IT support can look like a cost line when everything is working. An outage shows the other side of the calculation.
When systems stop, staff may be unable to work, customers may be unable to contact us, sales can be missed and invoices may be delayed. The first hour is rarely the full cost, either. Recovery work often continues after systems come back online.
Published estimates vary widely. Some UK estimates place small-business downtime at roughly £800 to £1,200 per hour, while larger or more dependent businesses can lose much more. The right figure for our business depends on how many people and processes rely on IT.
The useful question isn't, “What does IT support cost?”
It's, “What does one hour without it cost us?”
What happens during an hour of downtime?
The impact usually falls into several areas.
1. Staff remain on the payroll
If staff can't access email, business applications, files or phones, we may still pay them for an hour when little work gets done.
This is easy to calculate:
Number of affected staff × fully loaded hourly cost × proportion of lost time
The fully loaded hourly cost should include salary, employer costs and other employment overheads. It doesn't need to be exact. A sensible estimate is more useful than ignoring the cost altogether.
For example, if 20 employees cost the business an average of £25 per hour, a full hour of lost productivity costs:
20 × £25 = £500
This doesn't mean every employee is completely unproductive. Some may continue working offline. Others may be affected only briefly. We can adjust the calculation by using a percentage.
If 20 employees lose 75% of an hour:
20 × £25 × 0.75 = £375
2. Sales and enquiries can disappear
Revenue loss is often more difficult to see than staff cost.
An outage might stop:
- Online orders
- Card payments
- Booking systems
- Customer enquiries
- Sales demonstrations
- Calls to the business
- Access to a customer relationship system
- Work that needs to be submitted through a client portal
A business generating £4,000 during an eight-hour working day has an average revenue rate of £500 per hour. That doesn't mean every hour produces £500. Sales may be concentrated around certain times. Still, it provides a useful starting point.
Average revenue per trading hour × proportion of revenue affected
If 60% of that hourly revenue depends on the unavailable system:
£500 × 0.60 = £300
The lost amount may be higher if customers abandon a purchase or move to a competitor. It may be lower if orders can be recovered later. We should use a realistic estimate rather than assuming every missed opportunity becomes a permanent loss.
3. The work doesn't always restart immediately
A system may be restored after 60 minutes, but normal work may take much longer to resume.
Staff may need to:
- Re-enter information
- Reconcile orders
- Return missed calls
- Re-send emails
- Recreate documents
- Rebook appointments
- Explain delays to customers
- Catch up on a backlog
This creates a second cost: recovery time.
If 10 employees each spend another 30 minutes catching up, at a fully loaded cost of £25 per hour, that adds:
10 × £25 × 0.5 = £125
This is why we should measure the total disruption, not just the time shown on the outage message.
A simple way to estimate our cost
We can create a practical estimate with five figures:
- Number of affected staff
- Average hourly employment cost
- Average revenue per trading hour
- Percentage of staff and revenue affected
- Expected recovery time after service returns
A simple calculation looks like this:
Staff cost + lost revenue + recovery cost + additional costs = estimated downtime cost
Let's use a straightforward example.
Example: a 30-person business
Assume:
- 30 employees are affected
- Average fully loaded staff cost is £24 per hour
- Average revenue is £400 per trading hour
- 80% of staff are unable to work
- 75% of revenue-generating activity is affected
- Recovery takes another 30 minutes for 15 employees
- The business pays £200 for emergency technical support
Staff productivity
30 × £24 × 0.80 = £576
Lost revenue
£400 × 0.75 = £300
Recovery time
15 × £24 × 0.5 = £180
Emergency support
£200
Estimated total
£576 + £300 + £180 + £200 = £1,256
This estimate doesn't include missed service levels, customer churn or reputational damage. It also doesn't assume a serious cyber incident or hardware replacement.
For this business, one hour offline could reasonably create more than £1,200 of immediate cost.
We can use the same method with our own figures. It takes only a few minutes and gives us a more useful basis for IT decisions.
The costs that are harder to measure
Some effects don't appear on an invoice straight away.
Missed service levels
If we have contractual response or delivery commitments, downtime may cause:
- Service credits
- Refunds
- Missed deadlines
- Contract penalties
- Additional account-management work
The amount depends on each agreement. We should check whether our important contracts include uptime or response commitments and include a reasonable allowance in our business continuity planning.
Delayed invoicing and cashflow
If finance systems are unavailable at month-end, invoices may be delayed. That can affect when customers pay us.
A short outage might not change the final invoice total, but it can move the payment date. For businesses managing tight cashflow, that delay matters.
Customer confidence
Customers may accept an occasional technical issue when communication is clear and recovery is quick. Repeated outages are different.
They can create questions about whether we are reliable, organised and safe to work with. In sectors where customers depend on timely service, one visible failure may influence future buying decisions.
Overtime and additional work
Teams may need to work later to catch up. We may also need specialist help, replacement equipment or temporary systems.
The cost of recovery can exceed the cost of the original outage, particularly when backups haven't been tested or nobody is sure how systems should be restored.
Prevention usually costs less than recovery
We can't prevent every incident. We can reduce how often problems happen, how long they last and how far they spread.
A sensible business IT support plan should include the following.
Proactive monitoring
Monitoring can identify failing disks, full storage, unavailable services, unusual activity and network problems before they become a full outage.
This gives us a chance to fix issues during a planned window rather than during a busy trading period.
Tested backups
A backup that has never been restored is an assumption, not a plan.
Backups should be checked regularly. We should know:
- What is being backed up
- How often backups run
- Where copies are stored
- How long restoration takes
- Who is responsible for recovery
Testing also helps identify whether a backup is complete or only appears to be working.
Planned out-of-hours maintenance
Some work can't be completed without interrupting a service. Upgrades, migrations and infrastructure changes are safer when scheduled outside normal working hours.
Our out-of-hours support service helps businesses plan this work around their operating needs. It also provides a response when an issue happens outside the usual working day.
The goal isn't to avoid every maintenance window. It's to choose the least disruptive one.
Remote IT support that starts quickly
Waiting for an engineer to travel to site can add hours to an outage. Many issues can be investigated and resolved remotely, including problems with desktops, servers, virtual machines, networks and cloud applications.
Remote IT support can begin as soon as the problem is reported. That may reduce both the outage time and the need for an emergency site visit.
On-site support still has a place when hardware needs replacing or physical work is required. Remote support simply gives us another, often faster, option.
IT support is a business continuity decision
The right support arrangement doesn't need to be the most expensive option. It needs to match the cost and risk of an outage.
For some businesses, business-hours support is enough. Others rely on systems that operate evenings, weekends or across multiple time zones. A one-size-fits-all package may not reflect the real business need.
We can start by calculating our own hourly exposure, then ask:
- Which systems would stop work if they failed?
- How quickly could we restore them?
- Who would respond outside working hours?
- Which issues can be fixed remotely?
- When were our backups last tested?
- How long would recovery and catch-up take?
A provider-agnostic managed IT services review can help us answer those questions without starting with a particular vendor or product.
The aim isn't to spend more on IT for its own sake. It's to reduce avoidable downtime, recover faster and protect the work that keeps the business moving.
When we know that one hour offline could cost £1,000, £5,000 or more, reliable IT support stops looking like a fixed overhead. It becomes a practical investment in productivity, revenue and customer confidence.
Find out more about impartial IT support from Your IT Specialist.
