A real-number comparison in Vietnam between hiring an in-house engineer, using a freelancer and retaining a monthly operations partner for a small business website or custom software, with a comparison table, 5 questions to choose by, and the hybrid model.
For a small or medium business that owns a website or custom software, a monthly operations partner is usually 5 to 10 times cheaper than an in-house engineer and far less risky than a freelancer, right up until the software becomes a core product with enough daily work for a whole team. This article puts the three options side by side with real Vietnamese numbers so you can choose for your own situation.
The opening scene
One morning the company website throws an error on the checkout page. Customers call to complain, orders pile up, and the only person who knows how the system is configured is on holiday and not answering. The question becomes very clear: should we have our own technical person inside the company, or hand the whole thing to an outside team?
The answer is not "which is better" but "which fits our size and stage". Here are the three options with their real costs.
Option 1: Hire an in-house engineer
The real monthly cost
The number people quote is salary. But a technical hire in Vietnam costs more than that:
- Salary for an engineer with 3 to 5 years of experience: 20 to 35 million dong.
- Insurance, tax, benefits: another 20 to 25 percent of salary.
- Equipment, software, a desk: 1 to 3 million dong.
- Management: a manager's time to assign work, review and retain.
- Recruiting and gaps: typically 1 to 3 months to hire, plus handover time every time someone leaves.
The total usually lands between 30 and 45 million dong a month for one person. And that is one person.
The problem with "one person"
One engineer cannot be on call 24/7. They cannot cover for themselves when sick, on leave or after resigning. Someone strong at programming is not necessarily strong at infrastructure, security and databases; running a system needs all four. And for most small businesses, one website or one application does not provide a full day of work, so the person is either underused or gets loaded with unrelated tasks and leaves.
When in-house is right
When the software is the product or the core competitive advantage, changes every week, and there is enough work for at least 2 to 3 people (to cover shifts and each other). At that point in-house is not just right but necessary.
Option 2: A freelancer or "someone we know"
The cost
Cheapest on paper: 2 to 8 million dong a month for a few hours of support, or per task. This is why it is so common among small businesses.
The real risks
- No time commitment: freelancers have many clients, and your job waits behind someone else's emergency. Nobody signs an SLA as an individual; see what is an SLA.
- Single-person dependency: passwords, source code and hosting accounts sit with them. When they are busy, change careers or simply go quiet, the business is stuck. Moniro has taken over many systems that had to be rebuilt for exactly this reason.
- No proactive monitoring: a freelancer fixes things when called; nobody watches the system at 2 a.m. Incidents are discovered by customers, not by monitoring.
- No process: no tested backups, no scheduled updates, no documentation. Technical debt piles up; see the hidden costs of self-managing.
When a freelancer is right
For work with a clear start and end: building a landing page, adding a feature, redesigning the interface. Not for "keeping the system running every day", because that work has no end.
Option 3: A monthly operations partner
The cost
A fixed fee by asset type. With Moniro it is published on each page: landing pages from 500,000 dong a month, content websites from 1,000,000, e-commerce sites from 2,000,000, custom applications from 2,000,000 per application. Work outside scope (new features, major changes) is quoted separately on a ticket and only starts after the customer approves.
What the business gets
- A team, not a person: someone on duty, someone to cover, with infrastructure, security, database and development skills.
- Proactive 24/7 monitoring: incidents detected before customers notice, alerts for domains, SSL and hosting about to expire.
- Time commitments via an SLA, with a monthly report to check against.
- Fixed routines: daily backups with tested restores, monthly updates, every change documented.
- Assets owned by the business: domain, hosting and source code belong to you; the partner is only authorized to operate.
What to consider
An operations partner does not sit next to you; communication runs through tickets and a service portal. If you are used to "call and they show up", it takes a few weeks to adjust. In exchange, everything leaves a trail and someone is accountable.
Quick comparison table
For a business with 1 online store and 1 internal management application:
- Monthly cost: in-house 30 to 45 million (1 person); freelancer 3 to 8 million; operations partner 7 to 9 million.
- 24/7 coverage: in-house no (unless 3 or more people); freelancer no; operations partner yes.
- Cover during leave: in-house no; freelancer no; operations partner yes.
- Resolution time commitment: in-house per internal policy; freelancer none; operations partner SLA with fee credits.
- Proactive monitoring: in-house depends on the person; freelancer no; operations partner yes.
- Single-person dependency risk: in-house high; freelancer very high; operations partner low.
- Best for: in-house when the product changes weekly; freelancer for bounded projects; operations partner for keeping systems stable.
5 questions to decide for yourself
- Is this software a core product or a supporting tool? Core leans in-house; tool leans outsourced.
- How many hours of real technical work are there each week? Under 20 hours, a full-time hire is a waste.
- What does a 4-hour outage during business hours cost? Over 5 million dong, you need 24/7 coverage and an SLA, which means a team.
- Who holds the domain, hosting and source code accounts? If not the business, the first task is to recover ownership, whichever option you choose.
- Are major changes planned in the next 12 months? If yes, use an operations partner to keep the foundation stable and hire development separately for the changes.
The hybrid model that usually works best
Many businesses between the two extremes choose this: an operations partner keeps the system stable for a fixed fee, and one person inside the company (not necessarily an engineer) acts as the point of contact: opening tickets, approving quotes, reading the monthly report. When a major feature is needed, hire the right people for that job while operations stays accountable.
When technical work grows and the software becomes a product, move gradually to in-house on top of a documented foundation, instead of starting from a pile of configuration nobody understands.
Frequently asked questions
Does outsourcing mean losing control of the system?
Not if the contract states that assets are owned by the business and the partner is only authorized to operate. With Moniro every change goes through a ticket with a full trail, visible to the business in the service portal.
We already have an internal IT person. Is an operations partner redundant?
Not if that person is juggling many roles. The partner handles on-call, monitoring and backups; the internal IT person focuses on value-creating work and acts as the point of contact. That is the hybrid model above.
Do maintenance fees rise over time?
With Moniro the fee is fixed by asset type and only changes when the business adds assets or changes plans. Out-of-scope work is quoted separately and only done after approval.
How do we start?
Send a request describing your current system; Moniro assesses it for free and proposes a plan within 24 hours. See scope details on website maintenance and custom software maintenance.
