IT support built for small businesses
Small business IT support means someone else runs your technology so your team can get on with work. LOOKUP does that for Sydney businesses of 5 to 75 staff — a local helpdesk answering 8am to 9pm seven days, senior Australian engineers, and a 13-minute average acknowledgement. Fixed monthly pricing from $210 per user. No lock-in contract.
Most small businesses arrive here from one of two places. Either nobody owns the IT and it's shared between whoever is least busy, or one person does it alongside their actual job and is quietly drowning. Both work until they don't.
What small business IT support actually covers
Everything that keeps your technology working, handled by us instead of you.
| What you get | What that means in practice |
|---|---|
| Local helpdesk, 8am–9pm, seven days | Someone answers. 13-minute average acknowledgement, senior Australian engineers, no offshore first tier. |
| Unlimited remote support | No per-ticket charges and no hourly rates. Ask as often as you need to. |
| Microsoft 365 administration | Accounts, licences, permissions, security settings — managed, not left at defaults. |
| Device monitoring and patching | Operating systems, applications and your line-of-business software, kept current automatically. |
| Line-of-business application support | The software your business actually runs on, not just the Microsoft stack. |
| Network and internet support | Including the monitoring and management tooling, licensed by us. |
| Documentation platform | Your environment documented offsite, so knowledge doesn't live in one person's head. |
| Asset management | A live register of what you own, where it is, and when it's due for replacement. |
| Ticketing system | Every request tracked, with history you can audit. |
| Dedicated account manager | A named person who knows your business, not a generic queue. |
| Quarterly business reviews | Planning what's next, not just reporting what broke. |
Every platform in that list is licensed by us and included in the per-user price. The only thing you licence separately is Microsoft 365.
Built for teams of 5 to 75
Most IT providers say "small business" and mean anything under five hundred staff. We mean this: five users minimum, and we're built for organisations up to about seventy-five.
That range matters because the problems are specific to it. Below five people you can usually get by with a good laptop and a friend who knows computers. Above seventy-five you start needing internal IT staff and we'd tell you so. In between, you're too big for improvisation and too small to justify a full-time hire — and that's exactly the gap managed IT support fills.
It also shapes how we work. A business of twelve doesn't need a change advisory board. It needs someone to answer the phone, fix the thing, and make sure the backups are actually running.
What small business IT problems usually look like
You probably recognise at least two of these.
Nobody owns the backups.
Something is backing up somewhere, configured by someone who has left. Nobody has ever tested a restore.
IT is a side job.
Your operations manager, or your most technical staff member, spends four hours a week on password resets and printer problems. That's a quarter of a day of work they were hired to do, gone.
You pay by the hour, so you don't call.
Break-fix billing means every question has a price attached, so small problems get ignored until they become large ones. The invoice arrives after the emergency, not before it.
Nobody is looking ahead.
Machines are replaced when they die. Licences renew without review. Security is whatever was installed three years ago.
None of these are unusual and none of them mean anyone did anything wrong. They're what happens when technology grows faster than the structure around it.
Sydney helpdesk, senior Australian engineers
When you call us, an engineer based in Australia picks up. Not a script, not an offshore first tier whose job is to log the ticket and pass it on.
Our helpdesk runs 8am to 9pm, seven days a week — including weekends, which most Sydney providers don't cover. The average time to acknowledge a request is 13 minutes. Industry average is around four hours.
We work remotely wherever possible because it's faster. You don't wait for a van. When something genuinely needs someone on site, that's arranged separately.
Security included, not sold as an upgrade
Every LOOKUP client runs a cyber security services plan alongside managed IT, starting at $85 per user per month. It isn't optional, and that's deliberate — managing an environment we haven't secured means we can't promise it stays working.
Cyber Protect covers managed antivirus and endpoint security, email and web threat protection, firewall management, MFA and a password manager licensed for every user, cloud backup with 12 months retention, security awareness training, and incident response with no hourly charges.
Every licence and platform in that list is included in the per-user price.
Switching from your current IT provider
The most common reason businesses stay with a provider they've outgrown is that changing sounds worse than staying. So we've made it as low-risk as we can make it.
Onboarding runs in four phases:
- Order — specifying and procuring anything you need before we touch the environment
- Asset onboarding — discovering, documenting and enrolling every device and account
- Cutover — moving you across, scheduled around your trading hours
- Training — showing your team how to use the tools, including password managers and MFA
That fourth phase is the one most providers skip, and it's why security investments quietly fail. A password manager nobody was shown how to use is a password manager nobody uses.
Then there's a two-month cooling-off period. For the first two months after onboarding you can walk away. If we haven't shown you the difference by then, you shouldn't be stuck with us. Terms and conditions apply.
IT support services for small businesses across Sydney
We support small businesses across Sydney metro — the CBD, Parramatta, North Sydney, Chatswood, and out through the south from our Rockdale office.
Our clients are accounting practices, law firms, franchise groups, financial services businesses and mechanical services companies. What they have in common isn't an industry, it's a shape: enough staff that technology failures cost real money, not enough to employ someone to prevent them.
Kristallis Accounting is a good example. Established 1977, operating across Australia and the Philippines, more than a thousand clients, and a need for one security standard across two countries. We deployed a Sophos firewall with secure remote access, rolled out endpoint protection, set up centralised monitoring and implemented phishing awareness training. Sophos published the engagement as an official case study.
What it costs
Managed Services is $125 per user per month. Every client adds a cyber security plan from $85 per user. Most small businesses start at $210 per user per month, minimum five users.
That figure includes every tool and platform we use — monitoring, ticketing, documentation, asset management, security software, backup and training platforms. Microsoft 365 licensing, onsite attendance, on-premises servers and additional devices beyond one PC per user are quoted separately.
Onboarding is a separate project, quoted per client, because it scales with your size and setup. See full pricing for the complete breakdown, or learn more about our managed IT services in Sydney.
Frequently asked questions
How much does small business IT support cost in Sydney?
LOOKUP starts at $210 per user per month — $125 for Managed Services plus $85 for Cyber Protect, with a five-user minimum. Every tool and licence we use is included in that price. The only separate costs are Microsoft 365 licensing, onsite visits, on-premises servers and any devices beyond one PC per user.
Do I need managed IT if I only have eight staff?
Eight people is squarely in range — our minimum is five. Below that, most businesses manage informally. At eight you're likely already losing a few hours a week to IT problems handled by someone whose job is something else, and paying by the hour when things break.
Is outsourced IT support cheaper than hiring someone in-house?
For most businesses under 75 staff, yes. A junior IT hire costs more annually than a managed contract for a whole team, and one person can't cover 8am to 9pm seven days, hold every specialisation, or take annual leave without leaving a gap.
How do I switch from my current IT provider?
We run a four-phase onboarding — order, asset onboarding, cutover and training — scheduled around your trading hours. You don't need to end your current arrangement before talking to us. There's also a two-month cooling-off period after onboarding.
What happens after hours or on weekends?
Our helpdesk runs 8am to 9pm seven days, so weekends are covered as standard. Most Sydney providers are weekday-only. Cyber Secure adds 24/7 security operations monitoring for businesses that need continuous coverage.
Do you support remote and hybrid teams?
Yes. Support is delivered remotely as the default, so it makes no difference whether someone is in the office, at home or on a client site. Device management, security policies and access controls follow the user rather than the location.
Can you work alongside the person who already does our IT?
Often, yes. Plenty of our clients have someone internal who knows the business well and simply needs the infrastructure, security and out-of-hours coverage handled. Talk to us about how the split would work.
Am I locked into a contract?
No minimum contract. Longer 12, 24 and 36-month terms are available if you'd rather fix your costs. There's also a two-month cooling-off period after onboarding, subject to terms and conditions.
How long does onboarding take?
It depends on your size and how well your current environment is documented. The four phases run in sequence and cutover is scheduled around your trading hours so your team isn't disrupted. We'll give you a timeline with the onboarding quote.
Do you support our industry-specific software?
Yes — line-of-business application support is included. Whether that's practice management software, a booking system or an industry platform, it's covered in the same way as Microsoft 365.
Talk to us about IT support for your small business. Call 1300 553 559 or book a consultation.
