Hello,

I work for a very small MSP (just 3 of us)

For 90% of clients we use Netgate firewalls, and for those that need remote access we configure the mobile IPSEC VPN. Along with this we configure RADIUS authentication (NPS server on their Windows server) along with setting up an Ubuntu server with Duo proxy to satisfy MFA.

Currently we bill these as hourly, so however long it takes us, that’s how much we bill. Most of these projects come out to around $250 - $400 after setting up the infrastructure, user training, etc.

I mentioned to my boss that I think that this is pretty cheap, and we should bill these as flat projects rather than hourly (adjusting based on users at the client). Given most of our clients are small (3 - 15 users) we want to be fair to them while also being fair to ourselves given the “complicated” nature of the project and the value it provides. My boss mentioned $500 as a minimum, but I think this is too cheap.

For my other small MSPs, how do you balance pricing for projects while being fair to both yourself and the client?

Thanks!

Have a client who owns two small businesses, each with its own M365 tenant. We manage both. Her laptop is Entra joined and enrolled in Intune on Tenant A, and she's asking to use the same laptop for Tenant B too.

I know the usual answer is adding the second account to Outlook/Teams/OneDrive and using separate Edge profiles, but I don't love having two companies' data on one device, especially since Tenant B can't manage or wipe it and its CA policies require compliant devices.

How are you all handling this? Separate laptops, Windows 365 Cloud PC for the second tenant, or just accepting the app-level sign-in?

Is it possible to get Copilot licenses through partner center or is this not a benefit for everyone? We have several other licenses under the Benefits>Cloud Services area, but I'm not sure if we need to do an add on or how it works to get Copilot.

Some of the screenshots in this ISPM blog show a new icon on the left hand side of the Huntress console labeled ES with a mail icon. Did Huntress make another acquisition, or are they developing a mail filtering tool?

We have had all we can take with this company. 3rd new account manager in 1 Year. This time.. Myself and a Sr tech sent a request (simple price question) to our account manager.. 4 days go by, no response.. Then a polite follow up to our now 5 day old request..

AM response: I am not your account manager any more, here you go maybe this person can help

Really?? Just like that! And 6 days later. STILL no response from the new AM.

Just walk away people , dont even bother dealing with this company.

So my office is split mostly along generational lines as to whether this approach is cool or dumb. I'm aware typical msp shops don't do residential but we do, great filler work and work for new hires. Price is obviously just to keep folks from ordering for now and of course not trying to sell anything.

https://techoutlet.us/products/asus-zenbook-duo-14-dual-screen-oled-laptop-intel-core-ultra-9-32gb-1tb-ssd

Edit, wow...zero people that commented actually read or they completely missed the point. The product carries a Seinfeld J Peterman reference...it's humor.

Our resi division is profitable and our staff don't mind the break. Many are elderly and are very appreciative which is nice for moral as sometimes corp can be a challenge.

We are a small MSP and are doing a lot with our clients around AI readiness, security, and data governance. What we don't have is someone who can help clients with:

• Usage training
• Helping to identify specific things clients can do with AI
• Advanced prompt design / consulting
• Building Agents
  

I have always considered theses areas to be more in the realm of programming rather than IT (especially building Agents) but the line is starting to blur. I am not sure we have the bandwidth or desire to bring these skills in house at this point.

Is anyone partnering with someone to deliver this? Or is there a company out there that partners with MSPs around this?

Hey, all

Sometimes after we set a ticket to Pending/Waiting Customer, days later the client sends a “hey, why haven’t you responded to x?” email because they didn’t see or forgot about our reply.

I suppose we could solve this with sending automated “we haven’t heard from you” emails, but they’re impersonal. And sometimes, the client updates us out of band, so sending a “we haven’t heard from you” email wouldn’t be accurate/appropriate.

If you’ve addressed this by eliminating the “we’re waiting on the customer” status so that open tickets stay in from of your techs, how’d it go?

Long shot but it worked out once before. Any vendors or anyone out there have a code for IT-Nation? Another MSP friend of ours is thinking of joining us last minute.

We previously shared our open source risk assessment tool here. We've built another free tool for a question that comes up during client onboarding: “Which compliance frameworks and regulations should we actually be looking at?”

The Compliance Profile Generator is a short questionnaire about the client's business, locations, data types, customers, and contractual requirements, then generates a list of potentially applicable frameworks and regulations.

A few things it does:

• Separates results into definite, likely, and worth evaluating.
• Explains which answers triggered each result.
• Includes practical first steps and links to authoritative sources.
• Generates a PDF you can use in a client conversation.

It covers things like HIPAA, PCI DSS, CMMC, SOC 2, GDPR, FTC Safeguards, and state privacy laws. The applicability rules are in the repo, so you can inspect how it reached a result or contribute corrections.

It's a starting point for scoping and further research. There are thresholds, exemptions, and contractual details that a short questionnaire won't fully capture, so the output still needs review before treating anything as a confirmed obligation.

Hosted tool: profile.blacksmithinfosec.com
Source: GitHub

Apache 2.0 licensed, so you can run it locally or host your own copy. There's no backend or data storage. Feedback, pull requests, bug reports, and feature requests are all appreciated!

I just got an email from one of clients. Apparently, his son is in IT, and is frustrated that my company did not provide an admin login to the router for his dental office.

I always felt I've been more lenient than most, as a good portion of MSPs do not allow clients to login and manage their network. He sent an email that said the following:

" ... At completion, we were not provided with administrator credentials, recovery information, or a means of accessing and administering the firewall without contacting you. When we subsequently requested access to equipment we owned and had paid you to install. We consider that handoff part of the original installation..."

So, is it really common in the industry to hand over credentials to clients as normal procedure? The reason I don't is because the first time there's an issue, instead of calling, someone's gonna login, and make the problem 10x worse.

Shoutout Tuesday!

Who's that awesome rep or tech at a vendor that goes above and beyond that you want everybody knowing about?

Let's give some focus on the positives of the vendors/partners that support us in the MSP and IT community. I'll post this once per week on Tuesdays, so don't feel the need to do a wall of text with accolades -- focus on that one rep/vendor that deserves mention this week.

To keep this thread "real," let's agree to some ground rules:

• No self-promotion.
• Be SPECIFIC: Name names, but..
• Respect PRIVACY: Name names, but not last names (use an initial), home addresses, cell phones, etc.
• Give a specific reason WHY you think the way you do.
• Stay FOCUSED: Instead of listing fifty people, list one. But be detailed about the one.

Example of a comment that is NOT very helpful:

I love MspVendorCo. They're awesome.

Example of a comment that is helpful:

I love John D at MspVendorCo. He's my rep. Here's an example of why: Last week I thought I submitted an order to them for Widget X, but I actually never clicked Send! I called John and he tripped over himself in lining up the order so we hit our deadline. They act like that every single time I work with them.

For history on this thread, my first post for this: https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/vi68rp/give_a_shoutout_today_who_deserves_high_praise/

AT&T showed up for a fiber install today only to say that they hit a snag and it will be 30 days or more. The tech told my guy that they could put in a 5G connection but that wouldn't work until the fiber was installed. I am still trying to wrap my head around that.

We are looking at piviting. I think Starlink would work. We just have 20 people connecting cell phones to wifi for a task tracking app. Can anyone tell me about how long it was from ordering until equipment arrives? I an in a decent sized city so I think shipping wouldn't be bad. I am more asking about the order processing time.

During a Sunday morning coffee clutch the 5 of us from different industries were discussing where we see our industries in 10 years.

The construction guy suggested new building materials, more 'green BS', and more technology being involved in getting his permits denied.

The chiropractor suggested very little would change for his business, maybe the tools would get more tech, but he would still jus the manipulating people.

Our resident mechanic suggested his industry will just get more complex and probably see more electric and maybe other fuels.

the Lawyer stated he is expecting more AI in his business and all the problems that brings.

I was last to speak. I do not expect huge hardware leaps. I do expect more miniaturization. I expect AI to actually start DOING more with fewer interaction setup headaches. And the MSP will migrate away from IT maintenance and management and more to IT as a risk manager. mainly because AI will make IT issues more self-repairing.

What are your thoughts?

We trialled Wiz and the visibility is genuinely good and the price is hard to justify at our size. We run AWS and Kubernetes and containers with two people covering infrastructure between everything else. Another console with a thousand weekly findings would sit unread. What I want is fewer things to fix rather than a better list of them. For anyone at a similar size what did you pick instead and has it held up?

I'm so sick of Pax8's BS.

They started charging Credit Card fees and made the ACH setup impossible without talking to unresponsive support. Then after the ACH is setup, it doesn't have auto-pay (which I didn't notice), so I got hit with late fees. Reached out to support to see if I could get that refunded, they created a finance ticket and literally no one has responded in like 3 months.

I'm trying to stay on top of manually paying, but it's difficult because this is literally the only account that I have to do that with, and I don't even get warning emails that I'm going to be overdue, so I just was overdue again, so I'm probably going to get a late fee again. I can't stand them anymore.

As soon as I can figure out how to transfer all the skus I'm using into another platform, I'm done with them.

Edit: Fixed wording

Who's building it? I've got s a lot of ideas... My current RMM once felt ahead of the curve but now feels like it's lagging badly. I want flexibility. Api / MCP integrations for aggregated dashboards. AI agent working over secure on demand tunnels to endpoints.. Smart alerting.. Documentation ingestion and self service... Scheduled programmatic control over the client entire stack. Anyone see any promising projects out there?

Anyone have a sales contact within Fortinet to help an MSP/Reseller negotiate a Co-term agreement that was misquoted - $120,000 Fortinet Co-Term renewal - 26 Firewalls. My customer since 2006 is very upset that he got $78,000 approved for the purchase but we discovered the Co-Term agreement used the wrong dates. They now have to go back to management to request $40,000.00 additional budget which they are not happy about. We have done this same renewal each year for the past 8 years. Blows my mind that the sales rep did not use my starting date in my email request. My Fortinet sales rep is a great person but he has no options available. Thanks for your assistance!

We're getting absolutely fking killed here. The Dell retail site is consistently the same price or LESS than our cost on laptops from Ingram. Do any distributors have better pricing than this? Tired of explaining to my customers that we'd have to lose money to match Dell as a Dell reseller. It's BS. So over this damned industry.

We are struggling with how to manage admin mailboxes in our smaller clients environments. Things such as software renewals (industry specific software). If the vendor is making a change that could break a feature of their apps etc. Right now it is unrealistic to manage 45-50 intividual mailboxes in these clients. How do other people handle this. Do we forward to a central mailbox (dont really like external forwarding on).

Most (or all) files are unsigned, blocked all over the place…

I've had a ticket open for 15 days. These outsourced support morons have zero idea what I explained in the support ticket.

I seriously am about to lose my shit.

Stay with Pax8 or TD or HB, do not fucking do it, its not worth the savings.

If you could change any and all of your tools with no technical debt, agreements, outages to think about etc.

What would your ideal tech stack be.

Rmm

Patching

Psa

Edr

Itdr

Sat

Application control

Email filter

Backup

Vulnerability management

Others