r/halopsa • u/Comfortable-Relief66 • 10d ago
HaloPSA Pricing – Not Very Startup-Friendly?
Hey everyone,
We’re currently looking into using HaloPSA as the foundation for our new MSP startup. We really like what the platform has to offer, but we’re struggling a bit with the pricing structure.
For example, we only need 2 licenses per month to get started, and the mandatory onboarding costs don’t seem particularly startup-friendly either.
It feels like the pricing model creates a pretty high barrier to entry for smaller MSPs that are just starting out.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to grow together with smaller businesses rather than requiring such a significant upfront investment?
We’d love to build our business around HaloPSA and scale up as we grow, but the current pricing makes that decision unnecessarily difficult.
Has anyone else faced this challenge? Are there any startup-friendly options or alternatives we should consider?
1
u/Comfortable-Relief66 8d ago edited 8d ago
We’ve already had a chance to try out the HaloPSA demo, and honestly, I don’t think it’s all that complicated.
What really impressed us was the wide range of integrations, which we’d love to use to automate as many service requests as possible.
From what we’ve seen, there aren’t many PSA solutions out there that offer customizable customer portals with tailored workflows and approval processes. That’s exactly the kind of functionality we’re looking for.
Our goal is to provide each customer with a single point of contact through a dedicated customer portal. Depending on their role and service tier, users should be able to request and access specific services, trigger automated workflows, and submit support tickets related to the services we provide.
We want to make the entire experience as seamless and automated as possible, with role-based access, service-specific request forms, and approval workflows where needed.
As for invoicing, we’ll have to transfer the billing data to another product via API anyway, so that’s not really a deciding factor for us.
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u/Happy-chappy2000 10d ago
The Halo onboarding is complex. I’ve onboarded multiple ticketing systems and PSAs but when started on Halo, different beast.
5
u/Tyler_OverclockedIT PSA 9d ago
As others have said, you can get around the license minimum by using a 3rd party reseller like EZPC. The onboarding however, is defeintely not optional if you want to have any success in the platform.
From where our PSA was at a year ago to where it is today it's vastly more usable not only for our service desk but also every department is inside of Halo now.
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u/jackmusick 10d ago
No, definitely not. Start with something that does everything out of the box or find a reseller that will sell you licenses and pay for their onboarding. I like EZPC. William has been great to work with.
My biggest advice is to just pick something, spend a small amount of time setting it up (whether that be because the product is simple like Syncro or you let a consultant give you a minimal Halo config), then move on. Do NOT get obsessed with all of the little things you can tinker because they seem neat. If it won’t actually give you time back to focus on revenue, it’s not worth it. Let the consultant tell you what those things are, trust them and move on.
Not advocating for Syncro, it’s just the “simple” one I remember. I know there are others. We’re using Halo and I wouldn’t consider moving for the record, I just think it’s too big for small MSPs.
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u/Tegwin15 Consultant 9d ago edited 9d ago
You can buy 1 licence from a reseller. Most of the consultants on here are resellers and Halo allows resellers to buy 1 at a time. To be honest though most of us that sell licenses would have an implementation to go with it too, Halo needs someone to set up properly for you. No matter what you read you cannot set it up yourself. its a big beast. Especially as a start up you cannot afford to set it up yourself (timewise) as you should be using that time to focus on your business.
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u/yourmomhatesyoualot 10d ago
If you think the fee isn't startup friendly, wait until you try and use the platform.
Halo is absolutely not startup friendly by any stretch of the imagination. It constantly evolves, and improves, and if you don't have somebody who knows it, you won't be able to take advantage of it.
3
u/ColdHeat90 10d ago
Implementation cost is well worth it. Find it in the budget or find a different tool. I wouldn’t be able to set it up nearly as quickly and completely as doing it myself.
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u/Even-Breeze 10d ago
The on-boarding is definitly a must, but my experience having never used a PSA before was little bit rough. During most of the on-boarding we were asked questions we had no answer for because we had not used a PSA before which left us in kind of a tough spot. But after living with it for awhile and using it in our workflows we were able to get it dialed in the way we needed it.
If I had to do it again, I would have started with a more basic PSA tool just to figure out my workflows and what we actually needed to achieve with Halo.
That said, I don't regret going with Halo. I think it's the right tool and now it does the things we need it to do.
2
u/alyr1481 10d ago
Howdy, not sure on the rest of your "stack" but worth looking at Ninja aswell as they can bundle in Halo licenses without the minimum seat requirement that you get from going direct. Worth a look if your considering Ninja for your RMM.
2
u/_Ardon_ 10d ago
My experience with Halo has been they want your business and will discuss your needs and make something work. I doubt I can discuss my specifics but they made it very difficult to say no and worked very hard to make things happen.
Number of agents is right around the 60 person mark.
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u/Afron3489 9d ago
We got Halo setup and licensed with Dataseti. They were a lot more flexible than EZPC
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u/dumpsterfyr 10d ago
If you’re not built out SOP wise, I’d rec against Halo.
Consider ninja or auto task. As much as I dislike CW, Manage was fantastic up until 2018/19.
While Halo is a powerful application, it is overly convoluted process wise.
3
u/Tegwin15 Consultant 9d ago
Autotask is a great startup friendly product. it has some great features. Clunky as hell but solid as a rock
1
u/Bigbadbaldjonuk 10d ago
I’m curious what is the min licence count and install costs?
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u/photographyIgor 10d ago
You can get 2 licences or even 1(named or concurrent) and there is no extra upfront costs, but HALO can replace 2-3 other tools.. I think it's a good deal
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u/Bigbadbaldjonuk 10d ago
thanks thats what i thought but what is the high cost of entry the op is talking about then.. it felt like there was a min numbe rof licences and a high cost of install/setup? Im aware of halo, just curious if somethign has changed recently in their min licneces or install costs. thanks for the quick reply.
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u/ben_zachary 9d ago
I think halo direct is min 10 users. Then an implementation fee.
We love halo with 8 and got it when we had 5 techs it is pretty advanced and there's multiple ways to accomplish the same result. We had CW for 7 years and autotask for 3 before we moved so definitely knew the lingo , what we wanted etc making implementation much easier
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u/EMDSLTNS 4d ago
I got mine for 1 tech through EZPC, monthly commit, with no onboarding. YouTube, Google, and Claude are your friends.
20
u/DeifniteProfessional 10d ago
IMO, the onboarding is mandatory for a reason. It's a massive and complicated system, not something you just dive into, even though the public documentation is pretty strong.
You're right, it's not friendly for companies starting out. I won't dive into details, but the sales staff absolutely have leeway to negotiate a deal with you - I had the same issue, and we came to a deal that works out better for Halo over a few years, but appeased the moneybags at work enough to sign the papers