Pay As You Go IT Support in Haverhill

What Does Pay As You Go IT Support Actually Cost?

One of the most common questions small businesses ask before taking on any IT support is a simple one: what will this actually cost me? With pay-as-you-go support, the answer is more straightforward than it is with contract arrangements - but there are still factors that push costs up or down depending on your situation. This page sets out the real numbers and explains what affects the final total.

The Base Prices for Pay As You Go Blocks

Pay-as-you-go support is sold in blocks of time. All prices exclude VAT:

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

Blocks are valid for up to six months from purchase. You don't need to use the time all at once - a block bought for one problem can cover several smaller jobs spread across the validity period.

You buy a block, we support your machines. Remaining time carries forward to your next call.

What Pushes the Cost Up

The biggest variable in pay-as-you-go support is whether the work can be done remotely or requires someone on-site. Remote work is drawn directly from your block. On-site visits for pay-as-you-go customers are also drawn from block time, but they take longer than remote sessions because travel time is involved. If a visit lasts two hours and takes an hour of travel each way, that's four hours of block time rather than the two hours of actual work.

Hardware faults drive costs up in a different way. If a hard drive needs replacing or a machine needs additional memory, the parts are not included in the block - they're priced separately. The same applies to any physical equipment we source on your behalf. Labour for fitting is covered by block time; parts are quoted before anything is ordered.

Larger or more complex jobs consume more time. Setting up a single new PC on a straightforward network is typically a two-to-three-hour job. Migrating several users from one Microsoft 365 tenant to another, untangling years of accumulated permissions issues in SharePoint, or recovering data from a failing drive can run significantly longer. If the scope of a job isn't clear at the outset, say so - it's better to agree an approach and a realistic time estimate before starting than to run through a block mid-job.

What Keeps Costs Down

Problems that are caught early are almost always cheaper to fix than problems that have been left to develop. A Windows machine that's running slowly because of a build-up of startup processes is a straightforward remote fix. The same machine, ignored for another few months until the drive fails, becomes a data recovery job - which is significantly more expensive and not always fully successful.

The monthly monitoring included in every pay-as-you-go block exists precisely for this reason. It's not a passive service - if monitoring flags a warning, we'll contact you during office hours and tell you what we've seen. Acting on an early warning keeps the job short and the cost proportionate.

Keeping your Microsoft 365 licences and account settings in order also reduces costs over time. A well-maintained 365 tenant - with licences assigned correctly, user accounts deactivated when staff leave, and admin settings reviewed periodically - generates far fewer support calls than one that's been left to drift. One organised session to audit and tidy a Microsoft 365 setup can prevent several reactive calls later.

Comparing Pay As You Go to a Contract - the Cost Maths

Pay-as-you-go at the 4-hour block rate works out at £78 per hour (ex VAT). Our Business Essentials managed contract starts at £36 per computer per month for a single machine, falling to £31.20 each for two to three computers, £25.20 each for four to nine, £22.20 each for ten to seventeen, and £21.60 each for eighteen or more. Under Essentials, on-site visits are charged at £60 call-out plus labour on top of the monthly fee.

Business Premium includes on-site call-outs and labour within the monthly price: £54 per computer per month for one machine, £42 each for two to three, £38.60 each for four to six, £33.80 each for seven to nine, £31.20 each for ten to twelve, £28.40 each for thirteen to fifteen, £25.40 each for sixteen to nineteen, and £24.40 each for twenty or more. Contracts are billed per computer, not per user.

The break-even point between pay-as-you-go and a contract depends on how often you actually need support. A business that buys one or two blocks a year is almost certainly better off on pay-as-you-go. A business buying blocks every two or three months would likely save money on a contract - and would also get continuous rather than monthly monitoring, which has a real value in its own right.

What the Support Covers - and What It Doesn't

All our support covers Windows PCs, laptops and Microsoft 365. This includes Windows faults, Microsoft 365 applications (Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, the desktop Office apps), user accounts, network connectivity on Windows machines, and backup and security monitoring. We do not support Apple Mac hardware or macOS.

A managed email service is also available for businesses that need more structured email management - pricing for this is quoted on request.

Support is available during office hours. That covers the working day when most problems actually surface and when staff are most affected by them. We don't provide out-of-hours or weekend support.

Practical Questions to Ask Before You Buy

Before committing to any pay-as-you-go block, it's worth being clear on a few things. How many Windows machines does the block need to cover? What's the nature of the work - is it a one-off fix, an ongoing configuration job, or something you expect to need periodically? Is on-site access likely to be needed, and if so, how far does that shift the time estimate? Getting answers to these questions upfront gives you a clearer sense of which block size to start with.

We've been providing IT support to businesses since 1990. If you're a Haverhill business and you'd like to talk through costs before buying anything, call us during office hours and we'll go through it with you.