An MSP in Sydney that answers the phone.

// A month in the life

What a managed service provider does each month.

The honest test of an MSP is what happens in a month where nothing breaks. Here is ours.

• Monitoring alerts, handled. Every machine, every server and the network are watched around the clock. A drive reporting errors or a disk running out of space is a warning I deal with, not an outage you discover.
• The patch cycle. Operating system and application updates are tested and rolled out on a schedule, after hours. The unpatched machine is how most break-ins happen, so this is the item I care about most and the one cheap quotes quietly drop.
• Backup restores, actually tested. Backups are local plus off-site and restore-tested on a schedule. A backup that has never been restored from is a hope, not a backup.
• Security alerts, read by a person. Endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication and email filtering as standard, with someone reading what they flag.
• Licences and assets tracked. Microsoft 365 licences are billed at RRP, and licences, hardware and warranties are tracked in documentation you own.
• The helpdesk, in the background. Password resets, new starters, the printer, the email that will not send. Reply within one business hour, Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm.
• A report you can read. What broke, what was patched, what was blocked, in plain English, so you can see what the fee bought.

The helpdesk side and the 60-minute response target are on the managed IT support page: helpdesk and monitoring detail.

// Under fifty seats

Small business MSP: what changes under 50 seats.

Under fifty seats the trade-offs are different from the ones MSP marketing is written for, and it is worth being straight about which way they cut.

• Why per user. You pay a set amount for each person looked after, and that seat covers their computer, their helpdesk access, their security software and their backup. Hire someone, add a seat. Lose someone, drop one. It moves with your team instead of locking you into a retainer sized for last year.
• Why no 24/7 desk on Essentials. A guaranteed overnight desk has to be staffed, and you pay for people sitting ready. Most businesses that clock off at five do not need it. Emergency support outside hours is available on a managed plan for the night the server dies; a password reset at 3am is not that.
• What a one-engineer MSP does better. The person who answers the phone is the person who knows your network. No account manager, no tier-one script, no explaining your setup from scratch to a new technician every call. Continuity and direct access are the whole point.
• What it does worse, honestly. When two customers break at once, someone waits. A big MSP has more bodies; it also has you as account number 4,000. I would rather tell you there is no guaranteed on-site arrival time than promise one I cannot keep for everyone.
• When you are too small. Two or three people with laptops and everything in Microsoft 365 usually do better on ad-hoc support at $140 per hour. The monthly model starts paying for itself around five staff, or the day you take on a server, compliance obligations or work where an hour of downtime costs billable money.

The small business IT support page has the published pricing and what a plan does and does not cover. How to choose a managed IT provider covers pricing models and the red flags.

// Practices and offices

MSP for Sydney practices and offices.

The sweet spot is roughly five to fifty staff across offices, practices, trades and warehouses. The setup differs by what the business does, so here is the shape each one usually needs. The settings are generic on purpose.

• Medical practices. Patient records bring rules that add logging, retention and reporting work, and a practice cannot trade with the booking system down. The priorities are a security baseline that is actually switched on, backups with tested restores, and a helpdesk that treats a dead front-desk machine as urgent.
• Professional services. Legal, accounting and finance offices live in Microsoft 365 and handle sensitive records. Multi-factor authentication, sensible sharing rules, clean offboarding when staff leave and Microsoft 365 backup are the inclusions that matter, with the Essential Eight as the baseline if you carry compliance obligations.
• Trades and field crews. Laptops and phones that leave the office, a job-management app in the cloud, and a shed or yard where WiFi does not reach. The work is endpoint protection on every device, cloud backup, and network design that covers the yard rather than another extender. See WiFi site surveys.
• Warehouses and workshops. Big files, scanners, label printers and equipment cabinets in uninsulated spaces where Western Sydney heat shortens drive life. Often the honest answer is hybrid: the heavy, latency-sensitive work in-house, email and phones hosted, cloud backup behind both.

// Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 under an MSP.

Microsoft 365 is the right call for almost every small business for email, calendars and documents. What matters is who sets it up and who watches it afterwards.

• Licences at RRP. You pay for management and support, not a margin on software. Business Premium is roughly $38 per user per month at RRP, and whether that sits inside or outside a per-seat quote moves the number by about a third, so ask.
• Security baseline from day one. Multi-factor authentication on, sensible sharing rules, no admin accounts left open, and mail authentication that actually passes.
• Administration included. New starters, leavers, shared mailboxes, licence changes and the why-is-Outlook-doing-that tickets are part of the plan on both Essentials and Complete. See shared mailboxes in Microsoft 365 and common Outlook problems for the kind of thing that comes up.
• Backup, because Microsoft does not do that part. Deleted SharePoint files and departed-employee mailboxes are your responsibility, not Microsoft's. Microsoft 365 backup is $5.50 per user per month and closes that gap.
• Migration without lost mail. Moving from old email, Google Workspace or an ageing Exchange server runs out of hours. Your team finishes Friday on the old system and starts Monday on the new one.

The full picture, including Azure and hybrid, is on the Microsoft 365 and cloud management page. Setting up business email properly from scratch is covered in business email setup.

// Coverage

Sydney MSP, remote Australia-wide.

An MSP does most of its work without anyone in the room, which is why near me matters less than people expect. Here is what is covered on-site and what is not.

• Western Sydney and the Nepean. Penrith, Emu Plains, St Marys, Kingswood, Cranebrook, Glenmore Park, Werrington and Jamisontown. See IT support in Penrith.
• Greater Western Sydney. Parramatta, Blacktown, Seven Hills, Castle Hill, Baulkham Hills, Rooty Hill and Mount Druitt.
• Inner and central Sydney. The CBD, the inner west and the surrounding business districts.
• Northern, southern and eastern Sydney. On-site by arrangement, with timing agreed when the job is booked.
• Everywhere else in Australia. Remote. Monitoring, patching, backups, security work, cloud administration and the large majority of everyday faults are resolved in a secure remote session while you watch. Remote is the default even for customers a short drive away, because it is faster for you and cheaper than a callout.

Travel is included within the on-site area. Anything physical, meaning hardware, cabling, WiFi coverage and cameras, needs hands, and that is the honest limit. The full list and the timing detail are on the service areas page.

// Plans

What it costs, before you ask.

Two managed plans plus ad-hoc hourly support, 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.
• Complete, 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.
• No contract, $140 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.

The five questions, and our answers.

The questions at the top of this page are the ones to put to any MSP quote, including this one. Here is how we answer them.

• Capped or unlimited? Essentials covers remote helpdesk. Complete makes it unlimited, and the inclusions list says so in writing.
• Response time, in writing? Reply within one business hour, Monday to Friday 8:30am to 5:30pm, with a 60-minute response target on the helpdesk. No guaranteed on-site arrival time, on purpose.
• Who owns the licences, domains and passwords? You do. Domains, Microsoft tenancy, licences and DNS sit in accounts you own from onboarding onwards.
• When was a backup last test-restored? Restores are tested on a schedule as part of the plan, not assumed, and that is the line to check on any other quote.
• How do we leave? Everything is documented and the documentation is yours. No lock-in, no data hostage, and how to leave is written down.

Essentials and Complete compared inclusion by inclusion is on the managed IT support page.

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 $140 per hour will serve you better until the headcount catches up.

// Questions

MSP questions, answered straight.

// Pairs well with