Remote IT support for small businesses. Something stops working, you let us know, we get on it. The backups and the boring bits happen quietly in the background.
From £13.75 a person, a week, billed monthly
Twenty years in the job · Microsoft and Datto partner · Run to Cyber Essentials standards
The problem
When one of them plays up, you stop. You're not down a bit of capacity, you're just stopped. And if you've got a server, it's worse: that one doesn't take a person out, it takes the lot of you out at once, usually on the busiest morning of the month.
Then there's the half nobody talks about: having to go and find somebody. Ringing round. Asking another business who they use. Waiting for a call back. Arranging for someone to come out, probably Thursday.
Whatever size you are
A two-person outfit booking in window measurements needs something different from a thirty-person accountancy practice, and it'd be daft to pretend otherwise.
It has to be affordable, somebody has to actually be available, and it has to get sorted quickly. Most of what goes wrong is small.
It still just has to work. There's more of it though, and more people means more that can tangle: more accounts, more kit, more things quietly depending on each other.
You pay for what you've actually got and nothing else, which is the fair way round. And I can do either end, which is really the bit worth knowing: I've spent twenty years on setups a good deal bigger than yours, and that's why a small office gets an answer rather than a project.
What I can't tell from here is which one you are. Tell me on the phone and I'll give you a straight number.
What actually happens
Ring us in the day and Eric answers. Or email, the portal or a DM, any hour of the day or night.
Onto the machine from here, while you get on with something else.
No booking anything in. No waiting for anybody to turn up.
And if it's ten at night when you notice, log it then. It's with us for the morning rather than sat in your head until you remember. You'll speak to a person in office hours, not a queue, and not a ticket that disappears.
Not sure it's worth it for a business your size?
Ask Eric, he'll tell you straightThe boring bit
That's what happens when there's nobody steering it. The machine picks its own moment, and its moment is never yours.
Updates and housekeeping handled quietly, out of the way, so they don't land in the middle of your day.
Your files copied somewhere safe every day, and your email backed up as well, so a deleted mailbox is not the end of the world.
The system warns us if something's going wrong with a laptop, sometimes before you'd have noticed.
Nobody rings up to say thanks for a quiet week.
But that's the bit you're really paying for, and it's what a mate who's handy with computers can't do for you.The honest comparison
Nobody sets out to buy IT support. You end up looking because something's gone wrong once too often. So here's the fair version of what you're actually choosing between.
| Leave it and hope | Ask whoever's handiest | Ring round when it breaks | Have us | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| When something stops | You stop too, and start Googling | You wait until they've got a minute | You ring round and hope somebody's free | You tell us, we get on it from here |
| If it's the server | Everybody stops, not just one of you | Well outside what a favour covers | You wait, and everybody waits with you | Same phone call, and we're already watching it |
| Who picks up | Nobody | Someone with their own job to do | Whoever's got a slot this week | A person, in office hours |
| What it costs | Nothing, until it costs a lot | Goodwill, and that runs out | Whatever the callout is that day | From £13.75 a person, a week, billed monthly |
| Your backups | Whatever came with the laptop | Not really their job | Usually nobody's job between visits | Files and email copied daily |
| Updates | The machine picks its own moment | Nobody's steering | Only when someone's looking | Handled quietly, out of your way |
| Ten at night | It sits in your head till morning | You're not ringing them at ten | You're not ringing them either | Log it then, we pick it up in the morning |
| Getting out | Nothing to get out of | Awkward, and you still see them | Nothing to get out of | After year one, rolling 30-day notice, no exit fees |
Costs shown for a two-person office with no server, on the standard support plan. It's priced per person, so a bigger team is a bigger number. What doesn't change is the deal.
The first three are genuinely fine right up until the morning they aren't. The question isn't whether they work, it's what it costs you the day one of them doesn't.
Almost every small office starts on the first one. You ring somebody when something's gone wrong, they sort it, you pay them, and everyone goes away until next time. It works, it costs nothing between times, and it is genuinely the right answer for some people.
What it can't do is the bit in between. Nobody's watching, so the backup that quietly stopped in March gets found in September. Updates land whenever the machine fancies. The same fault comes back because the cause was never looked at, only the symptom.
There's also a difference in how the two get paid, and it's worth knowing. If somebody only earns when something's broken, a quiet month is a bad month for them. That's not anyone being dishonest, it's just how being paid by the callout works. We're the other way round: your figure is the same whether it's been a busy month or you've not needed us once, so a quiet month isn't a loss, it's the thing we're aiming for. That's why the updates and the backups actually get done, when they're the jobs nobody ever rings up about.
Straight answers
What it costs
Every one of those is either a thing you'd have to go and buy, or a thing that right now nobody is doing. Work out roughly what one stopped morning costs you, everybody sat there waiting on it, and put that next to the monthly figure.
We'd rather tell you the monthly figure up front than have you work it out later. Getting a surprise on the invoice is the single most common complaint people have about their old IT company, and we're not starting there.
Servers, Azure and network gear sit outside that figure, and that's deliberate. If you're a few people on a router your broadband company dropped through the door, there's nothing there worth managing and you shouldn't be paying anybody to say there is. If you have got kit that the business genuinely leans on, that's priced separately and we'd work it out when we speak. What I won't do is bundle it in so the number looks tidier.
Our promise
Once you give us access, you're set up and looked after inside a week. If we don't manage it, you don't pay for that month. No arguing about it.
Before you ask
No, two is exactly who this is built for. It's where the price starts, and it moves up as you add people rather than in big jumps.
Still fine, and honestly you're the ones this is worth most to. The two-person figure is just where it starts, and it's £55 a head from there, so ten of you is £550 a month. A server sits outside that and is priced per box, as do Azure and your network gear if you want those covered, and we'd agree the lot before you committed to anything. They're optional on purpose: a small office with a broadband router has nothing there worth paying to have managed. It then gets watched, patched and backed up like everything else, and when it falls over it's the same phone call.
Then stick with them, honestly. This is for offices where it's nobody's job, or where the person doing it already has a proper job of their own.
After your first year, rolling 30-day notice, no exit fees. If it isn't working for you, you say so and that's that.
Ring us and a person picks up, not a queue. Anything you send in writing has a reply within 2 working hours. That's the standard we work to.
Log it whenever it happens, by email, the portal or a DM. The helpdesk takes tickets logged 24/7, and our security and monitoring platforms are running whenever your devices are. A person picks it up in office hours, and if you ring during the day I answer.
Most of what stops a small office is a login, a setting, a file in the wrong place or a machine that's gummed up, and all of that we do down the wire. If it turns out to need hands on it, I'll say so straight away and tell you what it needs, rather than charging you to find out.
Two routes, depending on where your email actually sits. If it comes down onto your machines, which is how most small offices work, it's caught in the same daily snapshot as everything else on them. If you're on Microsoft 365 or a paid Google account, we also back the mailboxes up in the cloud, separately from the machines, so a deleted mailbox can be put back even if the laptop is long gone.
The one gap worth knowing about: if you only ever read your email in a web browser, on a free account, and it never touches a machine, there is nothing for either of those to take hold of. It's not common, but it happens. Tell me on the call and we'll sort it out rather than you finding out later.
Because it's remote. There's no van, no fuel and nobody's afternoon spent driving to you, and that's a good chunk of what you pay for elsewhere. It isn't a budget version of anything, it's the same work without the travelling.
We put a small piece of software on each one. It keeps the antivirus current, handles the updates and tells us if something's going wrong. When we need to be on your screen to fix something, you'll see it happening and you can stop it.
No. We work with what you've already got. Nobody's moving your email or making you learn a new way of doing things.
Visits to your office, and a round-the-clock security operations centre. The centre is real and we can add it, but it's an extra. Same for a server, Azure or network gear you want covered: priced per box, and optional so a small office isn't paying to have a broadband router "managed" when there's nothing to manage.
Also not in it: hardware and your own software licences. If a machine needs replacing you buy it, and we'll tell you what to get and set it up. Your Microsoft 365, your accounts package and anything specific to your trade stay on your own bill, where you can see them. I'd rather put all that in front of you now than have it turn up on an invoice.
Still not sure? That's what the chat is for.
Have a chat with EricWho you'd be dealing with
I'm on the Wirral, and we look after businesses across the North West with our remote support system. I've been doing this twenty years, most of it on far bigger setups than yours, which is mainly why the small stuff rarely takes long.
We run to Cyber Essentials standards. You'd be dealing with me, not an account manager who changes every few months.
Tell me a bit about what you do and how many of you there are, and I'll tell you honestly whether it's worth it for your lot. No pitch, and no hard sell at the end of it.
P.S. If you've already got somebody good, stay where you are. I meant that.
But if the honest answer is that nobody's really looking after it, the thing worth knowing is that the backups are what you find out about last, and always on the day it matters. Nobody discovers a broken backup on a quiet Tuesday.
The offer doesn't change depending on when you ring. From £13.75 a person a week, billed monthly, set up and looked after inside seven days, or that month is on me.
