'll be honest: I'm not a big fan. Half the time the two teams end up fighting each other. The in-house people ask, "What's wrong with us? Are we not smart enough?" and they end up working against you. We have plenty of clients in the 50-to-250 range who use us very effectively with no IT person on staff. Where mixing does make sense is a narrow specialty, like Azure cloud management, layered on top of a team that already handles the basics.

Even large organizations rarely in-source everything. Most companies under 500 employees buy security leadership fractionally rather than hiring a full-time CISO.

Spend on what you need, not what you're sold

I don't feel the need to push owners into buying things they don't need to be in business. We have servers out there that are 10 to 15 years old. A competitor would walk in and say, "Look at what your guy left you with." Is that fair? I don't think so.

You're not a 911 center that has to be up 99.999% of the time. So we keep a spare server on hand for our customers. If yours crashes, you don't have to buy a new one on the spot. We deploy the spare, you're down for a couple of hours, and then we get you a proper replacement.

The same goes for software. Microsoft will tell you the next version of Windows is coming and the world will fall apart without it. Windows 10 has vulnerabilities. Windows 11 has vulnerabilities. The next one will too. No matter what you do, you're going to get hit. What saves you is having backups to restore from, and training your people. The operating system isn't the biggest factor.

Pricing you can see

We publish our tiers next to the national numbers because we'd rather show you how we got there than ask you to take our word for it. It's like showing your work in math class: it builds confidence that you're getting the right service at a fair price, and you're not being taken for a ride.

One of our longest-standing clients has spent close to a million dollars with us over three decades. He'll tell you we saved him more than we ever cost him. That's the goal: do the right thing long enough, and it works out for everybody. (More about how we work.)

The bottom line

Don't hire a full-time salary for a part-time need. Fractional IT gives you entry-level support for everyday issues, senior engineers for complex problems and strategic guidance for planning, each at the moment you need it and only for as long as you need it.

Figures are 2026 U.S. national ranges compiled from published industry guides and BLS data; local quotes vary with compliance needs, environment complexity and contract length.

Want to see what fractional IT would cost for your team? Let's talk. Get a free assessment: 585-205-8430.