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Hello,

So after being in IT for more than 12 years, I’m going to start a MSP partnership with a friend of mine who is in commercial sales and in contact with so many businesses. I’ve always run IT department for corporate and had two/three small businesses on the side, so I was doing just casual IT business with my clients. but now that we’re thinking of start a professional company, I have some questions that I really appreciate if you can help with:

  1. I know this is not an IT question, but I’d like to know your idea. If you were to start a MSP partnership in way that you handle technical part and your partner takes care of sales, what kind of percentages seem fair to you? 50 50?

  2. Can you give me some necessary apps/tools for MSPs? The first ones we’ll be using Kaseya and Jamf probably, but any other apps that you think is necessary compared to in-house corporate IT that we should focus on?

  3. What apps do you suggest for customer relations? CRM, quoting app , invoice, accounting app?

  4. We always worked with MSPs to support our devices so the model technically has been $/month/device to make sure the device is up & running. However how do you charge helpdesk tickets? Per hour? Package/person? If per hour what’s your minimum minutes? The best scenario is for example when you receive a password reset ticket, how do you usually charge these kinds of tickets?

  5. If you have to provide on-site support, do you charge at a higher hourly rate? or the same hourly rate and just add some $ to your bills to cover the commute?

  6. The last one, if you have any advise/ recommendations I really appreciate it. I know there will be huge a different between my 12 years of corporate IT vs MSP, but the good thing is that I won’t be worry about the sales\marketing part and my partner will be responsible for that.

Thanks a lot in advance!

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Hi,

I’ve been considering starting an MSP myself for a while but seem to be stuck in “everlasting” research, so would be interested in hearing others thoughts on this too.

As per my own research for msp tools.
Here are the few I have in my list I would seriously consider using if I do kick it off.

Malwarebytes OneView - for MSP focused Malware protection.

For ITIL servicedesk tools
Currently trying out Manageengine MSP and have a demo scheduled with Ninja RMM on Monday, but Service Tree Zoho one seems interesting as well.
One thing I liked about servicetree was the bot that assists with basic troubleshooting freeing up tech time for small issues, but they didn’t give me access to that part when I did the trial. I’ve also heard great things about datto RMM but haven’t tried it out yet.

For me I think the best tool would be something that can integrate with other tools for all aspects of your business as well as allow for customising the tool for how you work (being able to delegate some access, customer portal, self service, working from your phone…) so you’re probably going to need to try a few service desk tools.

I also have been using meshcentral2 on GitHub for managing friends and family computers, could be interesting to use such a tool to provide customers access to their own computers for training and coaching purposes and save travel time or remote access licence Costs.

Just my thoughts for now

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(Owenmpk) 3

I have been an On Demand IT consultant with a mix of some MSP features for 13 years now I never planned to have employees so could say away from full MSP model so it has worked for me.

Last year I switched to Kaseya and I wish i had not, am now into my 2nd year of the contract and I will move off it in 2 years. It is sold like cars and once the deal was done they were no longer your best friend. Lots of misrepresentation on training and deployment. It is a very powerful tool but really takes a dedicated person to run. It’s update tools are amazing and work very well. Edit from original post: Kaseya’s support is excellent!

I have heard good reports of Ninja RMM. The real key is to find a tool that will not force you to cough up $6,000 -$10,000 to get into it but tool that will let you start small and grow. Also a tool that does not force you to have a “PhD” of time invested to make it run. Oh i support 250 endpoints and used LogMeIn before the switch and i left due to price creep and a weak patching engine.

I use Trend Micro Worry Free Services and it work great

I use Kerio Control for a UTM router but would consider any product that lets me use my own hardware. This allows fast switch outs if hardware fails. Product that do this that i know of are Untangle and Sophos.

I been able to get dam close to 100% of my clients on Dell hardware which has helped when support is needed and only have one Mac left at a law office.

I use Shadow Protect for all my server backup needs and Carbonite for one person office needs.

Regarding your partner the only thing i would worry about is him over selling your abilities and you end up working nights and weekends. Sales folks can do that to you. Also if your market gets saturated and your partner no longer is bringing in new clients will you be happy working to pay his or hers salary?

Check out Karl Palachuk’s books i personally know him he gives good advice for MSPs and his books are reasonably priced. http://www.smallbizthoughts.com/ we do not agree on everything but he is realistic.

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To answer your first question, document your value and present it to your partner. If you want 50% ownership, state that and the reasons why you should get that. Keep in mind, either of you could go out and start your MSP, even the sales guy who is not technical can find other partnerships to fill a technical role and still maintain 100% ownership.

In order to understand what software you will need you should be further defining your needs. Solarwinds, Barracuda, NinjaRMM, ConnectWise are just a few of the other names out there. What you should be doing is sitting in on demonstrations and evaluating these solutions for yourself to understand how they would best fit with your plans.

At the beginning stages of starting a company you may just consider using Excel and outsourcing the financial tools.

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@danch8170 ​ If you’re considering backup solutions, I’ll of course recommend MSP360 Managed Backup​ (formerly CloudBerry). Our MBS platform was designed for MSPs and gives you a lot of flexibility. We support all the major cloud storage providers as well as some of the newer, lower cost providers. We don’t lock you into our cloud storage, you get to choose your own (and you can use multiple if you like).

For more information and to sign up for a free trial check here: Managed Cloud Backup Service

Let me know if you have any questions.

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Thanks Pardus for your reply!

All of it made sense to me. I’ve always been struggling to start IT business, got into to the point to get out of IT totally and start construction company or restaurant. However my friend who is in commercial sales and in contact with more than 600 business as their finance adviser, he convinced me to start MSP and if it didn’t work we get into other industries as I mentioned either restaurant (franchise) or construction. He sees there is a good market there and how much most businesses that he is in contact with spend on their IT, so he thought its the most profitable if we can get enough clients as he has planned. thanks for that malware suggestion, I’ve never used that. I’ve always worked with TrendMicro and Sophos in past for all whole security package. For servicedesk I’m very comfortable with Jira and can modify it a lot, so I’ll probably use that. I should check Ninja RMM

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Thanks Owenmpk for your comment!

tbh I’ve never used Kaseya myself, I just heard that most MSPs using that. I’ve also used LogmeIn in past and was able to do 85% of our tickets remotely.

I’m also mostly Dell fan, for servers, firewall (sonicwall) , business laptops ,etc). I’ve used Kerio in past, but for mid sized business I usually used sonicwall and for small ones I used “Draytek” since they are very budget friendly. For camera and Wireless, mostly ubiquiti and for VOIP I can do Trixbox\elastix by purchasin trunk from voip provider or just have my partnership with cloud voip solutions.

For backup software, depending on the size of backup and it’s importance, I choose between novastore, cloudberry (mostly for Off-site bakcups) and cobian.

For security I’ve worked with Trend, Sophos and bitdefender and been comfrotable with all of them.

I’ll check out that book, thank you!

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Thanks Gustav for your comment! I’ll consider all of them. And I agree for the beginning it’ll make more sense to outsource financial.

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Thanks Doug!

I’m very familiar with “CloudBerry” as I’ve been using that for last couple of years to handle my offsite backups to aws. so it’ll definitely be one of my tools.

Best,

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Thanks again everyone for sharing your experience with me!

I’ll keep you posted how it goes in the next 3 months, as we’re getting everything started.

Also I’d appreciate if you let me know about your charging models… as I said device/month is very clear model. however how do you charge other requests that are not related to the hardware? For example user access to a new server, backups, or as simple as a user password reset? do you charge per hour? If yes, what’s the minimum minutes you charge? resetting someone passwords probably take less than 5 minutes, how do you charge a customer for that? Or instead you offer packages like per user/month/ tickets? I know most of clients don’t like when you charge them by time, instead they prefer some kinds of packages

Best,

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Hi Dan,

Just thought I’d add some more detailed notes based on what I’ve learnt so far, though billing is also still my biggest challenge.
Even though my business is not operational at yet, my plan is to group services and offer bundles.

Example…
helpdesk: includes portal access, email, phone, chat and remote support and plus limited on site visit time, for on site visit time, offer limited hr/month on site and allow them to book on site visit using those hours, possibly offer discounted rate for on site visit after they used up their time for the month, show the in cost vs if they don’t sign up for help desk. user management would fall under here.
I think flat rate would be best but I know some charge for block of hours while some charge per ticket, but if it’s not a flat rate, to me it would seem there’s not a lot of motivation to fix root cause of issues since you make more if they keep having issues. Monthly reports showing you are meeting or exceeding SLA, top tickets by users, top ticket by issue… (If you have a whitelabel helpdesk service that is local and fairly priced, it might work to your benefit by offloading the everyday quick fix to someone else and possibly have 24/7 offering, then focus on projects and overall service improvement)

project management: Any jobs that don’t fall under basic helpdesk for reduced hourly rate. setting up new server, automation projects to streamline your customer’s processes and save them time, migration and the rest falls under here. Customer would have to agree to and sign off on the terms, duration and cost of each project, as well as their responsibility.

backup and disaster recovery: includes planning and setting up DR plan/procedure, managing backups, performing recovery in event of data loss. pricing would depend on your BDR partner, I think Datto offers fixed monthly rate with equipment on-site then copies off-site. Having local and off-site copy is highly recommended. There are some resellers (sherweb.com for example) that would have portal to direct bill customers, I’m sure there’s lots like them but I think flat/predictive rate is more attractive to customers.

Managed antivirus: covers installation of your own AV solution, free virus removal if they do have one slips through, monthly reports and all. Here’s where you strongly recommend BDR unless they’re willing to carry the risk of data loss due to malware. You’re not guaranteeing they’ll never get a virus, just that you’re working with the best in the industry to prevent it and will be responsible for the remediation if it ever happens, but BDR is what they need to guarantee no data loss for any reason including hw failure.

Security awareness: See what KnowBe4 has to offer, if you can sell them on Security awareness programs, even with $0 profit to you, it will save you a lot in the long run.

Server Monitoring : Additional offer to monitor system state and alerts, create a ticket from alerts and fix the issue.
Monthly reports showing issues that came up and got fixed (like disk almost full, application crash, ftp transfer failed… etc) can show how proactive you are.

Then offer discount on multiple service subscription.
Be as specific as possible as to what’s covered for each service, what’s your what’s the customers responsibility and what’s yours.
Make your policy and get customer to sign off that they understand the costs/risks of not using your recommendations (minimum OS requirements, minimum hardware requirements for endpoints and servers, etc) eg. if they insist on using a 15 year old computer for their daily tasks, they can’t complain when they have to send a staff home while waiting for replacement part to arrive.

I guess one big thing is see if using partnerships to deliver services would work better for you, for instance, instead of having to waste time fixing printer issues, you can bring in the experts to show the client how they can save funds by leasing the correct printer for their business and the lease covers maintenance, removing up front costs and service costs. Then maybe using white label helpdesk, and outsourcing SOC can free up your time and position yourself in a IT Manager/Project Manager/ Team Lead kind of role. If you can do this and make it work for you, then maybe

Just how I think I would set up mine when I think I’m brave enough to take the leap.

Good luck on your adventures!

Looking forward to hearing what worked for you.

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Hey there! I’d just like to echo the comment above that mentions security awareness as a service you can offer. It’s going to end up saving you a lot of time in the long run, since it will directly reduce the volume of security incident response events.

Infosec also does a lot of work with MSPs, and we recently published a client story detailing one of our provider’s experiences with security awareness. I think you might be able to find some value in it, so feel free to check it out and shoot me a message if you have any questions about security awareness or about Infosec!

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I am surprised no one has mentioned it, but you should join MSP Alliance. It’s free. https://www.mspalliance.com/

They have a conference coming up in March in New Orleans called MSP World. A lot of your peers will be there and would be great to talk to them about your questions, and I am sure you will get great insights and new ideas. I am planning on being there. https://www.mspworldconference.com/

If you need a backup/DR MSP to partner with we provide a great experience. We use Veeam and built a Veeam focused MSP monitoring tool outlined here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDwNO1qpmOA

We don’t force any one to use appliances either, but can provide them when needed, or you can provide your own.

Best of luck, I am sure this is an exciting decision!

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Thanks Pardus for the detailed explanation of your model! It’s really helpful and I really appreciate it. I’ll post my model once it’s ready. As I go forward with this , more and more question come up that I should find an answer for , but pretty soon I’ll have the first version of my business model available.

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Thank you Sam!

I’ll definitely check it out.

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Thank you so much! I appreciate the information you provided. I’ll also check mspaliiance and the other link you provided.

Best Regards

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First of all, best of luck with your venture. As I have experience of this myself, it is the most rewarding journey, it is the hardest you will ever work, have a strategy but be open to change as you better discover yourself & the market & quite simply, never give up.

Pep talk over with, now buy my software :smiley: For the backup & availability part you would do well to look at Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery. It is a simple, all-in-one tool that allows you to segregate your client’s deployments to provide unified management but client specific reporting on use, this extends to whatever you use for your own cloud backup. Deduplication & archiving are native to the product so when managing numerous clients with large data sets, these tools enable you to reduce the total storage footprint as well as traffic. Here is a recent how-to on this subject that you will find useful: https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/167553-how-to-optimise-resources-for-backup-availability

@nathancollins ​ may also have something to say here, an MSP provider who uses Commvault to offer clients the most developed backup & recovery capabilities.

Get a free demo of Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery here: Request Demo | Commvault

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Work for a decent sized MSP, this seems like a pretty informative list to go off of.

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MSP on Reddit is good too

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Thanks, but I don’t think it’ll be possible now. I’ll probably hire a consultant with heavy MSP experience on the side, so I can have him for some hours to build the basic setup of the company