Business IT support in Wollongong, from the team already running your website.
Email, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, logins and backups, looked after by people you can actually get on the phone.
Most Illawarra businesses do not have an IT person. They have someone who is good with computers.
It works until it does not. Then it turns out nobody knows who set the email up, the licence renews on a card that expired, and the one person who understood any of it left in March.
The pattern is the same in every second business we talk to around here. Two staff share a mailbox because a second one was never created. Somebody who left eighteen months ago can still sign in. The bookkeeper is on a personal address with the business name in it. And every time something breaks, three suppliers each explain that it is one of the other two.
None of that is a crisis on its own. Together it is a business running on nobody's memory, and it always surfaces at the worst moment: mid quote, mid job, mid audit.
The other thing about working here is that almost nobody works in one place. A director on the South Coast line to Sydney twice a week. A yard at Port Kembla and the actual office in a ute. A practice in the CBD with a second room down at Shellharbour on Thursdays. Email, files and logins have to work in all of those places, on whatever device is in someone's hand, or people invent their own workarounds and you lose control of the lot.
If a person logs into it, that is us.
We do three things that people mix up, so here is the plain version.
Web hosting is where your website lives.
Servers, speed, uptime, the padlock, and backups of the site itself. If your website is slow or down, that is hosting.
Web hostingDomain names are the names.
Registering them, owning them, renewing them, and the DNS records underneath. If it is a name or a record, that is domains.
Domain namesBusiness IT is the people layer.
Mailboxes, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, migrations, who can log into what, backups of the files your team works in, and someone to ring when a laptop or an inbox stops behaving.
You are hereEmail is the one that genuinely straddles the line, so we are specific about it. If we build your site, addresses at your domain come with it. Everything after that, choosing the right platform, licensing it, moving your history across, adding and removing staff, and fixing it when mail stops arriving, sits here.
The advantage of it all being one team is not tidiness, it is that nobody gets to point at anyone else. When the website, the domain and the email are held in the same place, "it must be the other supplier" stops being an available answer.
The unglamorous things that stop work when they break.
Not a monitoring dashboard. The handful of things a small business actually loses days to.
Email that belongs to the business, not to whoever set it up.
Addresses at your own domain, in an account the business controls, with the admin login somewhere other than one person's head.
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, chosen for how you actually work.
Not whichever one we prefer. The comparison below is the real one, and we will make a recommendation.
Migrations that arrive with the history intact.
Mail, contacts and calendars moved across, scheduled so your team keeps working through it. Nobody should lose eight years of correspondence to change providers.
Logins, access, and the day somebody leaves.
Accounts created properly when people start and shut off the day they finish, two-factor turned on where it matters, and a record of who can get into what.
Backups, and a straight answer about what your plan actually keeps.
Most people assume Microsoft and Google keep everything forever. They do not, and the retention rules are not obvious. We will tell you what yours does and does not cover before you find out the hard way.
One number when it stops working.
(02) 4203 2642, monday to friday, 9am to 5pm. If it needs someone standing in front of it, we can come to you within the local area.
Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and which one suits you.
Two platforms do professional email properly. Everything else is a compromise. Both give you addresses at your own domain, mail that syncs to every device, shared calendars, storage and the admin controls a business needs. What separates them is how your team works between nine and five.
Plans and storageGmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet, run in the browser. Two people editing the same document at the same time is the normal way to work rather than a feature you turn on. Admin is straightforward enough that a business owner can handle small changes without ringing anyone.
| Plan | Storage | What you get | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Starter | 30 GB per user | Custom email at your domain, Gmail, Drive, Meet, and the Docs, Sheets and Slides apps. | A small team whose files are mostly documents. |
| Business Standard | 2 TB per user | The same again, with larger Meet calls and recording. | Most businesses land here, and the storage is the reason. |
| Business Plus | 5 TB per user | Bigger meetings, plus Vault for email retention and search, and tighter security controls. | Larger teams, or anyone who has to produce old email on request. |
Plans and storageOutlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams, installed on the machine rather than living in a tab. If your accounting software, your industry package or your accountant expects Outlook, this is usually the shorter road.
| Plan | Storage | What you get | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Basic | 1 TB per user | Exchange email, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive, using the web and mobile versions of the Office apps. | Fine if nobody needs Excel installed. |
| Business Standard | 1 TB per user | Everything in Basic plus the proper installed desktop apps: Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint on your own computer. | The common choice. |
| Business Premium | 1 TB per user | Everything in Standard plus advanced security, threat protection and device management. | Company data on a phone that goes missing can be wiped. |
| Exchange Online Plan 1 | 50 GB mailbox | Email only, no Office apps. | Mailboxes for staff who do not need the software. |
| Exchange Online Plan 2 | 100 GB mailbox, plus archiving | Email only, no Office apps. | The same again, where the mailboxes have to keep more. |
The honest comparison.
Go with Google Workspace if- Your team works in the browser and on phones more than on a desktop
- Several people need to be in the same document at once without emailing versions around
- You want the least fiddly admin, and generous storage as you grow
- Gmail already suits how everyone works, and nobody is asking for anything else
Go with Microsoft 365 if- Someone in your business uses Excel in anger, with real formulas and real deadlines
- Your team is on Windows and already talks in Teams
- Your accounting, practice management or industry software assumes Outlook
- You have compliance, retention or device-control obligations to satisfy
For a browser-first business with a handful of staff, Google Workspace is simpler, cheaper to scale on storage, and less to go wrong. We will say so. The moment somebody needs installed Excel or Outlook for real work, or an industry package expects Microsoft, that argument is over and Microsoft 365 wins. Most of the businesses we set up in the Illawarra sort themselves into one camp or the other within about two questions.
And if you are already on the wrong one, it is not a trap. Moving between the two is a solved job. We do it with the mail, contacts and calendars intact, scheduled so nobody loses a working day. Being on the wrong platform is worth fixing, not worth panicking about, and it is not a reason to stay somewhere that is not working.
What we are, and what we are not.
We would rather you knew this before you rang than after.
We are not a managed IT company with a monitoring room. There is no overnight watch, no on-call roster and no 24-hour hotline. We work business hours, Monday to Friday, and we say so plainly instead of implying otherwise and disappointing you at eleven on a Saturday night.
We are not the people for a server room. On-premise infrastructure, a warehouse of machines or a complex network across multiple sites is a specialist job and somebody else's. If that is what you have, we will tell you on the first call rather than take the work and learn on you.
That is a genuinely different offer from a general IT contractor, because most business IT problems in a small business turn out to be a website, a domain record or a mailbox, and those three are usually held by three different suppliers who have never spoken. Here they are one call.
And we are local. Not a ticket queue in another time zone. One number, people who know the region, and a visit in person when the problem really does need someone standing in front of it.
Business IT questions from Illawarra business owners.
What people ask before they hand over their email, their logins and their licences.
What does business IT support cost?+
There are two separate costs and we keep them apart. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace licences are charged per user, monthly or annually, and change only when your headcount does. Our work is either a fixed quote for a defined job, such as a setup or a migration, or an ongoing support arrangement sized to how much you actually need. You get the number before anything starts. If a job turns out to be smaller than expected, the quote comes down.
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, which should we be on?+
It comes down to whether anyone needs the installed desktop apps. If your business runs on real Outlook and real Excel, or your industry software expects Microsoft, take Microsoft 365. If your team lives in the browser and shares documents constantly, Google Workspace is simpler and the storage goes further. Tell us how your team works and we will recommend one rather than leave it with you.
Can you move our email without losing anything?+
Yes, and it is a routine job. Mail, contacts and calendars move across from whatever you are on now, including the old-style mailboxes still sitting on a lot of Illawarra hosting accounts. We run the cutover so your team is not locked out during business hours, and we test that mail is arriving before we switch anything off at the old end.
Do you offer 24/7 IT support?+
No, and we would rather tell you now. We are a web and marketing team that also looks after business IT, not a managed service provider with staff watching screens overnight. Our hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, with a response time we agree with you up front. If your business genuinely cannot function without cover at three in the morning, you need a different kind of supplier and we will say that.
Can you come to our office?+
Yes, within the local area, when the job actually needs it. Plenty does not. A mailbox, a licence or an access problem is usually quicker to fix remotely while you carry on working. We will tell you which one yours is instead of booking a visit you did not need.
Is this the same as web hosting?+
No, and the difference matters when something breaks. Hosting is where your website lives, and it is what you want if the site is slow or down. Business IT is your email, your logins and your team's devices. Plenty of businesses have both with us, which is the point: one call, no working out whose fault it is.
One team for the whole job.
The website, the domain and the email are one system. Holding them in one place is why nothing gets lost between suppliers.
Tell us what you are running now, how many people need email, and what has been annoying you. We will tell you what is worth changing, what is fine as it is, and what it would cost to sort out properly.
If your current setup is fine, we will tell you that and leave it alone.