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In-House Sysadmin, Freelancer or Subscription: What Makes More Sense for a Small Business

Business tips Published: · 6 min read

With just one or two servers, an in-house administrator is busy a quarter of the time, and the “IT guy you know” answers when he can. Let’s look at what each option really costs.

Option 1. An in-house specialist

Pros: always on site, knows the infrastructure, helps with printers and employee email too.

Cons: a competent administrator’s salary in Tashkent is comparable to a chief accountant’s, plus taxes, vacation and sick leave. With one or two servers, they’re busy 20–30 % of the time — the rest is paid idle time. The main risk is the “one-person function”: when they leave, all the passwords, diagrams and knowledge leave with them. They’re also not around at night or on weekends.

Option 2. An on-call specialist or freelancer

Pros: cheap, you pay only for actual work.

Cons: responds when free; routine tasks (updates, backup checks) get done “when someone remembers”; there’s usually no documentation, and no contractual responsibility either. During a serious outage, you’re competing for their time with other clients.

Option 3. Administration by subscription

Pros: a fixed price per server per day — from 15 000 to 60 000 UZS depending on the package, i.e. 450 000 — 1 800 000 UZS per month. A team of engineers rather than one person; on the “Standard” package — priority incident response. A defined routine: updates, backups, monitoring and reporting happen on schedule, not on inspiration. Documentation and credentials stay with the company, not in one specialist’s head. A contract and closing documents.

Cons: they won’t fix the office printer (available separately); tasks are submitted via Telegram rather than “come over for a minute.”

A worked example

A 15-person company: a 1C server and a server for the website and files.

OptionPer monthIncident responseWhen the specialist leaves
In-house administratorsalary + taxes, usually from 8–12 million UZSduring business hours1–2 months to find a replacement, risk of losing access
Freelancer1–3 million UZS as billedif you’re luckysame
Subscription, 2 servers on “Standard”1.8 million UZSpriority incident responsenothing changes

When you still need an in-house admin

When you have many servers and services, in-house development, complex integrations or regulatory requirements for in-house staff. Even then, a subscription often takes over monitoring, backups and incident response, while your in-house specialist focuses on development rather than routine.

How to switch

It starts with a free audit: we review the server, find what hasn’t been updated or backed up, and put it in order. After that — a scheduled package. You can cancel any day: billing is daily.

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Not sure what to choose? We’ll help you pick a configuration

Tell us what you need — a server for 1C, cameras for a pickup point or a move from another host. We’ll find a solution, give you an exact price and help with the move: we’ll advise and walk you through the steps.