Menu
No data was found
Whether you’re a one-person operation or a growing business with a full team, we’re here to help. Get in touch and let’s talk about what we can do for you.
Whether you’re a one-person operation or a growing business with a full team, we’re here to help. Get in touch and let’s talk about what we can do for you.
IT that gets out of your way now and doesn’t need rebuilding at thirty people.
You’ve raised, the clock is running, and every decision either moves you toward the next milestone or doesn’t. IT sits awkwardly in that: too boring to prioritise, too important to get wrong, and quietly capable of costing you a week you didn’t have. This page is about the lean version: what to put in place now, what to leave until later, and how to avoid the two mistakes that cost startups the most.
Right now IT probably belongs to whoever is least annoyed by it, which is usually a technical founder who should be building product. It works, in the sense that laptops turn on and email arrives.
Then the two problems show up, usually in the same quarter.
The first is speed. You hire four people in six weeks and every onboarding takes half a day that somebody didn’t plan for. Accounts get created in a hurry, permissions get granted broadly because it’s quicker, and nobody writes any of it down.
The second is due diligence. Your first serious enterprise customer sends a security questionnaire, or an investor’s technical DD asks how you manage access and data. Suddenly the shortcuts from month three are a line item in a deal, and you’re fixing them under time pressure at the worst possible moment.
Neither is a disaster if you’ve done a few things properly early. Both are painful if you haven’t.
The two ways startups get IT wrong are over-buying enterprise tooling you won’t use for three years, and under-building so badly that a customer’s security review stalls a deal.
You have limited time, finite runway and investors who expect the money to go into growth. Nobody wants to spend it on infrastructure for the company you might be in 2029. But the alternative most startups pick, doing the minimum and moving on, creates a debt that comes due at exactly the wrong moment: during a funding round, or halfway through closing your biggest customer yet.
The right answer at your stage is narrow and boring. Get identity, access, devices and data right. Skip everything else. Done properly, that’s a small monthly cost, it makes hiring fast instead of fiddly, and it means the security questionnaire is an afternoon rather than a project.
Microsoft 365 configured properly from the start, with multi-factor authentication, sensible permissions and a repeatable onboarding process. The version you won’t have to unpick when you’re thirty people.
Access controls, device management and data protection that hold up when an enterprise customer or an investor asks how you run things. Plus a route to Cyber Essentials when a deal needs it.
Per user pricing and rolling monthly terms, so you’re paying for the team you have today. No three year commitment on a headcount you can’t forecast.
Two minutes, a handful of questions, and a straight answer – including if that answer is “you don’t need much”. No sales call at the end unless you ask for one.
We could list all four packages and let you work it out. Here’s what we’d actually say if you rang us.
Essential covers the things that are genuinely hard to retrofit: your Microsoft 365 set up properly, complete cloud and email security, and real backup of your data. It includes the Microsoft 365 Business Premium licence you’d be buying anyway, so a chunk of the cost replaces spend you already have, and it means new starters are a process rather than an afternoon.
Critically, you can take it on a rolling monthly term. Longer commitments carry a discount, but at your stage we’d rather you kept the flexibility than saved twenty percent on a headcount forecast that’ll be wrong.
When a deal needs certification, step up to Professional. Enterprise pilots and public sector work increasingly ask for Cyber Essentials before they’ll proceed. Professional includes the tools and the certification support, so it’s a few weeks rather than a scramble.
If you’re pre-launch and tiny, Starter gives you unlimited support and core device protection, and you can move up whenever the team or the customer list grows.
And if you genuinely just need occasional help, On-Demand with no contract at all. We’ll say so if that’s where you are.
The Essential IT Support Service brings together everything most businesses need in a single monthly price. IT support and device security as the foundation, layered with complete cloud and email security, a Microsoft 365 Business Premium licence, and centrally managed email signatures. Reliable IT and real cyber defence, simply bundled.
Key Features
Every package is unlimited support with no ticket caps and no per-incident charges. Rolling monthly terms are available, longer terms carry a discount, and not-for-profit pricing applies across the range.
One place where accounts are created and removed, multi-factor authentication on from day one, no shared logins. Everything else is easier once this is right and painful to fix later.
When you’re hiring fast this is the difference between growth feeling smooth and every new starter costing you a morning.
Encrypted, protected, patched, and recoverable if someone leaves or loses one. Retrofitting this across forty machines is nobody’s favourite week.
Microsoft protects the service, not your content. Founders are often surprised by this, usually just after deleting something.
Even a short one. You’ll be asked, and the asking usually has money attached.
A server, an internal IT hire, an ISO programme, or a security stack built for a bank. You’ll know when that changes, and we’ll tell you if you don’t.
Most startups we work with have no incumbent provider, just a founder who’s been holding it together. So this is less a migration than a tidy up.
Accounts, devices, licences, who can reach what. Usually takes an hour and usually turns up two or three things worth fixing that week. No obligation, and you keep the findings either way.
Identity, multi-factor authentication, permissions, device enrolment and backup. Done in the background, without asking your team to stop working.
You tell us someone’s starting, we handle accounts, licences, access and the laptop. Same in reverse when someone leaves.
Unlimited support when you need it, and a short conversation every so often about what’s coming: headcount, a customer’s security requirements, whether it’s time for Cyber Essentials.
Questions founders ask us
That’s exactly the case this is built for. Pricing is per user so it tracks your headcount, and the setup is designed so that scaling is adding people to a process rather than rebuilding anything.
No. You can take any package on a rolling monthly term. Longer terms carry a discount, 5% at 12 months, 10% at 24 and 20% at 36 on IT support, but at your stage we’d usually suggest keeping the flexibility.
They get their week back. We take the accounts, devices, onboarding, patching and security tooling. They keep the decisions and anything genuinely product related. Most technical founders are relieved rather than territorial about this.
Yes, and it’s one of the most common reasons startups call us. We’ll work out what’s true today, what needs fixing and how long it takes, so you can answer accurately rather than optimistically.
It depends where you’re starting from and we’ll tell you honestly after a look. Certification is included in our Professional package, and as an NCSC Assured Service Provider and IASME certified Cyber Advisor we take you through the whole thing.
No, it’s increasingly normal. Everything we do is cloud first and device based, so it doesn’t matter where anyone is sitting.
We don’t work to fixed SLA response times, and that’s deliberate. A service level agreement treats every ticket as a clock: a major outage and a slow printer both get whatever response time somebody wrote into a contract. We work on priority instead. If your issue is urgent, it’s treated as urgent, straight away. If it isn’t, it gets done properly rather than rushed to hit a target.
Yes. We supply hardware and licences, which usually works out cheaper than buying ad hoc, and machines arrive already set up, encrypted and enrolled rather than needing an afternoon of someone’s time.
Honestly, per user cost against hours saved and risk removed, and we’re happy to put that in writing. At your stage the strongest argument is usually the deal you don’t lose and the round that isn’t delayed by a security finding.
We work with startups and growing businesses across Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Somerset and Swindon, and remotely across the UK. We’re an NCSC Assured Service Provider, Cyber Essentials Plus certified, and ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 accredited, which is usually what a customer’s security review is checking for in a supplier.
The first step is a look at what you’ve got and a straight answer about what’s worth doing now. No obligation, and if the answer is that you’re fine for another six months, we’ll say so.
There is nothing more annoying than an IT glitch that stops you working efficiently. However, knowing you have access to immediate attention to the glitch and a solution to it, is very reassuring and that is provided by We Do Your IT. We have so appreciated the availability and response given by the team at We Do Your IT, enabling us to remain a productive firm.
Richard Sharp – Sharp Family Law