Who it's for
Growing SMB 5-8 staff who want strategic IT, not just operational support
- → Growing trades business — director + 4-7 field/office staff
- → Allied health practice with multiple practitioners + admin
- → Professional services firm at the 5-15 staff inflection point
- → Business that's previously been on Essentials and is now feeling the limits
Why Standard
Standard is the inflection point. At 5+ staff, you stop needing IT-as-utility and start needing IT-as-strategic-function. That means someone meeting with you monthly to talk about what's working, what isn't, what's coming. It means upgraded email security because BEC attacks find the 5-15 user range juicy. It means a documentation layer the team can actually use.
Monthly Business Reviews (MBRs) are the headline addition — 60 minutes once a month with Daniel where we walk through ticket trends, security score, licence usage, anything coming up, and what to do about it. This is the difference between a vendor and an IT partner.
Standard also adds Defender for O365 P2 — Threat Explorer for forensic email search, Automated Investigation and Response (AIR), and Attack Simulator for in-house phishing simulations. Not visible to users; very visible in incident response.
What's included
Everything in Standard, by category.
Bundled price; no separate line items. The list below is the full scope of what we deliver at this tier.
- ✓ All Essentials inclusions, plus:
- ✓ Microsoft Defender for O365 P2 — Threat Explorer, AIR, Attack Simulator
- ✓ Cloudflare Gateway Standard — enhanced DNS filtering + 100+ content categories
- ✓ Per-tenant Conditional Access policies (customised beyond baseline)
- ✓ Exclaimer Pro tier (upgrades from Essentials' Standard tier) — adds banner campaigns + analytics
- ✓ 1Password Business — full shared-vault structure with role-based access
- ✓ M365 tenant hardening (CIS baseline)
- ✓ Basic compliance policy templates (AUP, BYOD, etc.)
- ✓ AI Ready pack — Acceptable Use Policy + tool register + annual review (bundled)
- ✓ Monthly Business Review (MBR) — 60-min strategic + operational meeting
- ✓ Light vCIO — quarterly roadmap input, technology decisions, vendor coordination
- ✓ Documentation maintained in Hudu with full client access
What's NOT included
Honest about the boundaries.
Other MSPs leave this off their service pages and then surprise you with line items. Here's the explicit list of what you don't get at Standard.
- ✕ Premium-tier human SOC (Huntress)
- ✕ Application allowlisting (ThreatLocker-class)
- ✕ After-hours best-effort response
- ✕ After-hours on-call retainer
- ✕ Quarterly Business Reviews (Premium-only)
- ✕ Essential Eight Maturity Level 1+ certification (add-on project)
Need more?
Add managed AV with human SOC, application allowlisting, and after-hours coverage.
Premium adds the inclusions you're missing here. Worth the difference if you fit the description.
See Premium →FAQ
Common questions — Standard
What happens in a Monthly Business Review?
What's the difference between Standard and Premium?
Is the AI Ready pack really bundled at Standard?
Onboarding fee and contract term?
Ready to talk about Standard?
30-minute discovery call. We'll confirm fit and quote your specific scenario. No sales script.
Book a 30-min discovery call →