What looking after your IT properly costs
Universal Support is a monthly subscription, charged per person, covering the management and support of the technology your team uses. The point is predictability: the work needed to keep your IT healthy is already paid for, so nobody has to weigh up whether a problem is worth calling about.
Three levels of cover. Start with your shape.
Change the numbers and watch the three levels move. People, servers and sites are what actually drive the work, which is why a single per-seat price tells you so little.
Everyone with a login, including part-timers.
Physical or virtual, on site or hosted. Zero is common.
Each location with its own network and internet connection.
Indicative figures only, excluding GST. They exist so you can see how the shape of your business moves the number — not as a quote. The figure we give you comes after the audit, when we know what's actually there.
System Support
Businesses with capable staff who want the background work done properly, and are happy to pay for help as they use it.
Universal Support
Most small and medium businesses. Support for your team is included, so nobody weighs up whether a problem is worth calling about.
Universal Management
Businesses where technology is central, where compliance matters, or where there's no one internally to own IT decisions.
What's in each level, line by line
The same six areas of work at every level — what changes is how much of it is included in the fee, how often it happens, and how fast we come back to you.
| Feature | System Support | Universal Support | Universal Management |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support for your team | |||
| Remote support for day-to-day problems | Billed hourly | ||
| Onsite support in Dunedin and Otago | Billed hourly | ||
| New starter setup and leaver offboarding | Billed hourly | ||
| Response target, business hours | Next business day | 4 business hours | 1 business hour |
| After-hours response for business-down faults | On call | On call, prioritised | |
| Named engineer who knows your setup | |||
| Monitoring and maintenance | |||
| 24/7 monitoring with alerting | |||
| Scheduled OS and application patching | |||
| Firmware and network device updates | |||
| Hardware health tracking (disk, battery, thermals) | |||
| Automated remediation of common faults | |||
| Security | |||
| Managed endpoint protection | |||
| Multi-factor authentication enforced | |||
| Microsoft 365 hardening and baseline review | Annual | Quarterly | Continuous |
| Sign-in and threat monitoring, investigated | |||
| Security awareness guidance for staff | |||
| Simulated phishing programme | Add-on | ||
| Backup and continuity | |||
| Backups configured for servers, data and Microsoft 365 | |||
| Automated verification with human review | |||
| Restore testing, documented | Annual | Half-yearly | Quarterly |
| Documented recovery plan for critical systems | |||
| Business continuity exercise with your team | Annual | ||
| Network and infrastructure | |||
| Firewall, switch and Wi-Fi management | |||
| Configuration backups for network devices | |||
| Connectivity oversight and provider liaison | |||
| Secure remote access, managed and documented | |||
| Planning and reporting | |||
| Documented environment, kept current | |||
| Asset register with age, warranty and replacement dates | |||
| Licence and subscription tracking | |||
| Review meeting with recommendations | Annual | Half-yearly | Quarterly |
| Technology roadmap and budget forecast | |||
| Project planning and management included | |||
| Compliance and insurance evidence pack | On request | ||
- Remote support for day-to-day problems
- Onsite support in Dunedin and Otago
- New starter setup and leaver offboarding
- Response target, business hours4 business hours
- After-hours response for business-down faultsOn call
- Named engineer who knows your setup
- 24/7 monitoring with alerting
- Scheduled OS and application patching
- Firmware and network device updates
- Hardware health tracking (disk, battery, thermals)
- Automated remediation of common faults
- Managed endpoint protection
- Multi-factor authentication enforced
- Microsoft 365 hardening and baseline reviewQuarterly
- Sign-in and threat monitoring, investigated
- Security awareness guidance for staff
- Simulated phishing programmeAdd-on
- Backups configured for servers, data and Microsoft 365
- Automated verification with human review
- Restore testing, documentedHalf-yearly
- Documented recovery plan for critical systems
- Business continuity exercise with your team
- Firewall, switch and Wi-Fi management
- Configuration backups for network devices
- Connectivity oversight and provider liaison
- Secure remote access, managed and documented
- Documented environment, kept current
- Asset register with age, warranty and replacement dates
- Licence and subscription tracking
- Review meeting with recommendationsHalf-yearly
- Technology roadmap and budget forecast
- Project planning and management included
- Compliance and insurance evidence packOn request
What no level includes
- Hardware, software licences and third-party subscriptions
- Projects, moves and new site builds, quoted separately
- Remediation of pre-existing problems found during onboarding
What changes the figure is the number of people, the systems behind them and the level of cover you need. We size it after the audit, so the number you're given is one we can stand behind — not a guess that gets corrected later.
What is your current support really covering?
Tick everything you're confident is already happening. What's left is the work that still has to be done at some point — usually reactively, usually billed by the hour — and the risk sitting with you in the meantime.
- 24/7 monitoring that alerts your provider, not youFaults are found by whoever is trying to work, usually at the worst moment. Small problems get time to become outages.
- Scheduled patching of computers and serversKnown vulnerabilities stay open on your machines. This is the single most common way small businesses get compromised.
- Managed endpoint protection, monitored centrallyProtection can be switched off, expired or alerting into an empty inbox, and nobody would know until something spreads.
- Multi-factor authentication enforced on all accountsOne leaked password is enough. Account takeover is the most expensive incident most small businesses will face.
- Sign-in and threat monitoring that gets investigatedAn intruder in your email can sit quietly for weeks, reading invoices and waiting for a payment to redirect.
- Backups covering servers, data and Microsoft 365Deleted or encrypted data may simply be gone. Recovery becomes a question of what you can rebuild by hand.
- Backup results reviewed by a person each weekBackups fail silently. The usual discovery moment is the day you need one — see our guide on finding a backup problem early.
- Restore testing, so recovery is provenA backup you've never restored from is a theory. Restore time is the number that decides how long you're shut.
- Firewall, switch and Wi-Fi actively managedNetwork gear is often the oldest, least patched equipment in the building — and everything runs through it.
- Your environment documented and kept currentEvery job starts with rediscovery, billed to you. If your provider loses a key person, so do you.
- A defined new starter and leaver processEx-staff keep access to email and files far longer than anyone assumes. It's also the slowest part of hiring.
- Asset register with age, warranty and replacement datesHardware is replaced in emergencies, at retail, with a day of downtime attached — instead of being budgeted.
- A regular review of risks, renewals and upcoming spendTechnology decisions stay reactive. Spending happens when something breaks rather than when it makes sense.
An estimate, not a quote. It's based on what gaps like these typically generate in reactive work across small Otago businesses — the hours get billed on top of whatever you already pay each month. It doesn't attempt to price the downtime, the lost day, or the incident that doesn't happen.
The things people ask about the number
Why isn't there a price list?
Because a per-person figure on its own tells you very little. Two ten-person businesses can need quite different work depending on the servers, the network, the line of business software and the state it's all in. The calculator here shows you the shape of it; the actual figure comes after the audit, and it's one we can stand behind.
What's the difference between System Support and Universal Support?
System Support looks after the systems: monitoring, patching, security baselines, backups and documentation all run to schedule. Help for your people is billed as you use it. Universal Support adds that help to the subscription, so there's no decision to make about whether a problem is worth calling about.
When does Universal Management make sense?
When technology is central to how you earn, when you carry compliance or insurance obligations, or when there's nobody internally whose job it is to own IT decisions. It adds planning, roadmapping, project management and evidence you can hand to an auditor or insurer.
Can we move between levels?
Yes. Most businesses start where they are and move up when the reactive hours make the case for it. We'd rather tell you that a level down is enough than sell you cover you don't need.
What isn't in the monthly fee?
Hardware, software licences and third-party subscriptions. Projects, moves and new site builds, which are quoted separately. And remediation of pre-existing problems found during onboarding, which is quoted up front rather than slipped onto an invoice.
Want the real number for your business?
It starts with an audit of what you've actually got — written up plainly, and yours whether or not you go ahead. Then the figure we give you is one we can stand behind.
