Nobody owns it
What most 1-15 person offices actually do
Free, apparently
The owner or whoever is most technical becomes IT by default. It works until it does not, and the hidden cost is their time plus the risk nobody is tracking.
Small Business IT Support · Treasure Valley
IT support built for offices of one to fifteen people.
Not a scaled-down enterprise plan. Not a call centre. Someone local who owns your computers, network, backups, and email for a flat monthly rate — so you can stop being the IT department.
Ascent Solutions provides outsourced IT support and computer management for small businesses across the Treasure Valley — IT support in Boise, Meridian, Nampa, and Caldwell. Services include help desk support, patch management, remote monitoring, tested backups, endpoint security, Microsoft 365 administration, network management, and vendor coordination, billed as a flat monthly rate per user. We specialise in businesses of 1–15 users, the size most managed service providers decline.
Why this page exists
Most IT companies don't want a six-person office.
It is not personal, it is arithmetic. A managed services business built around twenty-five-seat clients has a cost structure that does not work at five seats, so the honest ones turn you down and the rest quote you a number designed to make you leave.
The result is a genuine gap in this valley. Businesses with four to fifteen computers end up with no IT provider at all — the owner becomes the IT department by accident, backups go untested for years, and nobody notices the failing drive until it takes the customer database with it.
That gap is the entire reason this service is shaped the way it is. Small enough that you talk to the person who does the work. Experienced enough that it is done properly.
Plain English
"Outsourced IT" just means you rent the IT department.
The industry calls this managed services, an MSP, or co-managed IT. Ignore all of that. What it means in practice: instead of hiring somebody at $70,000 a year to look after fifteen computers — which no business your size can justify — you pay a monthly fee and get the function without the headcount.
You're already outsourcing IT, by the way. You're outsourcing it to yourself, or to whoever in the office is best with computers. That person has another job. The question isn't whether to outsource IT, it's whether to outsource it to someone who does it for a living.
Hiring someone internal
- Salary, benefits, payroll tax
- One person's knowledge, and one person's vacation
- Idle most of the week at your size
- You still buy the monitoring and backup tools
Outsourcing it to us
- Flat monthly fee per user, no employment cost
- Coverage that doesn't take a week off in July
- You only pay for the function, not the idle time
- Monitoring, patching, and backup tooling included
What's included
Everything that should be happening quietly in the background.
None of this is exciting. All of it is the difference between a business whose technology is boring and one that has a crisis every few weeks.
Help desk your people can actually reach
When something breaks, your staff call or email and get a person who already knows your setup. No re-explaining your environment every time, no ticket disappearing into a queue.
Monitoring and patching
Windows updates, driver updates, and application patches applied on a schedule instead of whenever somebody clicks the notification. Machines get watched, so failing drives and full disks surface before they take someone down.
Backup that gets tested
Configuring a backup is the easy part; almost everyone has one. We verify restores, because an untested backup is a hope, not a plan. This is the single most valuable thing on this list.
Antivirus, and the boring security basics
Endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication on email, sensible password practice, and the handful of settings that block most of what actually hits small businesses. Not enterprise theatre — the things that matter at your size.
Microsoft 365 administration
New user setup and offboarding, shared mailboxes, permissions, licence cleanup so you stop paying for people who left, and security settings that are almost never configured correctly out of the box.
Network and Wi-Fi
Router, switches, firewall, and access points — kept current, kept documented, and sized for your building rather than whatever the internet provider dropped off.
Vendor wrangling
When your line-of-business software or your internet connection is the problem, we deal with their support so you do not spend an afternoon on hold explaining it to three people.
Documentation and a plan
What you own, how it is configured, what it costs, when it needs replacing. Most small businesses have none of this, which is why every IT change turns into an archaeology project.
Your options
Honestly, four ways to handle this.
Including the two that aren't us, and the one where you should hire somebody else.
Call someone when it breaks
Break-fix, hourly
Per incident
Honest and reasonable for a home computer. For a business it means you only pay for problems, which also means nobody is preventing them — and the invoice always arrives at the worst time.
This is us
Managed IT support
Us — built for 1–15 users
Flat monthly, per user
Someone owns the outcome. Patching, backups, monitoring, and security run continuously, and support is included rather than metered. Predictable to budget and the incentive is finally aligned: we make money when nothing breaks.
A large regional MSP
Better for 25+ seats
Higher monthly minimums
Genuinely the right answer if you have compliance obligations, dozens of staff, or need 24/7 coverage. At your size you tend to be a small account with a long response time — and we will tell you if you have outgrown us.
Getting started
You get something useful before you pay us.
The walkthrough and the written assessment are yours to keep whether or not you hire us. If the answer is that you have three urgent problems and do not need ongoing support, we will say so.
- 01
A walkthrough
We come to your office and inventory what you actually have — machines, ages, network gear, software, who has access to what, and whether the backup works. Usually an hour or two.
- 02
An honest assessment
You get a written list of what we found, sorted by what would hurt most if it failed. Some of it you may want to fix before signing anything, and that is fine — the list is yours either way.
- 03
A flat quote
Priced per user per month, so it scales with your headcount and you can see exactly what changes when you hire. Any one-off remediation work is quoted separately so it is not buried in the monthly.
- 04
We take it over
Monitoring and backup agents get deployed, documentation gets written, and the known problems get worked through in priority order. From then on it is our problem, not yours.
Service area
On site across the valley.
We are in Meridian — closer to Nampa than Boise is. No travel surcharge for being on the Canyon County side.
5 min · Ada County
Meridian
20 min · Ada County
Boise
15 min · Canyon County
Nampa
25 min · Canyon County
Caldwell
Also serving Eagle, Kuna, Star, Garden City, Middleton, Parma, and Wilder. Need a one-off fix instead of ongoing support? That's computer repair.
FAQ
Common questions.
- What is the difference between outsourced IT, managed IT, and an MSP?
- Almost nothing — they are three names for the same thing, and the industry uses them interchangeably in a way that helps nobody. "Outsourced IT" means you pay an outside company to be your IT department instead of hiring one. "Managed IT services" is the same arrangement described from the vendor side. "MSP" stands for managed services provider, which is just what that vendor is called. If you were searching for any of those three, you were searching for this.
- Should we outsource IT or hire someone?
- At fifteen users and under, outsourcing almost always wins on arithmetic. A competent IT person costs a real salary plus benefits and payroll tax, and at your size they would be idle a large part of the week — while still being a single point of failure who takes holidays. You would also still be buying the monitoring, patching, and backup tooling separately. Somewhere past twenty-five or thirty staff the maths flips and an internal hire starts making sense, often alongside an outside provider rather than instead of one.
- How much does IT support cost for a small business?
- We price it as a flat monthly rate per user, which is the standard way managed IT works and the only way it stays predictable. The exact number depends on how many people you have, what condition the equipment is in, and how much of the stack you want us to own — so we quote it after the walkthrough rather than guessing on a web page. What we will commit to is that the number is fixed, includes support rather than metering it, and does not change when someone has a bad week.
- We only have five computers. Is that too small for managed IT?
- No, and this is the reason we exist. Most established IT firms in the valley have a practical minimum around twenty-five seats — below that you are not profitable enough for their model, so you get a polite no or a quote designed to make you go away. We are built for 1–15 users. A five-person office is a normal client here, not a favour.
- What is the difference between this and just calling you when something breaks?
- Incentives. On break-fix, we get paid when things go wrong. On managed support, we get paid a flat rate whether or not anything goes wrong — so patching, monitoring, and tested backups are in our interest as much as yours. Practically, the difference is that most of the problems you currently notice get caught and dealt with before you do.
- Do we have to replace all our computers first?
- No, and be suspicious of anyone who says yes. Some machines will genuinely be past it — an unsupported operating system is a real problem, not a sales tactic — but plenty of "old" computers just need a solid-state drive and more memory. The walkthrough tells you which is which, with a replacement schedule you can spread over time instead of a single alarming invoice.
- Are you locking us into a long contract?
- We will be straight with you: the pricing assumes some continuity, because the first month or two is where we do the unpaid work of learning and documenting your environment. But the terms are written to be readable and we will walk you through exactly what you are committing to before you sign. If you want out later, you leave with your documentation.
- Who actually shows up?
- At our size, the person you talk to is the person doing the work. That is the trade you are making — you do not get a 24-hour call centre, and you do get someone who knows your network without looking it up. Twenty years in IT, including six years building and running a managed services company here in the valley.
- Can you work with our existing software vendor?
- Yes, and dealing with them is part of the job. Whether it is your practice management system, your accounting package, or your point of sale, we handle the back-and-forth with their support so your staff do not have to.
- What about cybersecurity? We keep hearing we should worry.
- You should, but proportionately. Small businesses mostly get hit by boring things: a reused password, an email account with no multi-factor authentication, an unpatched machine, or a backup that turned out not to work. Those are the things included here. If you have specific compliance obligations — HIPAA, CMMC, PCI at scale — say so early, because that is a bigger conversation and possibly a different provider.
- Do you provide IT support in Boise, or only Meridian?
- Both, plus Nampa and Caldwell. We are based in Meridian — about twenty minutes from downtown Boise and, worth noting, genuinely closer to Nampa than Boise is. Canyon County businesses are a normal part of our week rather than an exception, and there is no travel surcharge for being on the far side of the valley.
- What if we want the AI and automation work too?
- Then you are in an unusual and good position, because very few shops our size can do both. But we would still want your IT stable first. Once it is, automating the repetitive work in your business is where the largest returns are — see AI consulting for what that involves.
Start with the walkthrough.
An hour or two on site, and you get a written picture of what you own, what is at risk, and what it would cost to have someone own it. Yours to keep either way.