You play a crucial role in helping businesses navigate the complexities of IT infrastructure and support. As a managed service provider (MSP), having the right platform is essential to efficiently manage clients, streamline operations, and deliver exceptional services. However, with so many options available in the market, choosing the best MSP platform for your business can be a daunting task.
In this blog, we’ll explore the key factors to consider when making this critical decision and the options available in the market.
Criteria for choosing the best MSP platform
When selecting an MSP platform, it’s crucial to carefully evaluate various factors that can significantly impact the success and effectiveness of your managed services. The following list outlines eight critical factors that are recommended for consideration during your decision-making process:
- Platform structure
- Security and compliance
- Vendor reputation
- Innovation and future-proofing
- Extensibility
- Scalability
- User community
- Vendor stability and longevity
While these criteria provide a solid foundation for evaluating MSP platforms, it is important to note that every business has unique requirements. Make sure you consider adding additional factors to the evaluation process that are specific and important to your business. By customizing the evaluation criteria, you can ensure that the chosen platform aligns with your organization's goals, operational needs, and industry-specific requirements.
Alternatives to consider when choosing the best MSP platform
Single point solutions
Single point solutions are specialized tools that focus on providing specific, individual functionalities for MSPs. These solutions are typically designed to address a particular pain point such as ticketing, remote monitoring and management (RMM), and professional services automation (PSA). Point solutions are often standalone products that may integrate with other tools or platforms but lack the comprehensive functionality of an MSP platform. While they excel in their specific area of expertise, point solutions may require additional integration efforts to create a cohesive and efficient workflow.
Pro: They can initially be a cost-effective option
Con: Limited functionality
Suitable for: Smaller MSPs or those with specialized requirements
Vendors to consider: HaloPSA, Tigerpaw, NinjaOne
Integrated product stacks
Integrated product stacks combine multiple functionalities by leveraging integrations. These tech stacks typically integrate RMM, PSA, backup and disaster recovery, and other key tools essential to MSP operations. By consolidating these capabilities, integrated product stacks provide MSPs with connected workflows, centralized management, and more efficiency.
With all the necessary tools integrated into a single stack, you can eliminate the need for multiple logins, data transfers, and manual processes. This not only saves time but also reduces the risk of errors and improves overall productivity.
Integrated product stacks may also enable you to have a better view of your clients' environments. By having all the relevant data and insights in one place, you can monitor and manage your clients' networks, devices, and applications. This centralized management approach allows for proactive monitoring, issue resolution, and better service delivery.
However, maintaining integrations between separate products can be time-consuming and frustrating. This often includes queueing issues, duplicate endpoints, and information errors when dealing with disconnected products
Pro: Streamlined operations by eliminating the need to log into multiple point solutions
Con: Maintaining integrations between different products can be difficult, costly, and time-consuming
Suitable for: MSPs looking for tools that work together seamlessly
Vendors to consider: Kaseya, Datto, N-Able
True MSP platform
A true MSP platform goes beyond just aggregating various solutions and takes it a step further by integrating them into one architecture. This unified data layer serves as the foundation for the platform, ensuring seamless communication and collaboration between different functionalities.
By having all essential MSP functionalities built into a single solution, you can enjoy the benefits of products seamlessly working together without the burden of maintaining those integrations yourselves. This eliminates the need for MSPs to spend time and effort on integration maintenance, freeing you up to focus on delivering value-added services to your clients.
An MSP platform also offers freedom of choice by providing seamless extensibility with other third-party applications. This means that you can easily extend additional tools or services that complement your existing workflows.
Pro: An MSP platform offers the best of both worlds by providing a unified architecture. It relieves the burden of integration maintenance and vendor management while offering the flexibility to extend functionality through seamless integration with third-party applications as needed.
Con: Reliance on a single vendor
Suitable for: MSPs looking for a long-term vendor partnership along their growth journey
Vendors to consider: We believe that ConnectWise is the only true MSP platform available
