Business IT support on the Gold Coast is typically charged either hourly or as a flat monthly managed fee. bcom ICT charges $198 + GST per hour ($217.80 inc GST), plus a $100 + GST call-out ($110 inc GST) for on-site attendance — so a first hour on site is $298 + GST. Remote support carries no call-out. Managed IT is a flat monthly fee calculated from business requirements and services included, quoted after a free review.
Hourly, or a monthly fee
Almost every Australian IT provider works one of these two ways. Which suits you depends on what an hour of downtime costs.
Hourly / break-fix
You pay when something goes wrong. Typically an hourly rate plus a call-out for on-site attendance. Predictable per job, unpredictable per year. Suits simple setups where a problem is an annoyance rather than a crisis.
Managed IT
A flat monthly fee covering monitoring, helpdesk, patching and backup. Predictable per year, more expensive in a quiet month. Suits businesses with a server, staff who can't work without their systems, or client data they'd need to prove is protected.
Our published rates
Billed in hourly increments and agreed before work starts. Remote support carries no call-out, which is why we try remote first wherever the fault allows it.
We publish these because the alternative — "contact us for pricing" — wastes everyone's time and tends to mean the number moves depending on who's asking. See pricing for the full picture including projects.
What drives a managed IT quote
There is no per-seat figure, because two businesses with the same headcount can differ by a factor of three. These are the things that actually move it.
- Do you run a server? On-premise servers carry maintenance, patching and backup that cloud-only businesses simply don't have.
- How old is the hardware? An ageing fleet generates support hours no provider can prevent. Sometimes replacement is the cheaper support strategy.
- How many sites? One office is straightforward. Three sites with connectivity between them is a different job.
- What has to stay available? A business that can lose a morning is priced differently to one that can't lose an hour.
- What compliance applies? AFS licensees, health providers and businesses handling sensitive data need controls and evidence that others don't.
- How documented is it now? An undocumented environment costs more to take on, because the first month is discovery.
Questions worth asking about any quote
What's not included?
Projects, hardware, after-hours work and per-ticket charges are the usual exclusions. "Unlimited support" with a per-ticket fee is not unlimited. Get the boundary in writing.
Is there a minimum term?
A three-year agreement protects the provider. Ask what the term is actually buying you — occasionally it's bundled hardware, more often it isn't.
What's the response commitment?
A monthly fee with no written response target is a subscription, not a service level. Ask for it by priority, in writing.
What happens if we leave?
Whether documentation, credentials and licences get handed over. Worth asking before you join rather than after.
When the honest answer is "you don't need us monthly"
Plenty of Gold Coast businesses are better served by hourly support than by a managed agreement, and we say so regularly. If you have a handful of laptops, everything in the cloud, no server and no compliance obligations, a monthly fee may be buying you very little.
Two things are worth doing regardless of which model you choose: multi-factor authentication on every account, and a backup you have actually watched restore. Between them they prevent most of what genuinely damages a small business, and neither is expensive.
Questions Gold Coast businesses ask us
How much does IT support cost on the Gold Coast?
bcom ICT charges $198 + GST per hour ($217.80 inc GST) for business IT support, plus a $100 + GST call-out ($110 inc GST) for on-site attendance — a first hour on site is $298 + GST ($327.80 inc GST). Remote support carries no call-out. Managed IT is a flat monthly fee calculated from your requirements and the services included, quoted after a free review.
Is managed IT cheaper than paying hourly?
In a quiet month, no. Over a year it usually is — and that's before counting staff hours lost to problems nobody is preventing. The real difference is predictability: a flat monthly fee can be budgeted, and you're never weighing up whether a problem is worth a call-out.
Why won't providers publish managed IT prices?
Partly because a single figure would mislead — the same headcount can cost three times as much depending on servers, hardware age, sites and compliance. Partly because some providers prefer the number to be negotiable. Ask for a quote after a proper review rather than a figure over the phone.
Should we pay for a quote or an assessment?
Quoting should be free. A detailed security or systems assessment reasonably carries a fee, but it should be fixed and agreed before it starts, and you should keep the report regardless of what you do next.
What's a reasonable hourly rate for business IT?
It varies with experience and what's included. What matters more than the headline rate is whether the provider tries remote first — remote work with no call-out is often cheaper overall than a lower hourly rate with a call-out attached to every job.
Do we get charged for travel?
We charge a single $100 + GST call-out for on-site attendance across the Gold Coast rather than billing travel time by distance. It's the same figure whether you're in Broadbeach or Coomera.
Related services
Want a real number for your business?
The review is free and the quote is based on what you actually run — not on a headcount and an assumption.