IT support for small businesses that never wanted an IT department
Helpdesk, monitoring, Microsoft 365, backup and cyber security in one fixed monthly fee from £299 a month. Senior engineers who answer the phone, based in Slough and on site across Berkshire, Surrey, Buckinghamshire and London.
What small business IT support actually covers
Small business IT support is an outsourced arrangement where one provider takes on the technology a company runs on: the computers, the email, the network, the backups and the security around all of it. Instead of calling someone when a thing breaks, you pay a fixed monthly fee and the provider keeps it working.
For a business of five to fifty people, that is usually cheaper than employing anyone. One IT hire costs upwards of £35,000 with no cover for holiday, illness or the specialist work nobody does often enough to be good at. A managed package spreads a whole team across your month instead.
The part that matters most is rarely the fixing. It is the proactive side: patching, monitoring and backup testing that stop the fault happening. A good provider is one you hear from less over time, not more.
In practice you are buying an outsourced IT department. Small and medium-sized businesses across the UK use the same model because it scales with headcount: the support team, the tooling and the security posture grow as your business grows, without a recruitment round each time. We work with UK businesses from Slough outwards, on site across the Thames Valley and London and remotely nationwide.
What is included in a managed IT support package
Every package below includes all six. The tier only changes the number of users and the depth of the security and project work.
A helpdesk your staff can ring
Direct access to an engineer, not a ticket queue and a call centre. Business-hours cover as standard, with a 4-hour response SLA on anything business-critical.
Proactive monitoring and patching
Endpoints are monitored and updated in the background, so most faults are fixed before anyone reports them. Downtime avoided is cheaper than downtime resolved.
Antivirus and threat protection
Endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication and email filtering. Most small business breaches start with a compromised mailbox rather than a clever attack.
Backup with tested recovery
Backup that is checked, because an untested backup is a guess. Cloud data in Microsoft 365 is included — it is not backed up by Microsoft the way most people assume.
Microsoft 365 administration
Licences, mailboxes, permissions, shared drives, joiners and leavers. Handled properly so you are not paying for accounts nobody uses.
A named senior engineer
The person who answers knows your setup, because they built or inherited it. No re-explaining your network to a stranger every time something breaks.
When to outsource IT support
Most businesses call at one of these points. If none of them sound familiar, you probably do not need a monthly package yet, and we will say so.
- Someone in the team has quietly become the unofficial IT person
- You are paying per incident and cannot predict the monthly cost
- Nobody can say for certain when the backup was last tested
- Staff work around problems instead of reporting them
- A client, insurer or tender has asked about Cyber Essentials
- You are moving office, growing headcount, or replacing ageing kit
Business continuity: what happens on the bad day
Most IT support services are judged on the ordinary days. The one that matters is the day a laptop is stolen, a mailbox is compromised or a drive fails the morning of a deadline. That is when the difference between providers shows.
Our packages include a service level agreement with a defined response time, backup that is restore-tested rather than merely running, and cloud services configured so a lost device is an inconvenience rather than an incident. If a machine goes missing, we can wipe it remotely and have the replacement signed in to the same files the same day.
None of that is exotic. It is the baseline any small business should expect, and it is the reason a support package is cheaper than the alternative once you count a single serious outage.
Small business IT support cost
Fixed monthly fees, quoted on user count. No per-incident billing, so a bad month does not produce a surprise invoice.
Essential
£299
per month
Core IT support for small teams. Great for 1–5 users.
- Remote IT support (business hours)
- Endpoint monitoring & patching
- Antivirus & threat protection
- Monthly health report
- Email & Microsoft 365 support
Business
£499
per month
Full IT management for growing businesses. 5–15 users.
- Everything in Essential
- On-site visits (up to 2/month)
- Network monitoring & management
- Backup & disaster recovery
- Priority response (4-hour SLA)
Enterprise
£799
per month
Dedicated IT management for established businesses. 15+ users.
- Everything in Business
- Unlimited on-site visits
- Dedicated account manager
- vCIO strategic planning
- 2-hour emergency SLA
Prices exclude VAT. Larger teams, multi-site setups and businesses with an on-premises server are quoted individually after the free audit.
How to choose an IT support company
Comparison articles listing the best IT support companies for small business rarely help, because the right IT support provider depends on your size, your systems and where you are. These four questions separate support companies quickly, whoever you end up using.
Who actually answers?
Ask whether you get a named engineer or a rota. Continuity is the difference between explaining your network once and explaining it every time.
How far away is the nearest engineer?
Remote support handles most things. When it does not, distance becomes the response time. A national provider with nobody near you is slower than a local one.
What is the response SLA, and what counts as critical?
A 4-hour SLA means nothing without a definition. Ask what qualifies and what happens when it is missed.
Is backup tested, and can they show you?
Almost every provider backs up. Far fewer restore-test. Ask when the last test was and what it proved.
Small business IT support: frequently asked questions
How much does IT support cost for a small business in the UK?
When should a small business outsource IT support?
What is included in managed IT support?
What response times should I expect?
Do we need our own IT person as well?
Can you support us if we have no server and everything is in the cloud?
What about cyber security and Cyber Essentials?
How do we switch from our current IT provider?
Start with a free IT audit
We look at what you actually have, tell you what is at risk, and quote a package that fits. If ad-hoc support would serve you better than a monthly plan, we will say that instead.