Small business IT · 5–50 seats · GTA
Flat-Rate IT for GTA Small Businesses
Managed IT, cybersecurity and monitoring for 5–50 person offices, priced per seat so a bad month costs the same as a quiet one. Security is in the base plan, not the upgrade tier.
- Flat-rate plans
- GTA-local
- No long contracts
- Built for 5–50 staff
or call (416) 624-4841 — priority queue during business hours
What an incident actually costs
The cost of a breach does not scale down with headcount
These are Canadian, all-business averages from named sources — not small-business figures, because a credible small-business-specific one is hard to come by. That is the point: the attacker, the downtime and the notification obligation do not check your staff count first.
A month on break-fix
Nothing here is a disaster. That is the problem
A small office rarely fails all at once. It accumulates — five ordinary weeks where every single item is somebody's afternoon, and none of them produce a system that catches the next one.
The pattern we take over
Break-fix is not cheaper. It defers the cost until the month you can least absorb it, and it never leaves anything behind that stops the next one.
Every row below is a pattern we find in environments we inherit. Under a managed plan, the same five weeks are a monitored alert, a self-service reset, a quarantined message, a patch report, and a backup job that pages someone.
- 1hrResponse target, business hours
- 90daysMaximum interval between restore tests
- Week 1 · MonA laptop stops booting
The office manager calls whoever fixed it last time. Someone comes out, images a spare, and invoices the callout. Nothing is written down, so the next machine starts the same way.
Billed callout · half a day of the manager gone - Week 1 · WedA password reset turns into a phone call
Someone upgrades their phone and loses their authenticator. With no self-service reset and no policy behind it, identity is verified by recognising a voice.
Account drops back to SMS codes - Week 2 · FriA supplier invoice arrives with new banking details
The thread is real and the reply address is one character off. Nobody was watching the mailbox that got compromised three weeks earlier, because nothing was watching any mailbox.
Payment lands in an attacker-controlled account - Week 3 · TueUpdates get deferred for the fourth time
Patching is whoever remembers, and nobody reboots during a busy week. There is no report showing which machines are behind, so "we are up to date" is a guess.
Known vulnerability stays open - Week 4 · ThuThe backup drive has been full since the 2nd
The job has been failing for four weeks. Nothing alerts on it, and nobody has attempted a restore, so the discovery happens on the day the restore is needed.
Four weeks with no recoverable copy
The four commitments
What “flat rate” has to mean
Most providers use the phrase. These are the four things that decide whether it is true, and each one is checkable against the published plans rather than taken on trust.
Priced per seat, not per incident
The invoice is the seat count times the published rate. A bad month — a failed drive, a phishing scare, a machine that needs rebuilding — costs the same as a quiet one, which is the entire point of moving off break-fix.
Same number every monthSecurity is included, not upsold
Managed EDR, MFA, email security, and backup monitoring are in every tier, including the cheapest one. Security that is an upgrade tier is a security posture that gets declined at budget time.
EDR in every published tierA senior engineer takes the ticket
No tier-1 script, no queue-shifting to a tier-2 who re-asks the same questions. Target response is one hour during business hours, and most issues close remotely inside half an hour.
1-hour response target, business hoursMonth-to-month after the first 90 days
The onboarding term exists because the work — enrolment, hardening, a verified restore — takes about that long to land. After it, there is no lock-in. We earn the next month.
No multi-year contractSystems we run in production
No two small offices run the same stack
A 15-person business is usually Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, a cloud ledger, one legacy application nobody wants to touch, and a network somebody's cousin set up. All of it is in scope.
Running something else? Vendor coordination is part of the plan — we deal with the support line so your staff do not.Ask about your stack
The standard build
Five layers, 10 controls, every seat
This is what “managed” means in practice, stacked from the account inward to the practice around it. Every control is in every published tier — none of it is an upgrade SKU. Open one to see what it does, what it stops, and what it produces when somebody asks you to prove it.
Who gets in
Onboarding
90 days to a documented environment
The onboarding term is 90 days because that is roughly how long enrolment, hardening and a verified restore actually take. After it, the agreement is month-to-month.
- 01
Take the keys
Day 1–30Inventory every device, account, licence and vendor — including the ones nobody remembered. Enrol machines, turn on EDR, enforce MFA, and move the helpdesk queue across. No destructive changes while the handover is live; we work alongside your outgoing provider where that helps.
You end this phase owning a written inventory of your own environment - 02
Close the gaps
Day 31–60Patching automated and reported, disk encryption completed, conditional access policies applied, email security and DMARC published, guest Wi-Fi split off the staff network, and backup brought under monitoring rather than assumption.
Output: the ten standard controls live across every seat - 03
Prove it
Day 61–90Restore an actual file from an actual backup and date the test. Assemble the cyber-insurance evidence packet — MFA coverage, EDR coverage, verified backup, incident response plan — and hold the first quarterly review against the documented posture.
Output: a dated restore test and a broker-ready evidence packet - 04
Month-to-month
Day 91 onwardThe onboarding term ends and the agreement goes month-to-month. Steady state is a monitored environment, a quarterly planning session, and an invoice that reads the same every month.
No renewal cliff and no multi-year lock-in
Changing providers
Switching is the part nobody explains
The objection is almost never whether this is worth doing. It is what happens to an office of fifteen people while it is being done. So, plainly:
- No destructive changes in the first 30 days.Discovery and stabilisation only. Nothing is migrated while we are still learning what you run.
- No cutovers during your busiest week.The calendar decides the schedule, not us. Work moves rather than the deadline.
- No gap between providers.We run in parallel with the outgoing one through the handover, and we will talk to them directly so you are not the go-between.
- Week 1
Nothing changes yet
We inventory what you run, map who has access to what, and get read-only visibility. No migrations, no cutovers, no password resets. The current provider stays exactly where they are.
- Weeks 2–4
The safety net goes in first
EDR, MFA and a verified backup land before anything is moved. If the handover went badly from here, you would still be in a better position than you started — that is the point of the order.
- Week 4
The keys change hands
Tenant ownership, domain registrar, licence agreements and documentation move into accounts you own. We run parallel with the outgoing provider through this, not after it.
- Day 90
You can leave
The onboarding term ends and the agreement is month to month. Everything is documented in your tenant, so a future provider — or you — can pick it up without us.
Transparent pricing
What does this actually cost?
The published per-user rate is the same for every industry. Multiply it by your seat count and that is the monthly line — there is no separate small-business schedule and no per-ticket component.
Billed per user, per month
The published rate is the same whichever industry you are in — there is no separate schedule for small businesses. What varies is scope, not price per seat, and we confirm the tier with you on a 20-minute call before anything is signed.
See the full plan comparisonFit
Who this is not for
Three situations where we are the wrong call. Worth two minutes now rather than twenty on a call that ends the same way.
Under five people, all on personal laptops
With nothing shared and no domain, the per-seat build is more structure than the office has. Worth doing the basics yourself first and calling when there is something to manage.
Start with the security checklistYou want it billed by the hour
Managed IT is a fixed monthly per-seat fee, and it is the only way we run somebody's systems — being paid more the more things break is the wrong incentive. Hourly work exists on the help desk for a single repair; that is a fix, not a provider.
See the break-fix menuYou want the cheapest number in the room
Every tier carries EDR and backup. We cannot strip those out to win on price, and an office that wants them stripped out ends up unhappy with us either way.
See what is in each tier
You already have someone technical in-house
Not a disqualifier. Plenty of our offices have an owner or an office manager who handles the day to day — we run the platform underneath and they stop being the backup plan.
Illustrative scenario
What an engagement actually looks like
A composite example rather than a client record — the profile is illustrative, and the steps are the ones we would genuinely run.
15-person GTA professional services firm
Consulting practice • Mississauga HQ + hybrid staff
- Huntress EDR
- Microsoft 365 BP
- Intune
- Tailscale
- 1Password Business
The situation
Reactive IT billed per ticket and per incident, with no monitoring and outages that keep interrupting client work. No EDR, no patching, no MFA.
What we deploy
A per-user plan with proactive monitoring, Huntress EDR-backed endpoint protection, automated patching, and a priority helpdesk — every device enrolled and MFA enforced firm-wide.
What changes
IT becomes one predictable monthly line instead of a variable invoice, endpoints carry managed EDR rather than consumer antivirus, and backups are tested rather than hoped for.
- 14d
Day 1–14
Devices enrolled, EDR live, MFA enforced, helpdesk queue migrated.
- 45d
Day 15–45
Patching automated, backups verified, M365 hardened, contracts reviewed.
- 90d
Day 46–90
Posture documented, quarterly plan agreed, month-to-month begins.
Self-Assessment
1-Minute Compliance Check
Tailored security and compliance scorecard. Four questions, no email required to see your score.
Keep reading
Where to go next
The things this page named
Not quite your sector?
Do some of it yourself
Ready to make IT one predictable line?
Book a free 30-minute assessment. A senior engineer will inventory what you are actually running, tell you which of the ten standard controls you already have, and scope the tier that fits — no cost and no sales pitch.
GTA-local engineersmonth-to-month after 90 days1-hour response, business hours
FAQ
Small business IT — common questions
Pricing, contract length, what is included, and how a switch from your current provider actually works.
8 results
PricingHow is this priced?
Pricing is per user, per month, and it is the same published rate for every industry — see the plan comparison on /pricing. Which tier fits depends on the control set you need rather than on your sector, and we confirm it with you on a 20-minute scoping call before anything is signed. Hardware, third-party licences, and one-off projects (cabling, migrations, office moves) are quoted separately.
CoverageIs there a long-term contract?
No. We run a 90-day onboarding term so the work has time to land, then month-to-month afterwards. We earn the next month.
CoverageWhat is included vs. extra?
Helpdesk, EDR, MFA, M365 admin, patching, backup monitoring, and quarterly planning are included. Hardware, licenses, and major projects (cabling, M&A, large migrations) are quoted separately.
CoverageDo you offer on-site support?
Yes — across the GTA. Most issues close remote in under 30 minutes, but on-site response is included when needed.
CoverageCan you take over from our current IT?
Yes. First 30 days are discovery and stabilization — no destructive changes during the handover. We work alongside your outgoing provider where useful.
CoverageWill this help with cyber insurance?
Yes — MFA, EDR, and verified backups (the three controls most insurers require) are in every plan. We supply the evidence packet your broker needs.
CoverageWhat size businesses do you support?
Best fit is 5–50 staff. Smaller is possible. Larger means we scope a custom engagement so the rhythm fits.
CoverageDo you support hybrid / remote teams?
Yes — most of our clients are hybrid. Zero-trust access, conditional access policies, and remote support are built into the standard model.