Aweeba IT Essentials
You shouldn't have to be your company's IT person.
If your business runs on up to about eight computers, Microsoft 365, and one location with no server, Aweeba keeps the technology you depend on secure, updated, and supported by a senior engineer. From $500 per month.
UP TO ABOUT EIGHT COMPUTERS · ONE LOCATION · NO SERVER · BUSINESS-HOURS REMOTE SUPPORT
Almost everything written about managed IT was written for companies with servers, branch offices and a hundred staff, and the price tags matched. So you have been running it yourself. At your size that is a perfectly reasonable thing to have done. The work is just constant, and it never belongs to anyone.
Aweeba IT Essentials.
Do small businesses need managed IT?
Not always. Under about three computers, with no shared files and no customer data, a good checklist and an hour a month may be enough. Once people share files, handle client or payment data, or would lose a day of work to one broken laptop, the work is constant and it needs an owner. That's where IT Essentials fits.
What changes is that it stops being someone's second job.
You get a senior engineer who knows your setup by name, and a number that answers during business hours. Somebody watches the computers and fixes things before you notice them. Updates go on to a schedule, and somebody confirms they landed. If you are still weighing managed IT or break/fix, here is how the two compare. And here is what good IT looks like as a company grows.
When you hire, the accounts are ready on the first morning. When someone leaves, their access ends that day, and you are not the one trying to remember which nine services they were in.
Why we built it
We created IT Essentials because we know what it is like to run a small business with a lot riding on technology and no one dedicated to managing it. When a laptop fails, an account is locked, or a new employee starts, the responsibility usually lands on the owner — at the expense of work only the owner can do.
Essentials gives straightforward businesses a real technology partner before they are large or complex enough to need a full IT department.
Real IT ownership before you need an IT department.
A business your size does not need the machinery of enterprise IT — the tiers, the categories, the process a company of a few thousand has to have. What it needs is narrower and much harder to buy: somebody accountable for the updates, the security baseline, Microsoft 365, who has access to what, and the computers everybody works on.
That is what Essentials is for. Once those belong to somebody by name, you stop keeping a private list of the technology jobs nobody got to — which is the job you have actually been doing.
What you get every month.
- Endpoint monitoring, patching and EDR
- Microsoft 365 and identity administration
- MFA and security-baseline management
- Email security
- Device health, asset inventory, documentation
- Setting up a new computer, and getting someone started or closed down
- Remote support from a senior engineer, business hours
Support is included. There is no meter running and no allowance to spend down — when you need us, you call. Work outside that shape — after hours, on site, or chasing one of your vendors — is quoted before it starts.
What sits outside the monthly, and what is quoted on its own.
The boundary is part of the design, so it is written down. Two things sit outside Essentials altogether. The rest is real work we do, priced on its own rather than folded into a monthly number that would then be wrong for everybody else.
Outside Essentials
- Server support
- Network and Wi-Fi ownership
Quoted on its own
- Projects
- Migrations
- Initial setup and onboarding
Billed when you need it
- Help outside business hours
- Coming to you, where that is what the job needs
- Dealing with your internet provider, phone system or software vendors
None of it runs on a meter, and none of it starts without you knowing the number first.
Available as an add-on
Backup of your Microsoft 365 data — email, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint. Microsoft keeps the service running; keeping your data recoverable is a separate job, and plenty of providers assume it is included when it is not. Ask us about it and we will tell you what it would cost for your setup.
What we are responsible for is what the support covers. In Essentials that is the computers, Microsoft 365 and identity, and the security baseline underneath them. Fully Managed is the arrangement where Aweeba becomes accountable for the rest of your technology as well. The support itself is the same support — same engineers, same phone, same day. What changes is how much of your technology it reaches.
What it costs, and how the price is set.
The number follows your technology environment — how many computers we are responsible for — rather than how many people you employ. Users are unlimited. Take on three people this year without adding a computer and nothing about your price changes.
If your setup changes, your price follows it — and we talk about it before it lands.
Setup is scoped when we write the agreement, and it is yours to pay up front or spread out. Projects and migrations are quoted before they start. Nothing reaches an invoice you haven't seen.
PRICED BY ENVIRONMENT · SUPPORT INCLUDED
What Essentials is sized for.
Up to about eight computers, one location, no server. Laptops and Microsoft 365 — the setup most small offices actually have. Essentials was built for that and priced for it.
To protect service quality and preserve direct access to senior engineers, Aweeba awards a limited number of new Essentials places each year as our way of giving back to small businesses.
Growing into Fully Managed
When your technology becomes more complex, Aweeba already knows your systems and can help you move into Fully Managed IT before the seams begin to show. You keep the same partner and the knowledge we have already built about your business — you do not start over with someone new.
A server, a second location, a regulated system, a network that needs owning, or simply more of your technology for us to be responsible for: any of those is a reason to look at Fully Managed properly. Complexity decides it rather than a count of computers, so there is no number that moves you automatically.
If you grow past it, we will say so on the way rather than at renewal. What we would quote you then is Fully Managed, after we have looked at what you actually run.
“Their technical expertise is rock solid, but it's the calm, responsive support that makes them a true long-term partner.”
Check your eligibility in three questions.
Answer three questions and we will tell you straight away whether Essentials fits — and what to do either way.
Would rather talk it through?
Book 30 minutes with our teamAsk us the same things you would ask anyone else.
Whoever you end up speaking to, four answers will tell you most of what you need to know.
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Can this number move without my setup changing?
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Who is my escalation, by name, on day one?
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Am I on a contract, and how would I leave?
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Do you back up our Microsoft 365 data, or do you assume Microsoft does?
If someone cannot answer those in plain language, that tells you something. That includes us.