Co-Managed IT In-house, outsourced, or co-managed: the right IT model for your UK SME in 2026
Most UK SMEs frame the IT decision as a binary: hire an in-house IT manager, or outsource the lot to an MSP. There is a third model that fits more businesses than either, and most internal IT decision-makers don't know it has a name: co-managed IT. Your internal IT person (or 2-3 person team) keeps the parts of the job they're best at (user support, business knowledge, vendor relationships) and an outsourced partner takes the parts they can't realistically do solo (24/7 cover, deep cyber-security operations, specialist projects, after-hours escalation). Below: the honest maths for all three models for a 20-100 user UK SME, when each one wins, and what a working co-managed split looks like in practice.
Iain Godding
17 Jun 2026