Answers to the questions we hear most often

We proactively monitor, maintain, and secure your systems around the clock so problems get caught and fixed before they cause downtime — instead of you calling us in a panic after something's already broken. Think of it as a full IT department for a fraction of the cost of hiring one internally.

Every plan includes remote monitoring and management, endpoint security, and patching for your desktops, laptops, and servers. From there, our tiers add layers like remote helpdesk support or full Microsoft 365 tenant management, depending on what your team needs.

Essentials Endpoint covers monitoring, patching, and a full security SOC for your Windows desktops, laptops, and servers. Essentials + Helpdesk adds remote helpdesk support for your team on top of that. Essentials Workspace focuses on managing your Microsoft 365 environment — email, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Many clients combine tiers to match their actual needs.

Both, depending on the client. Some businesses use us as their entire IT department; others keep an internal IT person or team and lean on us for helpdesk overflow, security monitoring, after-hours coverage, or specialized projects.

Response time depends on severity — critical issues like a downed server or a security incident get immediate attention, while routine requests are typically handled the same business day. We walk through the specific response targets during onboarding.

Pricing is based on your device count and the tier you choose, not a one-size-fits-all flat number. That keeps your monthly cost predictable and proportional to what you're actually using.

No. We quote a clear monthly rate up front based on your environment, so you won't see surprise line items on your invoice. Any project work or on-demand service, outside the plan, is scoped and approved before we start.

You're not locked in — as your business grows we simply adjust your tier or device count. There's no painful re-signup process and no lost history.

We support both. Most of our small business clients run a mix of Windows and Mac devices, and our monitoring and security coverage extends across both.

Yes — remote employees, multiple offices, and hybrid teams are all things we manage regularly. Our monitoring and support don't depend on everyone sitting in one building.

Onboarding starts with a full assessment of your current environment, then we deploy our monitoring and security agents and document your systems. Most onboardings are complete within the first couple of weeks without disrupting your day-to-day work.

Your systems, documentation, and data are yours. If you ever leave, we'll help transition everything over cleanly — we don't hold your environment hostage.

We don't rely on long-term lock-in to keep clients — we'd rather earn your business every month by doing good work.

Patching and updates run automatically in the background through our remote monitoring platform, and we track patch compliance across your whole environment so nothing quietly falls behind.

We start with a no-obligation assessment of your current setup — what's working, what's a risk, and what a plan tailored to your business actually looks like — before anything is installed or changed.

Small businesses are actually targeted more often than most people assume, precisely because attackers know smaller companies tend to have weaker defenses. Size doesn't make you invisible — it just means the impact of an attack can hit harder relative to your business.

Our managed security includes 24/7 threat monitoring and response from a real security operations team, endpoint protection across your devices, and rapid isolation of compromised systems — on top of the patching and monitoring included in managed IT.

Our security operations team monitors your environment around the clock and alerts on suspicious activity — you're not relying on someone happening to notice something looks off.

Our security team can identify and isolate a compromised account or device quickly to stop an incident from spreading, then works with our IT team to fully clean up, reset access, and restore normal operations.

Recovery speed depends on the severity of the attack and whether clean backups are in place — which is exactly why we pair security monitoring with real backup and recovery planning rather than treating them as separate problems.

Both — automated tools handle detection and response around the clock, but real security analysts review and act on alerts rather than leaving everything to software.

Yes, security monitoring runs 24/7/365, not just during business hours.

Yes — when a threat is detected, a compromised device can be isolated from the rest of your network to stop it from spreading while it's investigated and addressed.

Our security coverage is built around the kind of monitoring, response, and reporting that cyber insurance carriers and many compliance frameworks expect, though we'd recommend checking your specific policy or framework requirements directly.

Full security coverage is bundled into our Essentials Endpoint managed IT tier, and it's also available as a standalone service for businesses that already have their own IT support in place.

Yes — you don't have to be a full managed IT client to get our security monitoring and response coverage layered onto your existing IT setup.

Email filtering and monitoring are part of our security stack, catching a large share of phishing attempts before they ever reach an inbox, backed by guidance for your team on what still gets through.

Traditional antivirus just scans for known threats on a single device. What we provide is active, 24/7 monitoring and response across your whole environment, with a team watching for behavior that looks like an attack — not just a known virus signature.

Patching of your desktop, laptop, and servers is separate than stand alone security, but is included in our Essentials Endpoint tiers of Managed IT.

Call us immediately. Don't try to "clean it up" yourself first — the priority is containing the incident before anything else, and every minute matters.

No — sync tools keep a live copy of files, but they'll happily sync a deletion, corruption, or ransomware encryption right along with everything else. A real backup keeps historical, recoverable versions completely separate from your live data.

It depends on the system, but our backups typically cover full servers, workstation data, and Microsoft 365 email and files — not just a folder of documents.

Frequency depends on the system and your needs, with server backups typically running multiple times a day and workstation backups running at least daily.

Backups are stored both locally (for fast recovery) and in the cloud (for protection against fire, theft, or a disaster at your location), so you're never dependent on a single copy.

Desktop and laptop backups are kept for a minimum of 90 days. Server retention is customized to your business's needs, and email backups are retained indefinitely.

Recovery time depends on what's being restored — a single file can typically be recovered in minutes, while a full server restore takes longer but is planned for as part of your backup strategy from day one.

Backups are one of your best defenses against ransomware, since we can restore clean data from before an attack instead of paying a ransom. We also design retention and storage so backups themselves aren't an easy target.

Yes — Microsoft 365 doesn't automatically back up your email and files the way most people assume, so we include that in our backup coverage, as part of our Essentials Workspace IT service coverage.

Backups are actively monitored, not just assumed to be running — if a backup job fails or looks abnormal, it's flagged and addressed.

Backup is about protecting the data itself. Disaster recovery is the broader plan for getting your whole business back up and running — systems, access, and data — after a major event.

We can restore a deleted or overwritten file from a recent backup point, rather than it being gone for good.

Yes, though the frequency and retention differ slightly — servers are treated as more business-critical and are typically backed up more frequently.

Backup can be bundled into a managed IT plan or added as a standalone service, depending on what fits your current setup.

For most small businesses, the real cost isn't just lost data — it's the downtime, lost revenue, and reputational damage of being unable to operate for days. Backup and recovery planning is inexpensive by comparison.

It covers keeping your firewall, Wi-Fi, and switches configured correctly, monitored, and kept up to date — the infrastructure that everything else on your network depends on.

Slow or dropping Wi-Fi is almost always a sign of outdated equipment, poor access point placement, too many devices on one access point, or a misconfigured network — all things we diagnose and fix as part of network management.

It's not automatically bundled into every managed IT plan — you can add it to any plan, or take it as a standalone service even if we're not your full IT provider.

We monitor your network daily, watching for performance issues, outages, and security events, rather than waiting for something to break.

We typically deploy enterprise-grade business networking equipment, which you own outright — we're just the ones keeping it configured and healthy.

In most cases, yes — dead zones are usually solved with better access point placement or coverage planning rather than simply adding more equipment.

Segmentation splits your network into separate zones (like guest Wi-Fi, staff devices, and point-of-sale systems) so a problem in one area can't spread to the rest. It's especially valuable for PCI compliance and overall security.

Yes — internet failover (a secondary connection that kicks in automatically if your primary internet drops) is available as a paid add-on for businesses that can't afford downtime.

Yes, we regularly manage networks across multiple office locations as a single, unified environment.

Managed IT covers your devices and users; network management covers the infrastructure connecting all of it together. Many clients run both, since one supports the other.

We assess what you already have first. If your existing equipment is solid, we configure and manage it rather than pushing an unnecessary replacement.

Daily monitoring flags unusual activity, performance drops, or outages — often before your team notices anything is wrong.

Fewer outages, faster Wi-Fi, better security segmentation, and infrastructure that can actually support your business as it grows — not just today's default router settings.

A Microsoft 365 subscription includes email hosting, OneDrive and SharePoint storage, and desktop/online versions of Office apps — but proper setup, security configuration, and ongoing management are things most businesses need help with to actually get the value out of it.

OneDrive is your personal cloud drive for individual files; SharePoint is built for shared team and company-wide document libraries. As a rule of thumb, if more than one person needs regular access to a file, it belongs in SharePoint, not someone's personal OneDrive.

We manage the whole environment — your email, SharePoint sites, OneDrive, security settings, and user accounts — not just the computers that connect to it.

Yes, we handle migrations from other email systems (or older Microsoft setups) with a plan to move mail, contacts, calendars, and files without data loss or extended downtime.

This is one of the most common misunderstandings — Microsoft keeps your data available, but doesn't provide the kind of point-in-time backup you'd need to recover from accidental deletion, corruption, or ransomware. That's why we include Microsoft 365 backup as part of our Essentials Workspace IT Service.

Yes — we set up shared team folders and document libraries in SharePoint so your team can stop emailing files back and forth and start working from one current version.

We handle offboarding as part of ongoing management — securing or forwarding their email, transferring ownership of their files, and removing access, so nothing falls through the cracks when someone leaves.

Yes, spam filtering and phishing protection for your email are part of what we manage and monitor.

Yes — we track your licensing so you're paying for the right number of the right seats, not carrying (or missing) licenses you don't need.

Yes, Microsoft 365's real-time co-authoring lets multiple people work in the same document safely, with version history if anything needs to be rolled back.

Yes — cleaning up scattered personal drives, random file shares, and inconsistent folder structures into one organized, properly permissioned setup is a common project for us.

Microsoft secures the platform itself, but how your accounts, permissions, and settings are configured determines your actual exposure — that configuration and monitoring is where we come in.

Yes, we support Teams as part of the broader Microsoft 365 environment, not just email and files.

Microsoft 365 management is the focus of our Essentials Workspace tier, though elements of it — like security and backup — can also apply if you're on a different tier. We'll map out exactly what's covered for your setup.

VoIP runs your phone system over the internet instead of old copper phone lines, which means lower costs, more features (auto attendants, voicemail-to-email, mobile apps), and the flexibility to work from anywhere — without sacrificing call quality.

Voice calls use relatively little bandwidth, but we check your current internet connection during setup to make sure it can comfortably handle your call volume alongside everything else you do online.

Our platform runs across multiple geographically redundant data centers, and most plans support mobile and desktop apps so your team can keep taking calls from a phone or laptop even if the office internet is down.

In almost every case, yes — we handle porting your existing numbers over so your customers never notice a change.

Often, yes — many existing desk phones are compatible. Where they're not, we'll help you pick replacements that fit your budget.

A typical small business migration takes one to a few weeks, depending on number-porting timelines and how many lines and features you're setting up. We manage the whole process so it doesn't fall on you.

Yes. On a properly configured connection, VoIP call quality matches or exceeds a traditional landline, and issues are usually a sign of an underlying network problem we can fix.

Yes — that's one of VoIP's biggest advantages. Remote and hybrid staff can use the exact same extension, voicemail, and call features as someone sitting at a desk in the office.

Yes, multiple locations can share one phone system, with calls routed between offices as if they were one building.

Auto attendants, voicemail-to-email, call queues and ring groups, mobile/desktop apps, and call recording are all available depending on your plan — we'll help you pick the features that fit how your team actually works.

Many popular CRMs and business tools integrate with the platform; we'll confirm compatibility with what you use during setup.

VoIP calls run on the same encrypted, monitored platform behind more than a million business phone endpoints — properly configured, it's not an easy target.

Yes, 911 calling is supported and registered to your physical address.

Cost depends on your line count and feature set. Most small businesses find it's meaningfully less than what they were paying their previous phone carrier once features are factored in.

Yes, VoIP is billed as its own system, separate from managed IT — but it's supported and monitored by the same WesTech team you already work with, so there's only one number to call either way.

Fees are built from several layers — interchange fees set by the card networks, the processor's markup, your industry's risk classification, and how you accept payments (in person, online, or keyed-in). Most business owners have never had someone actually break that down for them.

Yes — we review your current statements and processing setup at no cost to identify exactly where you're overpaying and what a better setup would look like.

We've helped clients save well over $100,000 a year combined in processing fees and unnecessary PCI compliance charges, simply by cleaning up what they were already paying for.

Interchange-plus passes through the true card network cost plus a transparent markup; flat-rate charges one simple percentage regardless of card type; tiered pricing lumps transactions into buckets that often hide markup in a "non-qualified" tier. We help you understand which structure your current processor is actually using.

Yes — PCI compliance fees, statement fees, gateway fees, monthly minimums, and early termination fees are common places processors quietly add cost. We flag all of it during a review.

PCI compliance means meeting the security standards required to handle card data safely. Most small businesses have some exposure they don't realize, usually through outdated network setups or unmanaged point-of-sale systems.

For clients on our managed network services, we can use network segmentation (VLANs) and traffic shaping to isolate payment systems from the rest of your network, which directly supports PCI compliance and can reduce your compliance scope.

We can do either — sometimes a review shows your current processor just needs the right plan or fee correction, and other times switching is the better move. We're not tied to one processor, so the recommendation is based on your numbers, not a sales quota.

We aim for terms that make sense for your business, and we'll flag any long-term lock-in or early termination fees before you sign anything.

We work with a wide range of point-of-sale systems, gateways, and accounting integrations rather than forcing you onto one platform.

We work with businesses across many industries, including ones that get labeled "high risk" by some processors, and can help find a processing setup that actually fits.

Deposit timing depends on your processor and setup, but next-business-day funding is standard for most of the options we work with.

Yes — for businesses that want a simple, self-service setup, we offer Square processing through our partner portal as one available option.

You call us either way. We manage the relationship and troubleshoot on your behalf, so you're not stuck on hold with a call center trying to explain your own business.