Do I Really Need IT Support for My Small Business? An Honest Guide for Crawley Owners
Honest, jargon-free advice from Criddle Computer Care on when small businesses in Crawley actually need IT support — and when a monthly retainer is money down the drain.
If you run a small business in Crawley — a sole trader, a small office, a team of five squeezed into a serviced unit off Manor Royal — you’ve probably had the same question at least once: do I actually need “IT support”, or am I fine just calling someone when things break?
The IT industry has a strong financial interest in convincing you the answer is yes, you need us on a monthly retainer, £500 to £2,000 a month, forever. For a lot of small businesses, that pitch is nonsense. For a few, it’s the right answer.
We’ve been running Criddle Computer Care out of Crawley for over eight years, and we’ve seen it from both sides — small businesses being oversold managed services they never use, and small businesses trying to run without any IT help at all and losing days to problems that should take an hour to fix.
This is an honest guide — written by Bradley — to help you work out which side of the line you’re on. No sales pitch.
The £500-a-month problem
A typical managed service provider (MSP) will quote you somewhere between £500 and £2,000 per month for “IT support”. That pricing assumes:
That model works for the businesses it was designed for — mid-sized firms with ten or more machines, where an hour of downtime costs more than the retainer.
For a sole trader with one laptop, or a two-person office running Xero and Microsoft 365, you’re paying £6,000 a year for a level of coverage you’ll almost never use. Most months you’ll have no IT issues at all. The retainer is insurance you’re not claiming.
What “IT support” actually means for a small business
Strip out the jargon and it comes down to six real needs.
Someone to call when something breaks
Your machine won’t turn on. The printer’s disconnected. Someone’s clicked a dodgy link. This is the main reason small businesses want IT support — and it’s the one an MSP retainer is worst-value for, because you’re paying a monthly fee for something that happens maybe six times a year.
New machine and new starter setup
Someone joins the team, or you upgrade a laptop. Getting them properly onboarded — email, Microsoft 365, shared drives, printers, VPN, transferring old files — takes 2–4 hours. Doing it yourself between customer calls is a recipe for a bad day.
Backup and recovery
This is the one small businesses consistently get wrong. Not “do you have a backup” — most people say yes — but “does your backup actually work, and when was the last time you tested it?” A working backup is worth more than any other single piece of IT infrastructure a small business can invest in.
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace support
Email won’t send. Shared calendars aren’t syncing. Someone’s locked out. These are almost always software-configuration issues, resolvable remotely in under an hour by someone who’s seen them a hundred times before.
Network and Wi-Fi
The router your ISP sent is fine for a home. In an office of five people running video calls, cloud apps and connected printers, it’s often the bottleneck. A proper business-grade access point costs around £100 and pays for itself the first time nobody has to ask “is it just me or is the Wi-Fi rubbish today?”
Honest advice before you spend money
Should you buy new laptops or upgrade the ones you have? Do you need a NAS or is a shared OneDrive folder fine? Is Microsoft 365 Business Standard enough, or do you need Premium? Getting this right up front saves more money than any retainer.
Retainer or ad-hoc? An honest comparison
✓ Ad-hoc is right for you if
This is where most Crawley small businesses actually sit.
! A retainer makes sense if
If none of these apply, ad-hoc is almost certainly better value.
How ad-hoc IT support works in Crawley
At Criddle, we work pay-as-you-go. You call when you need us, and you pay for the time we spend on the job. No monthly fees, no contract, no minimum commitment.
Our rates are simple: £29.99 per hour for everyday software and setup work (new starter onboarding, Microsoft 365 issues, virus removal, basic networking) and £49.99 per hour for hardware repairs, on-site visits and business IT work like server maintenance or business-grade Wi-Fi installs. Both include the time to actually diagnose the issue, not just fix it.
Response times: most software issues are handled remotely, often the same day. For on-site work in Crawley or nearby — Horley, Horsham, East Grinstead, Haywards Heath — we can usually be with you within 24 hours, and same-day for genuine urgencies. Every job is covered by our 28-day warranty and our no-fix-no-fee promise. You can see full rates on our pricing page.
A worked example: £17,600 saved
A small Crawley office of six people came to us recently. They’d been paying an MSP £750 per month for two years — £18,000 total — and used them roughly eight times in that whole period.
Three of those visits were “the printer’s broken”, four were password resets, and one was a genuine emergency (a ransomware scare, which turned out to be a phishing attempt they’d already caught themselves).
Under ad-hoc pricing, those same eight incidents at £30–£50 per hour, most under an hour each, would have cost them roughly £400 over two years. They saved £17,600 by switching — and they still had us on call for the actual emergency.
Your numbers may be different — that’s the point. Do the maths for your own business before you sign anything.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to sign a contract?
What if I need urgent help outside business hours?
Can you help with Cyber Essentials?
What areas do you cover?
How do I know when to switch to a retainer?
Ready to talk?
If you’re a small business in Crawley or the surrounding area and want to talk through whether IT support makes sense for you — with no sales pitch, no obligation, and no attempt to sell you something you don’t need — get in touch or call Bradley on 07356 295518.
We’ll ask a few questions about your setup and give you an honest recommendation. Sometimes that’s “yes, we can help, here’s roughly what it’d cost”. Sometimes it’s “actually, you don’t need us — here’s what to do yourself”. Either way, you’ll leave the conversation better informed than you started. You can also read more on our business IT support page.
For more straightforward, no-jargon guidance like this, browse our honest IT advice for homes and businesses across Crawley and West Sussex.