Business IT support in Nowra, for the email and logins nobody is looking after.
Business email, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, staff access and backups, sorted out by people based here in Nowra.
Plenty of good Shoalhaven businesses are still run from an email address they do not own.
It is on the ute, on the invoices and on the sign, and it ends in bigpond, optusnet or hotmail. It has worked fine for fifteen years, which is precisely the problem. It cannot be moved, it cannot be shared properly with a second staff member, it belongs to a telco rather than to the business, and the day that account closes it takes twenty years of correspondence and every customer who has ever emailed you with it.
The version one rung up is not much better. Addresses at your own domain, set up years ago by whoever built the last website, on a mail service nobody has looked at since. The admin login is in somebody's head or in nobody's. The owner and the office share one inbox because a second one was never created. The bookkeeper is on a personal address with the business name typed into the display field. And a casual who finished at Easter can still sign in from their phone.
None of that is a crisis on its own. Together it is a business running on nobody's memory, and it surfaces at the worst possible moment: mid quote, mid job, mid audit, or the morning somebody leaves badly.
The other thing about working here is how little of the work happens at a desk. A trade running from Berry to Sussex Inlet. A tour operator whose office is a phone and a clipboard. A practice with rooms in two towns. Signal drops out west of the highway and down the back of the coast, so email, files and logins have to keep working on whatever is in someone's hand, or people invent their own workarounds and the business loses track of where anything lives.
Three questions, and they sort almost everything.
People mix up the three things we do in this territory, so here is the plain version.
- Where does the website live?
- That is hosting. Servers, speed, uptime, the padlock and backups of the site itself. If the site is slow or down, start there. Web hosting
- What is it called?
- That is domains. Registering the name, owning it, renewing it, and the records underneath it. If it is a name or a record, start there. Domain names
- Who signs in, and with what?
- That is this page. Mailboxes, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, who can get into what, backups of the files your team works in, and somebody to call when an inbox stops behaving.
Email straddles the line, so we are specific. Build a site with us and addresses at your domain come with it. Everything after that, choosing the right platform, licensing it, moving your history across, putting staff on and taking them off, and fixing it when mail stops arriving, sits here.
The point of holding all three in one place is not tidiness. It is that nobody gets to point at anybody else. Most small business technology problems turn out to involve a website, a domain record or a mailbox, and those three are usually held by three suppliers who have never spoken to each other.
The dull things that stop the day when they break.
Getting you off an ISP address and onto your own
Mail, contacts and calendars moved across with the history intact, the old address left forwarding for as long as you need it, and the changeover run so your team keeps working through it.
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, chosen for how you work
Not whichever one is easier for us. The comparison below is the real one and we will make a recommendation, not hand you a brochure.
Staff on, and staff off
Accounts created properly when someone starts and shut off the day they finish, which matters more here than most places because half the district takes on people for a season. Two-factor turned on where it counts, and a written record of who can reach what.
Files the whole team can get to
From the office, the ute, the shop counter and the kitchen table on a Sunday, without anybody emailing themselves a copy and then working on the wrong one.
Backups, and an honest answer about what yours actually keeps
Deleted is not the same as recoverable, and the window is shorter than most people assume. We will tell you in writing what your plan holds and for how long, before you find out the hard way.
A number that reaches a person, and people who are actually nearby
(02) 4480 6045, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. When it needs somebody standing in front of it, we are up the road rather than up the coast.
Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and how to pick.
Two platforms do business email properly. Everything else is a compromise you will eventually pay for.
Both give you addresses at your own domain, mail on every device, shared calendars, storage and the admin controls a business needs. What separates them is where your team does the work.
Everything happens in the browser. Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet, on any machine with a login. Nothing is installed, so a new starter is working within the hour and the admin side is simple enough that an owner can add a mailbox without ringing anyone.
- Business Starter
- Email at your domain, the full app set, and 30 GB of storage each. Enough for a small team whose files are documents, quotes and job photos.
- Business Standard
- The same tools with 2 TB each and larger meetings you can record. Most businesses land here, and the storage is usually the reason.
- Business Plus
- 5 TB each, bigger meetings, stronger admin controls, plus Vault for holding and searching old mail. For larger teams, or anyone who may have to produce old email on request.
Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams, installed on the machine rather than living in a tab. If your bookkeeper, your estimating package or your accountant assumes Microsoft, this is the road with the least friction on it.
- Business Basic
- Exchange email, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive with 1 TB each, using the web and mobile versions of the Office apps. Fine when nobody needs Excel installed.
- Business Standard
- Everything in Basic plus the proper desktop apps on your own computer. The common choice.
- Business Premium
- Everything in Standard plus device management and advanced threat protection, so a phone that goes missing can have the business data pulled off it remotely.
- Exchange Online Plan 1 and Plan 2
- Mailboxes only, no Office apps. 50 GB on Plan 1, 100 GB with archiving on Plan 2. Worth knowing about for staff who need an address and nothing else.
Go with Google Workspace if
- The work happens in a browser and on phones more than at one fixed desk
- Two or three people need to be in the same file at once instead of emailing versions around
- You want admin simple enough to add a new starter yourself
- Storage matters to you more than software does
Go with Microsoft 365 if
- Somebody in the business builds real spreadsheets, with formulas and deadlines attached
- Everyone is on Windows and the team already talks in Teams
- Your estimating, job management or practice software assumes Outlook
- A contract, an insurer or an auditor requires device control or retention
For a small Shoalhaven business where the work happens on phones and in a browser, Google Workspace is simpler to own and the storage goes further, so that is where we start. The moment somebody needs the real Excel or the real Outlook, or the trade software you already pay for expects Microsoft, the argument is over and Microsoft 365 wins. One question settles it more often than not: does your team open a program, or open a tab?
Being on the wrong one is not a life sentence. Moving between the two is a routine job. Mail, contacts and calendars come across, scheduled so nobody loses a working day. It is worth fixing, it is not worth panicking about, and it is certainly not a reason to stay somewhere that is not working.
What we are, and what we are not.
Better you hear this now than after the invoice.
We work business hours.
Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. There is no overnight watch, no on-call roster and no monitoring room, and we would rather say that plainly than imply otherwise and let you down at eleven on a Saturday night. If your business genuinely cannot function without cover at three in the morning, you need a different kind of supplier and we will tell you so.
We are not a network and server company.
On-premise infrastructure, a room full of machines, or a network stitched across several sites is a specialist job and it is not ours. If that is what you have, you will hear it on the first call rather than after we have learned on you.
We can get the basics right, and we will show you where our line is.
Businesses supplying into the contractors around the naval air station get sent questionnaires about who can access what, how data is handled and whether two-factor is on. Sorting out those basics is exactly what this page is about. If a contract demands formal accreditation beyond that, that is a different supplier and we will say so rather than nod along.
What we are is one supplier holding the three things that always turn out to be involved. The website, the domain and the email, under one local team, on one number, with the admin logins written down and handed to you rather than kept as leverage.
The questions that get asked at the counter.
Mostly asked by owners who already suspect the answer and want somebody to confirm it without a sales pitch attached.
We are still on a bigpond address. How hard is it to move?+
Easier than the fear of it. We set up mail at your own domain, bring your existing mail, contacts and calendars across, and leave the old address forwarding for as long as you want so nothing gets missed while the world catches up. The changeover is scheduled around your week, and we check mail is arriving at the new end before anything is switched off at the old one.
Somebody left and we think they can still get into the email. What now?+
Ring us, that day. Cutting off access is quick once someone can actually reach the admin account, and the hard part is usually finding out who holds it. We shut the access down, work out what was reachable, and then set up the process so the next departure is one job rather than one panic.
Can you set up a new starter?+
Yes. Mailbox, licence, access to the right files and two-factor, done before their first morning so they are not sitting there watching somebody else's screen. If you want a laptop set up too, bring it in.
Do you do after-hours support?+
No. 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, and we agree a response time with you up front rather than promising something we cannot hold to.
What does this cost, and do we have to buy the licences through you?+
Two costs, kept apart. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace licences are charged per user and only change when your headcount does. You can buy them direct if you would rather; plenty do, and we will still work on the account. Our own work is either a fixed quote for a defined job, such as a setup or a migration, or an ongoing arrangement sized to how much you actually need. You get the number before anything starts, and if the job turns out smaller than expected the quote comes down.
The rest of what we do, from the one office.
Everything else we look after for Shoalhaven businesses, out of the same office.
Tell us what you are running now, how many people need email and what has been annoying you. You will get a straight read on what is worth changing, what is fine as it is, and what it would take to sort out properly.
No obligation, and no jargon. If the answer is that you are fine, that is the answer you get.