The IT manager quit on a Friday in March. He left behind a spreadsheet of passwords, two vendors only he knew about and a server someone had to restart by hand every Monday. Management worked out what replacing him would cost: the same salary, posted on a job board. Three months later the role was still empty, and the finance assistant was handling tickets by searching Google.
When a company weighs outsourced IT support against an in-house team, it usually puts a technician's salary next to a provider's monthly fee. That math is wrong in both directions. For IT support at companies in Chile, the real cost of a hire includes social security contributions, the legal bonus, vacation, possible severance and something nobody puts in the spreadsheet: the hours when no one is there. The provider side has its own fine print too.
Here's how to build a comparison you can defend in front of management.
What a technician costs beyond the salary
Gross salary is only the starting point. On top of taxable pay, the employer covers charges that never show up in the job offer:
| Item | Employer cost | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Unemployment insurance (permanent contract) | 2.4% | BCN, Ley Fácil |
| Workplace accident insurance (Law 16,744), base rate | 0.9%, plus an additional rate based on activity and claims history | SUSESO |
| Employer pension contribution under the pension reform (includes disability and survivor insurance) | 3.5% from August 2026 to July 2027, rising every year to 8.5% at full rollout | Pensions Superintendency |
That adds up to 6.8% before the additional accident insurance rate. Watch the last line: it isn't fixed. If your support budget covers three or five years, the pension contribution will keep going up every August.
Then there's the legal bonus (gratificación). If the company pays it under article 50 of the Labor Code, it equals 25% of pay, capped at 4.75 minimum monthly wages per year. With the minimum wage at CLP 553,553 since May 2026, the cap works out to roughly CLP 219,000 a month.
An example, just to show the math: a technician earning CLP 1,500,000 in taxable pay costs the company about CLP 102,000 in contributions and around CLP 219,000 in bonus. That's over CLP 1,820,000 a month before you count the laptop, licenses, training or recruiting.
And there's the provision people forget. If the contract ends for business reasons, severance is 30 days of the last monthly pay per year worked, capped at 330 days. In practice, a month of salary per year that you'd better set aside.
The cost that doesn't show on the payslip: coverage
This is the most common mistake. Chile's maximum regular work week has been 42 hours since April 26, 2026, and it drops to 40 hours in April 2028. A 9:00 to 18:00 schedule, Monday to Friday, is 45 hours. One person can't cover it without overtime, and that's before lunch breaks.
Add vacation (15 business days a year), sick leave and training days. For several weeks a year, your in-house support just isn't there. If someone has to fill those gaps, that someone costs money too.
If the operation needs 24x7 support, the numbers change scale: 168 weekly hours split into 42-hour weeks means four people as a theoretical minimum, and more in practice once you account for shifts, rest days and absences. Few mid-sized companies can justify that for support alone.
Turnover and knowledge: the risk without a fixed price
The opening story isn't unusual. When everything about the infrastructure lives in one person's head, losing them costs more than replacing them. You get weeks of diagnosis, access nobody knows how to recover and decisions made blind.
Outsourcing doesn't make this go away. Providers lose people too. The difference is who carries that risk under the contract. Before signing, ask:
- What happens if the person assigned to your account leaves, and how fast they get replaced.
- Whether the knowledge handover is paid by the provider or by you.
- Where your infrastructure is documented and whether that documentation belongs to you.
- How everything gets handed back if you decide to switch providers.
We go deeper on this in what to demand from a managed IT services SLA, since most of these answers should be written down there.
What outsourced IT support brings, and what it doesn't
A good external service gives you coverage that doesn't hinge on one person, committed response times and access to skills you don't need full time, like security or networking. It also turns a cost with severance and salary adjustments into a monthly fee that's easier to budget.
What it doesn't bring by default is knowledge of your business. A new provider doesn't know month-end close happens on the 3rd, or that the CEO works from a phone. That context has to be built, and a provider that doesn't invest in it ends up just forwarding tickets.
It also doesn't remove the need for someone inside who makes decisions. Someone has to set priorities, approve changes and check whether the service delivers. Without that role, even the best contract loses its grip.
If you're looking for a Microsoft 365 help desk, what to expect from a Microsoft help desk in Chile covers how to split L1, L2 and L3 and which metrics to ask for.
The hybrid model: what we see work most often
In most mid-sized companies we know, the answer isn't one or the other. What tends to work is one internal person who knows the business and makes the calls, and a provider that brings the technical capacity, the coverage and the specialists.
| Responsibility | Internal team | External provider |
|---|---|---|
| Prioritize and approve changes | Yes | Proposes |
| End-user support (L1/L2) | Supervises | Delivers |
| After-hours and vacation coverage | No | Yes |
| Special projects and specialists | Defines | Delivers by the hour |
| Infrastructure documentation | Owns it | Keeps it current |
To run the numbers on this model, compare three 36-month scenarios: fully internal, fully outsourced and hybrid. In each one, include payroll charges, severance provision, vacation coverage, tools and the cost of an unexpected resignation. The differences that salary alone hides usually show up fast.
Frequently asked questions
How much does outsourced IT support cost for a company in Chile?
It depends on coverage (9x5 or 24x7), committed response times and how many users and systems are in scope. To compare it with an in-house team, ask for a proposal with defined hours or scope and set it against the employer's total cost, not just the salary.
Does a small company need an in-house IT person?
Not always full time, but it does need someone who owns the topic: who prioritizes, approves and reviews the provider. That can be a part-time role within administration if the external provider handles the technical side.
What happens to company data if the provider has access?
The contract should spell it out: which access they have, with which permissions, how it's logged and how it's revoked when the engagement ends. With Chile's Law 21,719 on personal data protection, that stops being a technical detail.
Run the numbers with someone who has done it
At Disrupsoft we provide managed services with response and resolution SLAs, 9x5 or 24x7 coverage and monthly reports, plus hour bundles and specialized profiles by the month. If you want to compare your current setup with an outsourced or hybrid one, take a look at our models in Disrupsoft IT Outsourcing and let's talk with your numbers on the table.
