YouGrowIT
Starting out
Starting a business? Get these six things right first
Almost nobody decides their IT when they start a business. It gets decided for them, by whatever was quickest in the first fortnight — and then it stays that way for a decade. This is the short list of things that are trivial on day one and genuinely expensive to undo in year three.
All of it is worth doing whether or not you ever ring us.
Why this list, and not a longer one
Plenty of people will hand a new business a twenty-item technology checklist. Most of those items can wait, and a few of them are somebody's product in disguise.
These six are on the list because of one shared property: each takes minutes now and days or months later. That's the whole test. Everything that fails it — the CRM, the phone system, the website, the automation — can safely wait until you know what your business actually does day to day, which you don't yet, no matter how good the plan is.
Nothing here needs an IT provider. It's a decent afternoon's work for a reasonably confident person, and we'd rather you did it yourself and got it right than paid someone to do it later.
The six decisions
Register the domain yourself, in your own name
Your domain is the one asset here you genuinely cannot replace. Buy it on an account in your business's name, with your own credit card and your own login. Not your web designer's account, not your cousin's, not the marketing agency's.
Why it's on the list. Getting a domain back off someone who has stopped replying to emails takes months, and sometimes doesn't work at all. Everything else on this list can be rebuilt in a weekend.
Get a real business email address on day one
you@yourbusiness.com.au, on a proper business mail platform — not a free personal account with the business name in the display line. Set it up before you print anything, hand out a card, or sign up for a single supplier account.
Why it's on the list. Changing your email address later means re-doing every supplier login, every bank record, every customer's address book and every invoice you've ever sent. It's the single most expensive small job we get asked to do.
Decide where files live before you have any
One place, in the cloud, that syncs to your machine. Not the desktop, not a USB drive, not a folder called "new folder (2)". Decide it once, on day one, and put everything there from then on.
Why it's on the list. Nobody ever reorganises their files later. Whatever pattern you set in the first month is the pattern you'll still have when there are twelve of you and you can't find the contract.
Turn on multi-factor authentication the moment you create each account
Email first, then the bank, then the accounting software, then everything else. Use an authenticator app rather than SMS where you're given the choice, and save the recovery codes somewhere that isn't the same phone.
Why it's on the list. It takes about ninety seconds per account when the account is new and empty. Retro-fitting it across a business with staff, shared logins and half-remembered passwords is a project.
Keep the business separate from you personally
A separate email account, a separate password manager vault, a separate login for anything financial. Don't run the business out of the same Google or Apple account that has your family photos in it.
Why it's on the list. The day you hire someone, sell the business, or have a falling-out with a partner, the line between 'yours' and 'the business's' has to already exist. Drawing it afterwards is legal work, not IT work.
Work out what happens if the laptop is stolen tonight
Not a hypothetical — actually answer it. If the machine went missing on the way home, what would you have lost, what could someone read, and how long until you're working again? If you don't like the answer, that's the thing to fix this week.
Why it's on the list. For most new businesses the honest answer in month one is 'everything, all of it, and about a fortnight'. It should be 'nothing, they can't get in, and I'd be working by lunchtime'.
The mistakes that cost the most later
These are the five we're called in to unpick most often, years after the fact. None of them looked like a mistake at the time — that's rather the point.
Signing up for everything with a personal address
Every supplier account, the domain, the accounting software and the bank all attached to a Gmail address you made in 2014. Untangling this is the most common first job we do for a business at the three-year mark, and it's tedious in a way that costs real hours.
Letting someone else own the domain or the website
Usually a web designer, always with good intentions, occasionally a person who has since moved to Bali. Ask, in writing, whose name the domain is registered in and get the login. If the answer is vague, that's your answer.
One login that everybody uses
It works fine with two people and it fails badly the first time someone leaves. You can't remove one person's access, you can't tell who did what, and every system that matters is now protected by a password three people have texted to each other.
Choosing software you can't get your data back out of
Before you commit to a job system, a CRM or a booking platform, ask one question: can I export everything, in a format something else can read? If the sales rep has to check, assume no. Switching later is what makes small businesses feel trapped by their software.
Assuming the cloud is a backup
It isn't. Cloud file storage faithfully syncs your mistakes, and it faithfully syncs ransomware. It protects you from a dead laptop, which is genuinely useful, and from nothing else. What a real backup covers is worth ten minutes of reading before you need it.
What you don't need yet
Being told what not to buy is more useful at this stage than being told what to buy, and you'll get plenty of the second from everyone else.
A server
Almost no business starting today needs one. If someone is quoting you a server before you've got staff, ask them to explain what it does that cloud storage doesn't.
A support package
Ours start at a monthly minimum, and below about five people that's usually poor value. We'll say so — see the pay-as-you-go rates instead.
An IT Health Check
It exists to find out what's already there. On day one there's nothing to find. Come back when you've got a few years and a few machines behind you.
Anything with a three-year contract
Phones, internet, hardware leases, software. Your business will not look the same in three years. Month to month costs slightly more and is worth it.
The two things worth spending real money on early are the machine you work on every day and the software your trade actually runs on. Almost everything else can be added the month you need it.
What it costs to get help with this
If you'd rather not do it yourself, setting up a new business properly is normally a couple of hours of remote work at our published pay-as-you-go rate — $181.50/hr inc GST ($165.00 ex). Domain, mail platform, file storage, MFA on every account, and the machine set up so a theft is an inconvenience rather than a disaster.
Software licences are passed through at what they cost. We don't mark them up, and we don't take commissions on anything we recommend — which is also why you'll sometimes hear us say a cheaper option is fine.
We'll tell you before we start if we think you can do it yourself. That happens reasonably often at this stage, and it's not us being modest — a business that sets its own accounts up understands them, and understanding them is worth more than the two hours saved.
Straight answers
I'm a sole trader. Is any of this overkill?
No. The first four — your own domain, a real business email address, one place for files, and MFA — are the same job whether there's one of you or twenty, and they're about an afternoon. It's the rest that scales with headcount.
Should I get an IT provider before I've got staff?
Usually not on an ongoing package. Ours carry a monthly minimum, and below about five people that's poor value — we'd tell you so on the phone rather than sell you one. Pay-as-you-go for the setup and the occasional problem is the honest answer at that size.
Mac or Windows?
Find out what your industry software runs on, then buy machines that run it. That one question settles it far more often than any general argument about the two platforms, and getting it backwards is an expensive way to find out.
Do I need my own email server, or is Microsoft 365 fine?
A hosted platform is fine, and it's what nearly every business this size should use. Running your own mail server in 2026 is a specialist decision with real consequences — if nobody has explained to you why you'd want one, you don't. How we set Microsoft 365 up covers what's involved.
Someone's offering me free Google Workspace. Should I take it?
Be careful with anything described as free or legacy — Google has been ending old free tiers and moving those businesses onto paid plans, sometimes at short notice. What that notice means, and what your options are. A current paid plan you chose deliberately is a perfectly good answer; an old free one you inherited is a countdown.
I've already started and got some of this wrong.
Everything on this list is fixable, and it's cheaper today than next year. The cost scales with how many accounts, staff and years have piled on top of it — which is an argument for ringing sooner rather than for feeling bad about it.
Are you only in Melbourne?
Setting a new business up is nearly all remote work, so we can do it anywhere in Australia. Anyone driving out is metro Melbourne only.
Come back to us in a couple of years
We're straight about the fact that a brand-new business usually isn't our client yet. What we'd rather have is that you set it up properly, get on with the actual business, and know where we are when there are six of you and the wheels start wobbling.
If you want a second opinion on any of the six before you commit to something, ask. It's a short conversation and it doesn't turn into a proposal.
A shorter version of this lives in the help centre as well — Starting a new business: the IT decisions to get right first. Free to read, client or not.
Not sure what you need at all? Start here sorts it in one click, or six questions will tell you whether we're a fit — including when the answer is no.