Support FAQ
The questions people actually ask
Not marketing answers. These are what business owners ask on the first call, and the things they wish they had asked before hiring their last provider. If yours is not here, call and ask it directly.
How we deliver service
Service and response
What exactly do you do?
We are the IT department for small and mid size businesses across the East Valley. Monitoring, patching, help desk, security, backups, vendor management and planning, either as a complete managed service or as project work. See services for the detail.
Do you outsource any of your support?
No. Every engineer is our own employee in the United States. Not one ticket has ever gone to a third party contractor or an overseas provider. Ask for the name of the person who would handle your account and expect to meet them before you sign.
What is a pod and why does it matter?
A pod is a named lead engineer and a named backup assigned to your business. They learn your network and stay with it, and the documentation lives with them rather than in one person's head. It means you never explain your setup from scratch, and there is no queue where your ticket waits for whoever is free.
How fast do you respond?
15 minutes during business hours for clients on a managed agreement, with after hours emergency response included. Business down issues jump the queue. On demand and block hour clients get scheduled response rather than a guarantee, and we will tell you what that realistically looks like.
Do you work with home users, or only businesses?
Businesses. We used to do consumer repair and stopped, because doing both well is not really possible. If you call us with a home machine we will point you somewhere sensible rather than take the work.
Do you support Macs as well as Windows?
Yes, alongside Windows, and mixed environments are normal. We manage, patch and secure both.
Do you require a long term contract?
No. Month to month is available at the standard rate, and twelve or twenty four month commitments earn a lower one. You keep your documentation and credentials either way, so nothing traps you.
What if we already have an IT provider?
Most businesses that call us do. Start with the free assessment. If they have everything in place, our report says so in writing and you have documentation you did not have before. If there are gaps, you get a specific list to take to them.
How often will we actually hear from you?
Beyond tickets, managed clients get a monthly report covering patching, backups, security and anything that needs attention, plus a quarterly review with the owner or leadership covering risk, spend and what is coming.
How is after hours handled?
Managed agreements include after hours emergency response. Planned disruptive work happens outside your business day by default, not as an upcharge.
How the business side works
Billing, security and onboarding
How does billing work?
Three ways. On demand at $250 per hour, with a two hour minimum per call and a $125 travel charge for onsite visits. Prepaid block hours at a discount that rises with block size, billed to the quarter hour with no minimum. Or a flat monthly managed agreement, which has no minimum and no travel charge and is the only tier with a response guarantee. Full detail on the pricing page.
Are there hidden fees?
No. Hardware and licensing are supplied at cost plus a stated margin you can see on the quote. Projects are quoted at a fixed price with the exclusions written down. Anything genuinely new gets quoted before it happens rather than appearing on an invoice.
Who owns our data, hardware and licenses?
You do, from day one. Documentation, credentials, licensing and configuration are registered in your name, not held in ours. A number of the businesses that call us are calling precisely because they cannot get their own information back from somebody else.
What happens to our credentials if we leave?
You keep them, because they were always yours. We hand over documentation and access and nothing stops working. There is no exit fee and no hostage situation.
How do you protect our systems?
Layered: MFA and identity hardening, endpoint detection on every machine and server, email authentication and filtering, DNS filtering, disciplined patching, immutable offsite backups with tested restores, staff training, and a written incident response plan. Every layer produces evidence you can show a carrier or an auditor.
Is the monitoring yours or resold?
We run the tooling and we watch it. Alerts come to our engineers, not to a third party network operations centre that emails you a ticket.
Is the backup tested, or just running?
Tested, on a schedule, with the test date documented. An untested backup is a rumor. The single most common serious finding in our assessments is a backup that has run nightly for years and has never once been restored.
Can you help us meet HIPAA or other compliance requirements?
We implement and document the technical and administrative safeguards those frameworks require, and we stay in the room when an auditor or an insurer asks. We do not certify anyone as compliant, because no IT provider legitimately can. For legal interpretation of your obligations, work with compliance counsel. Most businesses need both.
What does onboarding involve?
Documentation first, before anything changes. Then monitoring and security tooling get deployed, we work the fix first list in risk order, and your staff meet the pod. Disruptive work happens outside business hours. Most of the visible noise settles inside the first quarter.
What is not included?
Hardware and licensing, projects such as office moves and migrations, and after hours work beyond the emergency response in your agreement. All quoted before they start.
One more thing
Ask us the hard ones
If an answer would require us to promise something we cannot practically deliver, we tell you what we do instead. We do not sell binding uptime guarantees and we do not claim to certify anyone as compliant. What we do is build environments that meet the technical safeguards, document them, and stay in the room when someone asks for proof.
Question not answered here? Call (602) 677-0779 and ask it directly.
Get an honest read on your environment
A written report, red amber green, with a fix first list ranked by risk and cost. Free, no obligation, and yours to keep whether you hire us or not.
