Managed IT Support in Geelong
GravIT provides small business IT support across Geelong, the Bellarine and Surf Coast: help desk, monitoring, patching and backup management on a fixed-price contract with no hidden call-out fees. It is the arrangement the industry calls a managed service provider, or MSP: we take the whole IT function rather than billing you by the hour. Geelong owned and operated, so when you call, a local technician answers.
What managed IT support includes
Everything your business needs to keep computers, servers and people working, handled day to day by the same local team:
- Unlimited help desk. Remote and on-site, with no meter running. Ring, email or start a remote session; a technician picks it up, not a ticketing bot.
- IT infrastructure support. By phone, remotely, or on location when hands are needed on hardware.
- Backup monitoring and management. We watch your backups, test restores, and fix failures before you ever need the data.
- Proactive monitoring and patching. Most problems are fixed remotely before you notice them.
- User onboarding and offboarding, asset and licence tracking, monthly reporting.
How managed IT support is priced
Fixed-price support contracts, sized to your business. No hidden call-out fees, no surprise invoices for picking up the phone. If ad hoc suits you better, hourly support is available too.
And you choose the term. One, three or five years, and whichever you pick is fine by us. Starting on a year so we can prove ourselves is a perfectly good answer. Here is how the three compare.
Same-day on-site assistance across Geelong and surrounds, and rapid remote response the moment you call. Because we're based at 95 Mornington Street in North Geelong rather than interstate, a technician can be at your Geelong CBD, Grovedale, Waurn Ponds, Torquay or Ocean Grove site the same day.
Why businesses switch to us
- Unlimited help desk, fixed monthly price
- No hidden call-out fees
- Named account manager and technical lead
- Same-day on-site response
- Local Geelong team that answers the phone itself
- Backups monitored and tested
- One supplier for IT, 365 and web
“Urgent” is not a tone of voice
On a support agreement it is a priority level with a number attached, and the level is set by how much of your business has stopped, not by who is asking. These four rows are lifted from Schedule 2 of our services agreement, which means they are the same targets you would be signing.
- 30minutesP1Service not available
Every user and every function is down.
- 1hourP2Significant degradation
A large number of users, or a business-critical function, affected.
- 4hoursP3Limited degradation
Some users or functions affected, but work can continue.
- 1business dayP4Maintenance request
A new user account, a change, a question.
Two honest caveats, because a response table is easy to misread
These apply during normal business hours. Critical problems outside them go to an on-call technician who starts remotely straight away, but after-hours work is charged at an out-of-hours rate rather than being included in the monthly fee. The agreement is explicit about that and we would rather you read it here than find it on an invoice.
These are response times, not fix times. They are how long before a technician picks it up and starts investigating. How long a repair takes depends on what broke, and anyone who promises a guaranteed resolution time without knowing the fault is guessing.
We work remote-first because it is faster. Most things are fixed while you are still on the phone. On-site happens when hardware, networking or simply being in the room is the quickest way through, and being twenty minutes from most of Geelong is what makes that practical.
One, three or five years, and the choice is yours
Half a decade is a long time to promise anything, and a long time to be right about a supplier you have not worked with yet. We offer all three terms, we will tell you which one we think fits, and then it is completely up to you, including the short one.
One year
Sensible when you are trying a new provider
- The standard term on our services agreement
- Long enough for us to fix what is actually wrong rather than only the noise
- Short enough to be an easy yes while you are still deciding about us
- Move to a longer term afterwards if you want to, or simply stay here
Three years
A settled plan, once you know how we work
- Suits a hardware refresh or migration you are planning anyway
- Budget certainty across the whole term
- Usually chosen after a first year with us, not before it
Five years
Long-horizon planning, usually around a big project
- Certainty on both sides across a longer stretch
- Fits infrastructure that gets planned in five-year cycles
- Available because some businesses want it, and never the only option on the table
A long contract does not make the service better. If the work is good you will want to keep us; if it is not, a five-year term only means you spend longer being unhappy about it.
So we would rather earn year two than have it signed away before we have done anything. Prove-it-first is a perfectly reasonable answer to give an IT provider, and it is the one we would give in your position.
The bit worth reading in any agreement, ours included
Check what happens at the end of the term. Ours renews for a further twelve months, whatever the first term was, unless one of us gives written notice at least 30 days before it ends. That is ordinary and it is in the agreement you sign. It is also the clause that quietly turns a short contract into a long one, so ask every provider you are talking to where their notice window sits.
Ask what the term is actually for. A longer term is fair enough when it is buying something: hardware amortised across it, a project priced over it, a rate held still. When the only thing it buys is your inability to leave, that is worth naming out loud.
And ask what leaving actually involves. Ours is short: your access and your documentation come back at the end of the agreement, and your data comes with you if you ask us before your end date. That is written into the agreement, rather than offered as a favour or charged as a line item. Beyond that you are committed to the term you chose, the same as you would be anywhere. Which is the whole reason we would rather you picked a term you are comfortable with than the longest one on the table.
“We already have someone who looks after our IT”
Plenty of businesses do, and it works right up until it does not. The problem is rarely the person. It is that IT stopped being a single skill a long time ago, and these all pull in different directions at once:
- Networking
- Microsoft 365
- Cyber security
- Backup and recovery
- Phone systems
- Servers and cloud
- Line-of-business software
- Websites and email
Expecting one person to stay current on all of that means getting real depth in one and their best guess at the rest. They also take holidays, and problems do not.
What you get here instead is a team with a wide range of skills, rather than one person with one skill. Often that one person is Mike from accounts, who knows a bit about IT and has quietly become the help desk.
That is not a dig at Mike. It was never his job, and whether the business can open on Monday should not rest on him remembering how the server was set up.
So the arrangement we prefer is the simple one: we become your IT department. The whole function, owned by us, rather than a supplier propping one up. That is where the saving actually comes from: a team carrying every one of those skills costs a business considerably less than employing one person who can only ever have some of them.
What you keep on your side is an IT contact rather than an IT hire: someone who knows the business and can tell us what matters this week. That is a hat somebody already wears, not a position you need to fill.
It is a preference rather than a rule. Where a business already has its own IT person we can work with them, and we will tell you up front rather than later that we would rather one team owned the lot. Split ownership is where jobs fall between the two of you and neither side notices until something is down. Where a business decides to hand the whole function over, we have done that transition many times. Nothing gets switched off until its replacement is proven.
Most of what stops your day is not Microsoft
It is the practice management system, the ledger, the job-costing package, the thing that stops the day when it stops. We support the layer underneath it: the server or cloud it runs on, the database, the updates, the backups, and the vendor call when the problem really is theirs.
- Clinical
- Best Practice and Pracsoft, including database health and after-hours maintenance windows, so a waiting room never waits on a reboot.
- Legal
- LEAP, and the document systems that sit around it.
- Accounting
- MYOB Accountants Office and Accountants Enterprise, including the server side and the database behind them.
- Design and drafting
- AutoCAD, and the workstations, storage and file performance that decide whether it is pleasant to use.
- Microsoft
- Microsoft 365 and Exchange Online.
- Server operating systems
- Windows Server, plus AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Ubuntu and CloudLinux.
- Virtualisation and storage
- XCP-ng and Synology.
- Backup
- Veeam.
- Security
- SentinelOne endpoint protection and MailGuard email security.
- Web
- cPanel and WordPress, on our own servers.
If your line-of-business software is not on that list, ask. We would rather tell you honestly whether we have supported it before than pretend every package is the same.
Frequently asked questions
How much does managed IT support cost in Geelong?
GravIT works on fixed-price support contracts sized to your business, with no hidden call-out fees. The price you agree is the price you pay. Ad hoc hourly support is also available. Call 03 5280 8088 for a quote based on your headcount and setup.
What does "get a tech, not a ticket" actually mean?
When you call GravIT you speak to a technician from our Geelong team who starts working on the problem, rather than a call centre that logs a ticket and puts you in a queue. Support is delivered by the local team and never offshore.
How quickly can someone be on site?
We offer same-day on-site response across Geelong, the Bellarine and Surf Coast. Many issues are fixed faster than that by remote support, and most problems don't need a site visit at all.
Do you monitor and manage our backups?
Yes. Backup monitoring and management is part of our managed IT service: we check backups are actually completing, test that they restore, and fix failures before you need the data back.
Can you support staff outside Geelong?
Yes. On-site work covers Geelong and regional Victoria; remote support covers your whole team Australia-wide, wherever they're working from.
Do we have to sign a long contract?
That is entirely your call. We offer one, three and five year terms, and one year is the standard term on our services agreement. If you would rather start there and make us prove ourselves before committing to more, that is a sensible thing to do and we are happy with it. The inclusions and the price go in writing before you commit either way. The three terms compared.
Should we sign a five-year IT support contract?
Only if the length is buying you something: hardware amortised across it, a project priced over it, a rate held still. A long term does not make the service better, and if a provider will only quote you five years, it is fair to ask what the other four are protecting. We offer five years to businesses that want that certainty, but never as the only option, and never before you have seen us work.
Stop waiting in a support queue
Tell us what's slow, broken or worrying you. We'll tell you straight what's worth fixing and what it'll cost.