Syntek Solutions FAQ

Managed IT support starts from £49 per user per month on an all-in plan. More demanding setups (heavy compliance, multi-site, 24/7 cover) sit in a £49–£95 per user per month band.

Every quote is written, itemised and fixed for 12 months. No surprise add-ons for patching, MFA or backup — those are included.

Our standard agreement is rolling monthly with 30 days' notice. We don't use 36-month auto-renewing contracts.

Onboarding is a one-off fixed fee, not a tie-in. If we don't work out after six months, you leave with your data, your documentation and no penalty.

Both. Most tickets are fixed remotely within the SLA because that's faster. But every contract includes on-site visits across Horsham, Crawley, Worthing, Chichester and Bognor Regis at no extra charge when something needs hands-on work — a failed switch, a new starter kit, a WiFi survey.

Priority 1 (business down): 30 minutes to first response. Priority 2 (one user blocked): 1 hour. Priority 3 (standard issue): 4 working hours. Priority 4 (low / request): next working day.

These are written into the contract SLA, not buried in a welcome email.

Week 1: tenant and device audit, secrets handover, MFA enforced on every admin account, monitoring deployed.

Week 2: Defender for Business, Intune and third-party backup for Microsoft 365 rolled out.

Weeks 3–4: Cyber Essentials v3.3 gap fixes, documentation, user training. Fixed fee, written plan, named engineer throughout.

We run ourselves to Cyber Essentials v3.3 controls. MFA is mandatory on every admin action, secrets are stored in a dedicated privileged-access vault, and all engineer access to your tenant is logged, time-bound and reviewed monthly.

We'll share our internal policy pack on request.

Yes. Every onboarding includes a v3.3 gap assessment. Most small businesses reach Cyber Essentials within 6–10 weeks of starting the fixes.

Cyber Essentials Plus (the audited version with an external technical test) typically adds a further 4–6 weeks. We walk you through the IASME portal and the assessor call.

For most small businesses under 300 users: Microsoft 365 Business Premium. It's the only SME SKU that includes Defender for Business, Intune and Entra ID P1 — the three controls that make Cyber Essentials and ransomware defence achievable.

Business Basic or Standard alone won't pass Cyber Essentials v3.3 without bolt-ons.

Usually yes. We audit what you have, flag anything end-of-life (a 5-year-old laptop, an unsupported server, a WiFi access point with no firmware updates) and give you a replacement schedule with real costs.

Nothing is forced. If a device still does its job and can be secured, we keep it running.

No. Our smallest client is 2 users. The £49 per user entry price keeps it affordable at that size, and the controls that matter (MFA, backup, EDR, patching) are exactly the same for 3 people as for 30.

Yes. 10–50 users is our sweet spot. At that size you need a named engineer, a monthly written report and a quarterly vCIO review — which is exactly how the standard plan is structured.

BT's PSTN (the copper telephone network) shuts down on 31 January 2027. Any analogue line, fax machine, alarm dialler, lift line or ISDN circuit connected to it will stop working.

If you've not moved to VoIP or Microsoft Teams Phone yet, plan it during 2026 — not the last quarter. Openreach's stop-sell is already live across most exchanges.

Yes. Windows 10 reached end of support on 14 October 2025. Running it in a business today breaks Cyber Essentials and most cyber insurance policies.

We plan the Windows 11 migration (or device replacement for anything that fails the TPM 2.0 / CPU test) as part of onboarding.

No — and this is the single most common misunderstanding we see. Microsoft's shared responsibility model covers platform availability, not your data.

A deleted mailbox, a corrupted SharePoint site, a ransomware hit on OneDrive or a leaver taking data with them are all your problem. We run third-party backup for Microsoft 365 as standard on every plan.

Traditional antivirus matches known-bad files against a signature database. EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) watches device behaviour — a Word document spawning PowerShell, a script deleting shadow copies, a new process connecting to a known command-and-control server — and can isolate the device automatically.

Every Syntek contract includes EDR (Microsoft Defender for Business or equivalent). Standalone antivirus is no longer sufficient.

Almost always. We regularly support Sage, Xero, IRIS, QuickBooks, Clio, LEAP, EMIS, SystmOne, AutoCAD, Revit, Adobe Creative Cloud and hundreds of niche SaaS tools.

We don't try to replace your software — we keep it running, patched and backed up.

We help our clients achieve the Microsoft-aligned security baselines and certifications they need — Cyber Essentials, secure-score targets, Business Premium hardening.

We're a young company and we don't claim partner badges or tiers we haven't earned. Ask us directly and we'll tell you exactly where we are in the process.

Yes. Ask during the audit and we'll arrange a 15-minute call with a current West Sussex client in a similar size band to yours. We'd rather do that than publish invented five-star reviews.

Written response times (30 min / 1 hr / 4 hr / next working day), named engineer plus named account manager, monthly report, quarterly vCIO review, 99.9% uptime target on managed infrastructure, and a 30-day notice exit clause.

No hidden 'fair use' ticket ceilings. No charging for the time we spend on our own monitoring alerts.

Standard cover is Monday to Friday, 08:30 to 17:30. Out-of-hours emergency cover for Priority 1 incidents (business-down) is available as a monthly add-on, or ad-hoc at a published hourly rate.

The emergency number is included in every client welcome pack, so you always know who to call.