// MSP Sydney
An MSP in Sydney that answers the phone.
A managed service provider takes the running of your IT off your desk for a fixed monthly fee. Here is what that actually means, what it costs, and how to tell a good one from an expensive one.
An MSP is not a repair shop on a retainer. The point is that things break less, not that breakages get billed differently. If your provider is busy all month, something is wrong with the setup, not with your luck.
Most Sydney businesses come to us from one of three places: a one-person IT contractor who has become a single point of failure, a big MSP where they are account number 4,000, or no provider at all and a staff member who is "good with computers". All three are survivable right up until the day they are not.
- Is the monthly fee capped, or does "unlimited" have a fair-use clause you have not read?
- What is the stated response time, in writing?
- Who owns the licences, domains and admin passwords, you or them?
- When did they last test-restore a client backup, and what happened?
- How do you leave, and is that documented anywhere?
// Plans
What it costs, before you ask.
Three tiers, built from the same inclusions list so you can compare them honestly against anyone else. Indicative pricing ex GST. Your fixed quote comes after a free consult.
- Essentials, from $66 per user / month. Remote helpdesk, monitoring and patching, endpoint protection, backup monitoring, Microsoft 365 administration. For teams that mostly just need someone competent watching.
- Core, from $132 per user / month. Everything in Essentials plus unlimited helpdesk, on-site visits, and vendor management. This is the tier most five to fifty seat businesses land on.
- Enhanced, from $165 per user / month. Everything in Core plus endpoint detection and response, advanced email threat protection, security awareness training for staff, a quarterly review, and after-hours response for priority-one incidents. For businesses with compliance pressure or a real cost of downtime.
- No contract, $165 per hour. Ad-hoc support if a monthly plan does not suit yet.
- Onboarding, audit and documentation, from $550 one-off. Charged once, at the start, so the ongoing fee is not padded to hide it.
Hardware, licences and projects are quoted separately and at cost plus a stated margin. We do not mark up your Microsoft licences and call it a service.
How Sydney managed IT pricing actually works, and what to ask every provider →
// Switching
Changing MSP without the drama.
The fear that keeps people with a provider they have stopped trusting is the handover. It is a manageable piece of work, and we have done it often enough to know where it goes wrong.
- Audit first. We document what you actually have before anything changes. Surprises found here are cheaper than surprises found later.
- Credentials and ownership. Domains, Microsoft tenancy, licences and DNS get moved into accounts you own. This is the step bad providers stall on, and the reason to start it early.
- Overlap where possible. If the outgoing provider will cooperate, we overlap. If they will not, we rebuild the documentation from the systems themselves.
- Nothing switches on a Friday. Obvious, and routinely ignored.
// Who this is for
Roughly five to fifty staff.
Big enough that an outage costs real money and someone has to own the problem, small enough that you do not want an internal IT department and the payroll that comes with it.
If you are two people running everything out of Microsoft 365, a monthly plan is probably not worth it yet, and I will tell you that rather than sell you one. Ad-hoc support at $165 per hour will serve you better until the headcount catches up.
// Questions
MSP questions, answered straight.
What is an MSP?
A managed service provider is an IT company you pay a set monthly fee to run your technology, instead of calling someone hourly when it breaks. The fee covers the ongoing work: helpdesk, monitoring, patching, backup checks and security. Projects and hardware are quoted separately.
How much does an MSP cost in Sydney?
Almost always per user, per month. Our plans start at $66 per user per month for Essentials and run to $165 per user per month for Enhanced, ex GST. What matters more than the number is the inclusions list behind it, so get every provider quoting the same list.
Do I have to sign a long contract?
Not with us. No lock-in is a design rule here. You own your accounts, licences, domains and data, and everything is documented so you can leave without a hostage situation.
Can you take over from our current MSP?
Yes, and it is routine. We run a handover audit, collect credentials and documentation, and overlap with the outgoing provider where they will cooperate. Where they will not, we rebuild the documentation ourselves.
Are we too small for an MSP?
Possibly, and I would rather say so up front. Two or three people with laptops and everything in Microsoft 365 usually do better on ad-hoc support at $165 per hour. Around five staff the monthly model starts paying for itself.
Who actually does the work?
Angus, directly, with 20 years behind it. You are not being handed to a tier-one queue in another timezone.
// Pairs well with
Want IT that is handled before you notice it broke?
Tell me what you are running and I will come back with a fixed monthly number and the inclusions list behind it.
Beam us a message 🛸