Pay As You Go IT Support in Cambridge

Choosing the Right Type of IT Support - What Your Options Actually Are

Before you commit to any IT support arrangement, it's worth understanding what the main options involve, what each one costs in practice, and where the trade-offs lie. This page sets out the honest picture for small businesses in Cambridge - the kind with a handful of Windows PCs, a Microsoft 365 subscription, and no full-time IT person in house.

Pay As You Go: What You're Actually Buying

Pay-as-you-go IT support means you buy a block of time and draw on it when something goes wrong or when you need work done. There's no monthly standing charge, no minimum term and no penalty for not using it. The block is there when you need it and dormant when you don't.

Our pay-as-you-go blocks are priced as follows (all ex VAT):

• 4 hours: £312
• 8 hours: £592
• 16 hours: £1,123

Blocks are valid for up to six months. Support is available during office hours by phone and remote access. If an issue can't be fixed remotely, an on-site visit can be arranged.

Pay-as-you-go suits a business that has reasonably stable IT most of the time but occasionally needs expert help - for a new machine setup, a Microsoft 365 migration, a persistent fault that the office manager can't resolve, or an urgent problem during a busy period.

Managed Contracts: The Honest Pros and Cons

A managed support contract means you pay a fixed amount per computer per month and get unlimited remote and phone support within that agreement. Problems get handled without you counting the cost each time. The monitoring is continuous rather than periodic, and if your contract includes on-site visits, you're not weighing up whether a fault is serious enough to justify a call-out charge.

The trade-off is the commitment. You're paying every month whether you use much support or not. For a business whose IT runs smoothly most of the time, that monthly spend can feel like poor value in quiet months. For a business whose machines need regular attention, or where staff changes and software updates generate a steady stream of support calls, a contract usually works out significantly cheaper than buying time in blocks.

Business Essentials - What It Covers and What It Costs

Our Business Essentials contract gives you unlimited remote and phone support during office hours, with updates, backups and security kept in check on every covered machine. On-site visits are charged separately at £60 call-out plus labour, billed per visit.

Pricing per computer per month (ex VAT):

• 1 computer: £36
• 2 to 3 computers: £31.20 each
• 4 to 9 computers: £25.20 each
• 10 to 17 computers: £22.20 each
• 18 or more computers: £21.60 each

This is priced per computer, not per user. If your four staff share three machines, you pay for three machines. That matters when you're comparing quotes from providers who price per user instead - the two models can produce very different totals for the same office.

Business Premium - When On-Site Costs Are Included

If you'd rather not face a surprise invoice every time an engineer needs to come in, Premium removes that uncertainty. Pricing per computer per month (ex VAT):

• 1 computer: £54
• 2 to 3 computers: £42 each
• 4 to 6 computers: £38.60 each
• 7 to 9 computers: £33.80 each
• 10 to 12 computers: £31.20 each
• 13 to 15 computers: £28.40 each
• 16 to 19 computers: £25.40 each
• 20 or more computers: £24.40 each

Premium is most cost-effective for offices where on-site visits are a regular occurrence - for example, where hardware faults are common, where the office layout makes remote support difficult, or where staff aren't comfortable handling even basic physical tasks themselves.

What All Our Support Covers - and What It Doesn't

We support Windows PCs, laptops and Microsoft 365. That covers the vast majority of what a typical small office in Cambridge runs day to day. We do not support Apple Mac hardware or macOS - if your office uses Macs, we're not the right fit, and we'd rather tell you that now than waste your time.

Microsoft 365 support includes Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and the desktop Office applications. Problems with licences, user accounts, shared mailboxes, calendar permissions and OneDrive sync are all within scope. Email-specific needs - such as archiving, filtering or managing a business email domain - may fall under our managed email service, which is quoted on request.

Support is available during office hours. Emergency support during office hours is included in all our arrangements. We don't offer out-of-hours or weekend cover.

How to Decide Which Option Fits Your Cambridge Business

A useful starting point is to think back over the last twelve months. How many times did you need IT help? How long did issues take to resolve, and what did they cost in lost staff time? If IT problems were rare and minor, pay-as-you-go gives you a safety net without committing to a monthly bill. If problems were frequent, or if you want someone actively watching your systems rather than waiting for you to report a fault, a contract with ongoing monitoring is likely to serve you better.

The monitoring included in our pay-as-you-go blocks is monthly. Monitoring under a managed contract is continuous. That distinction matters when a hard drive starts failing gradually, or when a security alert needs attention before it becomes a breach.

A Note on Microsoft 365 Specifically

Microsoft 365 is not a set-and-forget service. Licences need to be managed as staff join and leave. Admin settings change when Microsoft pushes platform updates. Shared mailboxes and Teams channels accumulate permissions that nobody's reviewed in years. These aren't dramatic failures - they're gradual drift that makes the platform harder to use and, in security terms, more exposed than it needs to be.

Whether you're on pay-as-you-go or a contract, having a support arrangement in place means there's someone who knows your Microsoft 365 setup well enough to fix it quickly when something goes wrong, rather than starting from scratch each time.

If you'd like to talk through which option suits your Cambridge office, call us during office hours and we'll give you a straight answer.