I’m in the process of building out my MSP offering and I’m working through decisions on tools & processes. I’d love to get some input from those of you who have been doing this a while.
Tools I’m Considering
Right now, this is the stack I’m leaning toward:
RMM: NinjaOne(Even though it’s proving hard to get pricing)
Backup: MSP360
EDR/Security: Huntress
Ticketing/Helpdesk: Leaning toward Freshworks(not 100% settled on this, looking at other options)
If you think I should swap any of these out for something better, I’d love to hear recommendations.
Looking for Advice On:
Processes & Procedures
For someone starting an MSP, what are some of the things you wish you had known/documented better from the start?
I’ve looked over several forum posts on the topic, but didn’t think it would hurt to ask incase others had new recommendations/opinions.
NinjaOne is good and but I am not sure you need MSP360 as you can also do the backups with NinjaOne as well. Huntress is solid for security and I would also take a look at NinjaOne for ticketing https://www.ninjaone.com/ticketing-software/
I have not done a full write up or vidoe on starting an MSP (Maybe one day I will do that) but a few things that really stand out is price yourself so that you can grow which means you may not be the least expensive option. Also importat to have a clear sales plan because most MSP’s don’t ever grow because they are not good at marketing and sales.
Thank you for the information. I was thinking MSP360, just so I didn’t have all my eggs in one basket. I’m hoping to do a trial of NinjaOne, if I can ever get them to send me pricing/trial info.
Pricing is another beast, I’m working on trying to get all spreadsheet of all my costs down, so I know cost/endpoint. Do you have a method you recommend for pricing? As far as sales strategy, that’s a work in progress😆
I’ll second NinjaOne. I moved to them in early 2025 after having been with a competing product which had started out solid and slowly ground to a halt with months of unattended issues, despite several complaints. I had no problem getting pricing with NinjaOne and, on top of the fact that they’re responsive and have a much more modern and improved workflow compared to my previous solution, they also give you a price that doesn’t move. The competing product had a built-in expectation of annual price increase which they rarely stuck to and when they didn’t, it was always more, sometimes significantly more. NinjaOne told me the price they quoted me was never going to change and invited me to check with other MSPs who had been with them for years to verify the claim (I didn’t bother and my price has never increased). They also don’t bother me with sales calls, which I appreciate.
I use MSP360 with BackBlaze B2 since I had needed it previously, but I have moved some clients over to the NinjaOne built-in backup and it’s sufficient for basic needs. MSP360/BackBlaze still offers some needed retention options for some clients, but I don’t know that NinjaOne doesn’t offer the same, I just haven’t looked deeply into that yet.
I can’t help regarding ticketing. My previous MSP product had ticketing and it was more of a hassle to use it than anything, but I’m just a one-man shop, so I don’t bother with a commercial ticketing system. My clients contact me via e-mail, phone, or Signal messenger and I keep track of remote session time and included maintenance with spreadsheets - works fine for my purposes, as I can customize it to my needs.
I don’t know why your NinjaOne sales rep isn’t responding - mine has always been very responsive. That seems out of character for them.
I can’t speak good or bad about Huntress as I don’t use them. I’ve been with SentinelOne for a few years and it works fine. I got pricing through NinjaOne for that, too, without issue and it integrates well.
NinjaOne’s scripting and execution of automations is fantastic and immediate, which is more than I can say for my previous choice which required a minimum of about 15 minutes and up to an hour before a request for a script run or automation was active (or sometimes never).
Thank you for your information! I’ve heard great things about NinjaOne, so I’m assuming I just got a bad rep, or it could just be the time of year. I’m glad to hear their pricing doesn’t jump all over the place, that makes me worry less about signing on a customer, and all my costs changing.
I don’t mind. Also, so you’re aware, pretty much every RMM I’ve spoken to does business in a similar way regarding licensing. Licenses are not sold one at a time, but in packs. So, be prepared to have more licenses available to you than you need. At first, it might feel like you’re wasting money on unused licenses, but the flexibility comes in handy and encourages you to grow and to price your packages with a bit more forethought and in a less reactive manner than you might otherwise.
Atera of Syncro MSP (Flat rate per technician for the platform)
iDrive Enterprise - Unlimited DATA storage -fee is flat rate per block of 50 users (so depending on how much data/user, I use this since my data need is large and this is exponentially cheaper than any other option I have found)
I have a trial with Syncro right now, and I don’t hate it, most people I’ve talked to seem to like Ninja better which is the main reason I was leaning that way. I plan to start a trial of Ninja next week to better evaluate it.
I’ve looked into iDrive, I didn’t realize they had Unlimited though, I’ll look at it, wonder if there is a catch of some sort?
I’ve not looked into threatdown, will add it to my list along with Zendesk. I think I looked into zendesk briefly, will need to check my notes, can’t remember why I didn’t like it.
Speed, most of these companies that claim unlimited data do throttling. Also the speed at which you can get data back might be limited as well which is something you really need to take into consideration. It can put you in one of those good news and bad news scenarios: Good news, your data is safe, Bad News, it will take 72+ hours to get it back.
I trialed Ninja a couple of times, it looks good, worked well. But quadrupling my monthly cost vs Atera, it justifiable to me.
iDrive Enterprise is bought in buckets of users, not a per user cost model, so you must buy the blocks of users 50,100,200,300 and you prepay per year. It is truely unlimited storage, I am an active reseller, it works well. But you need to calculation your users to see if it works for your user count + data storage when comparing to other platforms. I have done full server restores (300GB+ from the cloud, it was done within a 5 hour window, still slowish but got the data). They don’t offer something like datto where you can spin up your fully backed up servers in cloud instantly. But exponentially cheaper, I find iDrive enterprise shines for my data only backup endpoints.
I have used datto, iaso (n-able), hornet, veeam and acronis in production environments. They all work, but different types of backup and different user/endpoint requirements and pricing models. I still use Hornet backup for local storage backups for HypverV guest and Wasabi for cloud storage alongside.
Know what kind of backup you need and compare. If price was no object I would probably still be using all Datto or Veeam
I second and third what Tom & JVComputers said about NinjaOne. I have used quite a few RMM’s in the past N-Able, Atera, Kaseya VSA, and moved to to Ninja about 3 to 4 years ago, and I have zero complaints. Ninja’s development and release cycle is insane, and not talking about minor features. They are constantly adding and evolving. Tutorial webinars multiple times a week to reveal the use of features. Initially their primary remote connection tool was Splashtop or TeamViewer, but they developed their own (Ninja Remote). Works very well, super stable. I haven’t used anything else since.
Their backup works very well also. Desktops, Servers. Cloud Only, On-prem only, Hybrid. Retention is flexible.
When I started with Ninja, their ticketing was basic, I set it up for handling alerts & events from endpoints and use it internally. Over time it has evolved and can be used for primary ticketing.
I am just getting started with their MDM (IOS, Android, MacOS) feature. Will be setting up a new MBP with it today.
Many new features are included in the agent price, while some things are extra (Backup). They don’t nickel and dime you for everything…I used Backup for almost a year before they started billing me for it.
