No lock-in, and we mean it: how our contract actually works

The Australian MSP baseline is still 3–5 year lock-in contracts with painful exit clauses. A small but growing number of providers now advertise "no lock-in," but the actual mechanics vary wildly — minimum spends, staggered exit fees, licence structures that keep you paying anyway.

We wanted to write down exactly what "no lock-in" means when we say it, so there's nothing to argue about.

Our contract, in plain English

• Month-to-month billing. You pay for the month you use. Not the year.
• No minimum term. You can end the engagement on 90 days' written notice — the same notice we'd give you.
• Guaranteed 5-business-day full exit on completion of that notice period. Your documentation is portable, credentials are transferred, and we're done. No dragged-out handover to punish you for leaving.
• Microsoft 365 licences are sold monthly or annually pre-paid. Never annual-billed-monthly — because annual-billed-monthly is the classic trap where you're "on a monthly plan" but actually locked in for 12 months.
• No claw-back of "discounts." If we quoted a rate, that's the rate. No "if you leave inside 24 months you owe us 60% back" gotchas.
• No exit fee. Not a small one. Not any.

Why we do it this way

Two reasons. One, under Australia's unfair contract terms regime, a "no lock-in" claim that hides a minimum spend or steep exit fee is a legal exposure — the small operators who advertise it and then don't deliver are on borrowed time.

Two, if we're actually good, you'll stay. A contract shouldn't be the reason a client sticks around; the service should be. If we're not delivering value in month 14, holding you to month 36 is bad for both of us.

What we ask in return

• Sensible baseline stack. For us to deliver on our SLAs, we need to be able to trust the monitoring, EDR, patching and backup tooling in your environment. Our stack, our rules. Otherwise we're on the hook for outcomes we can't influence.
• Clean exit if you leave. We produce the documentation you need to take with you. You give us reasonable access to do it.

That's it. No fine print.