Internal IT Technician vs. External Support: The Calculation Every Dominican SME Should Make

"We need someone from IT." It's the phrase every SME owner says when technology starts causing problems. And the first reaction is to hire an internal IT technician.

It makes intuitive sense: someone in the office, available, who knows your business.

But when you run the real numbers, the story changes. And there's a risk few consider: what happens when that one person gets sick, takes vacation, or quits on a Friday at 5pm?

The real cost of an internal technician

Let's be concrete. In the Dominican Republic, a competent IT technician (not a junior, someone who can truly manage your infrastructure) costs:

• Base salary: RD$45,000 - 80,000
• Social security (TSS): ~17% additional
• Vacation + bonus (prorated): ~8% additional
• Tools and licenses: RD$15,000 - 30,000
• Annual training (prorated): RD$5,000 - 10,000
• Estimated total monthly: RD$70,000 - 130,000

And this is for a single person who:

• Works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week
• Gets sick, takes vacation, resigns
• Has limited knowledge (nobody knows everything)
• Cannot monitor your systems at 2am on a Sunday

What an external support team gives you for less

A service like IT Care de Two Care gives you a complete team for a fraction of that cost:

• Multidisciplinary team: not one person, but a team with specialists in networks, security, cloud and backup
• 24/7 monitoring: your systems supervised all day, every day
• Guaranteed response time: under 1 hour, documented in a service agreement
• Enterprise tools: remote monitoring, ticket management, documentation, at no additional cost
• Up-to-date knowledge: certifications and ongoing team training
• Uninterrupted coverage: vacation, illness or turnover won't affect you

The honest comparison

• Availability
  • Internal Technician: 8/5
  • External IT Support: 24/7
• Specialization
  • Internal Technician: Generalist
  • External IT Support: Specialized team
• Coverage during absence
  • Internal Technician: None
  • External IT Support: Guaranteed
• Tools included
  • Internal Technician: Whatever you buy
  • External IT Support: Enterprise tools included
• Scalability
  • Internal Technician: Hire more
  • External IT Support: Already included
• Estimated monthly cost
  • Internal Technician: RD$70,000 - 130,000
  • External IT Support: From RD$17,000
• Approach
  • Internal Technician: Reactive (puts out fires)
  • External IT Support: Proactive (prevents fires)

When an internal technician DOES make sense

To be fair (and this is important), there are scenarios where an internal technician makes sense:

• More than 50 users with constant on-site needs
• Regulated industries that require dedicated on-site staff
• In-house software development (IT support manages infrastructure, not development)

And here's something many companies don't consider: it's not one or the other.

The hybrid model: the best of both worlds

The trend we see in the most successful Dominican companies is co-managed support: combining an internal resource with an external team that complements the areas where one person alone cannot cover everything.

It works like this:

• Your internal technician handles day-to-day support and on-site needs
• The external team manages infrastructure, security, backup and projects
• 24/7 monitoring covers the hours when your technician is not there
• Your internal person learns and grows with the backing of a specialized team

The result: you have physical presence when you need it, specialized expertise when required, and 24/7 coverage without depending on a single person.

This is exactly what we do with our Co-Managed Support model. Want to see how it works in practice? A law firm in Santo Domingo achieved 99.9% availability with this approach.

Run the numbers for your company

Before deciding, answer these questions:

1. How many users and devices need support?
2. Do you need coverage outside business hours?
3. How critical is your infrastructure to daily operations?
4. What happens if your only IT person is unavailable tomorrow?

Want us to run the numbers together? Schedule 30 minutes with our team. We'll present the real numbers for your case, with no commitment or pressure.