The person behind HelpFully IT
HelpFully IT is a deliberately small, senior IT consultancy run by Richard Hickson. No account managers, no ticket queue, no junior reading a script. The person who answers the phone is the person who fixes the problem.
Talk to Richard
Richard HicksonFounder
Richard has spent 23+ years running technology for businesses that couldn't afford to have it fail. That includes 11 years leading technology across multiple agencies inside a publicly listed group, and the technology side of a successful SaaS platform exit. Enterprise-grade experience, learned where the stakes were board-level.
He founded HelpFully in 2019 to bring that experience to businesses of 5 to 100 people. The kind of companies that have outgrown "my nephew does the IT" but don't need, or want, a 100-engineer national MSP. Based in Kent, a few miles from Gravesend, working remote-first with clients from North Kent to London and beyond.
The setup is deliberately personal. Around half of HelpFully's clients run on Macs, half on Windows, and Richard supports both fluently because he uses both daily. The business holds itself to the same security baseline it recommends to clients.
The three promises everything else hangs off.
We actually answer the phone
Call and a person picks up, usually within a few rings. Not a menu, not a chatbot, not a callback promise. A person who knows your setup and can start fixing it on the same call. Call, email or message, however suits you.
We speak English, not IT
You'll get a straight explanation of what broke, what it means for your business, and what we're doing about it. Jargon is a way of hiding; we don't need to hide.
We fix it properly, not just until next week
Quick patches are sometimes right, but they get labelled as quick patches and followed up. The goal is always the same: you stop thinking about IT entirely.
Deliberately small. That's the point.
Most IT firms scale by hiring juniors and putting them between you and the people who know what they're doing. HelpFully scales the other way: fewer clients, senior attention on all of them, and automation doing the repetitive work instead of a helpdesk tier. It's why the phone gets answered by someone who can actually help, and why businesses that need genuine senior input, up to and including fractional CTO work, end up here.
Small doesn't mean fragile
The obvious question with a one-person consultancy is what happens when that person is away. Here's the honest answer.
Everything is documented
Your systems, settings and setup are recorded in our secure client portal, not in Richard's head.
Credentials are held properly
We use Bitwarden, not spreadsheets or sticky notes.
Monitoring never takes a day off
Alerts reach Richard wherever he is, holiday or not, so issues are spotted before you notice them.
There's cover behind us
HelpFully works alongside two established managed service providers, with data processing, confidentiality and security agreements already in place. If Richard can't deal with something, it's escalated to them.
There's a break-glass plan
If Richard is ever unreachable, our partners can request emergency access to the documentation and credentials they'd need, approved by one of a small group of trusted approvers. Nobody gets in without approval, and nobody is left locked out.
You're never locked in
Your admin credentials sit in your client portal, accessible to your nominated contacts, so your business always holds the keys to its own IT.
A straight conversation about what's not working and whether we're the right fit. No discovery-call theatre, no sales handoff.