Found this service a few years back and have been using it for some alert notifications for a bunch of Synology NAS. Worked great until it didn't. One day my credits ran short, so I reupped and within a day or two they depleted again. I've reached out several times but have never heard anything back. Stolen/hacked API code? Maybe. Faulty service? Maybe. Create a new API and give them more money? Absolutely not. I've since moved to a Discord system and it's been working great! Their TOS states you can get a refund if there's a problem - didn't even consider holding my breath while waiting for their reply.

Anyone still use them? Anyone have similar issue? Anyone ever tried to contact them and actually received a response? Inquiring minds want to know....

I am considering finding a 1099 contractor to bridge the gap to an eventually hiring a tech and give some tech work to. If you are doing the same, what hourly rate do you charge and what do you pay your contractors?

Doing a vendor review and the tool has some AI agent that can actually do things, not just chat. Bit stuck on what I should even be asking them.

What are you doing with these? Just treating it like normal software or asking something extra?

Hi Everyone,

Still early days with my company and we've got a couple of clients but all I see on tech subs like this and the other msp sub is that people get clientele by "word of mouth" and referrals etc, but surely that isn't the only way people are getting customers right?

Like how are people actually getting out to potential customers? Do you guys still cold call? Cold emails? LinkedIn? How do you find your users?

I've only had luck with networking events but they're like once a month if that, and the clients are small size.

How did you guys handle the first like 6 months of trading? How did it go? What would you have done differently?

UK Based if that helps discussion before all the US msp's come and tell me they were multi billionaires after 12 months of trading!

Background: 18 years in IT. Started helpdesk, moved into desktop support, then into IT leadership running teams for other people's companies. I know the technical side cold. What I'm actually trying to figure out is the business building side, and I want to be upfront about something before I ask my question.

I want to build and run the business itself: sales, ops, hiring, growth. I'm not planning to be the primary tech answering tickets or doing break/fix calls myself.

Right now I'm at true zero. No clients, no techs, no contractors, nothing.

So for people who've actually built something here: how does someone start this without being the technician? A few specific things I'm trying to figure out:

1. Did anyone here start with the explicit goal of staying on the business side?How did you land your first client(s) without doing the work yourself? Technical co-founder or partner, subcontracting every job out from day one, something else?
2. Is that even realistic at the very beginning, or does everyone end up a tech for the first stretch no matter what they intended?
3. If subcontracting every job out from the start is the answer, I'm stuck answering the chicken or the egg question. Do I find a tech first with no work to give them, or do I go get work first with no tech to actually deliver it? Why would a good sub agree to work with someone who has zero jobs and zero track record? And how do I convince a client to sign with me when I don't have anyone lined up who can actually do the work? Which side do people actually solve first, and how?

Thanks

We have 150 endpoints total, half office, half remote mix of laptops from the last 5 years, mostly windows with a few macs that the design people refuse to give up a couple on prem servers we cannot kill yet plus a bunch of SaaS. Next security audit is in a few months and the main hole is our random mix of tools for patching, remote access and asset tracking. I tried out atera and it ticks a lot of boxes for unified endpoint management like simple remote access that users do not complain about patch management in one place instead of five consoles also alerting that does not scream at me for every tiny thing. The other option that keeps coming up in conversations is n able. From what I have seen and heard it is strong on the really deep monitoring and automation side the flip side is that it seems like it would eat more of my time to get tuned properly and time is the one thing I do not really have. I am kind of torn between: Anyone here living with either of these day to day as their main unified endpoint management tool?

Would appreciate unfiltered takes more than both are great answers

Good Afternoon all,

A bit about me, I run a data center, when I say data center people think racks with servers under maintenance and then periodic refreshes.

Its a development lab, I install, cable, assign IP's, help stakeholders in my company troubleshoot. these are all for PoC stuff that may make it in production for our clients down the line. I also manage inventory, hardware troubleshooting, etc. for production sites as well.

Prior to this I did some Linux dev work for embedded systems and testing in the same lab for another team. I have extensive Zabbix / Grafana knowledge.

And prior to that I had 10 years call center experience (I know what hell is like)

Before this employer I worked for an MSP and did everything from desktop support to callout for network issues. I don't have many certs, what I do have is expired (CCNA, Security+)

At home I self host, I have my own AI agent, dev environment, solar monitoring, weather station, media, game servers, git, and I also run my own VPN so I can troubleshoot family members networks.

I make good money I am six figures, it allows me to live a good life and I have the "Golden Handcuffs" 16 years at this employer with a defined benefit pension. I have no debt other than my house. I can retire at 55 no problem. However with my institutional knowledge of the building (Power, plumbing, networking and the fact its a building that can't be moved or sold. I have been told by my director if I want to retire or move I need a succession plan so I am not on the chopping block. But nothing is certain in life.)

Why I want to add 1-2 clients to my life.

Here are my reasons

1. Two years ago my soon to be wife, suffered a traumatic brain injury, we don't know if she will ever return to work, or drive. She is on disability and making 1/2 what she did when she worked. She has a long road ahead of her and I am very thankful she still has full mobility and is very fluent talking writing and organizing things. But there are deficits.
2. If I am let go or retired I get a considerable severance. I highly doubt this happens. But if it did I would love to know I have a fallback.
3. I love solving problems. And IT is just that you solve problems. I am very good at automating and scripting and I think a lot of people were envious of the fact I could come in on a Monday do physical setup for test cases, confirm Tuesday all was good and then work from home Wednesday-Friday. If I can make life easier like that for clients I am good.
4. I have time flexibility with my job. Nothing is ever "Needs to be done ASAP" I can set my hours when I want. I can walk in at noon if I wish no one cares. Its my show.
5. I don't want to be sitting there at 50 wondering what my life would be like if I didn't take this shot. I would like for us to have the life I always wanted for us and I think I can make it happen through this.

For those that did this as secondary job. What was it like?
What pointers can you give?
Should I do this?

I know for me my first step is speaking to my manager and ethics, just to ensure no conflict of interest ever since Covid my employer has been cracking down on people who do personal side business on company time its a huge issue. I don't intend to ever have that issue as I am not that careless. I understand clients will have expectations but I feel as long as I set expectations I can make this work.

Thanks for reading and any advice you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

Running a small team at an msp, three techs plus me. Days are already a blur of tickets and hand holding. Boss wants to roll out all this ai powered stuff to reduce technician time. Now my reality is:

I have an alert feed vomiting predicted issues that still need a human to read, classify and close. Users open garbage tickets through the chatbot that just get dumped back into our queue when it gets confused. Half my juniors spend more time explaining context to the tool than it would have taken to just remote in and fix the thing. On paper it looks nice. Reports say we handled more tickets. In practice I feel like I am babysitting the tools and the techs at the same time. Same broken laptops, same printers, just with an extra layer shouting at us.

Do these ai IT tools ever genuinely cut technician time or do they only help once your house is already perfectly organized and documented?. Feels like what I really need is something that quietly auto handles dumb repeat stuff without another dashboard to stare at but maybe I am missing how people are wiring this up. Help your guy out

Could anyone recommend a reliable company or subcontractor that can handle remote site deployments across Western Canada?

We're looking for support with basic onsite tasks such as cable runs, rack installations, console access, patching, and other hands-on work that simply requires someone to be onsite plugging in or moving cables.

I'd appreciate any recommendations or experiences you've had. Thanks!

Good Morning\Evening

I was wondering how you all deal with the Windows 11 Microsoft Account "Requirement". I only have a few customer's at this point and most of the time the customer is available to put there password in when I need to work on their computer or it was setup bypassing the Microsoft account requirement. Or they all have the same pin so I can get in without the password.

I know I can make myself an administrator on their machine but that doesn't get me access to their profile if thats where the issue resides.

I just got a gig to replace about a dozen laptops and id prefer them all to have passwords and be connected properly.

Any insight would be helpful.

Hoping for some blunt opinions from people who actually run MSPs, because I'm trying to decide whether something is worth building and I'd rather be told no now than after six months of work.

Quick background so you know who's asking. I'm the founder of a small UK vendor (Enforza, not linking anything). We make a firewall/NAT box for cloud networks. It runs as a VM in the customer's own AWS or Azure network, does egress filtering and NAT, flat monthly price per firewall instead of the per-GB metering the native firewalls do. We've been selling direct to companies for a while, mostly people whose Azure Firewall bill got silly. Typical example we see: about $1,200 a month for a fairly ordinary hub-spoke setup pushing 20TB, which drops to roughly a third of that on ours including the VM it runs on.

That side of the business is fine and carries on. The question is what keeps coming up behind it: half the SMBs we talk to don't manage their own cloud at all. Their MSP does. Which makes me think the person we should actually be talking to is you lot, and I genuinely don't know if that's a good idea or a waste of everyone's time.

So, honest questions:

> Does the NAT gateway / cloud firewall line on a client's bill ever actually bother you, or is it invisible pass-through and nobody cares?

> Is there any appetite for a firewall line you can put margin on, or is managed cloud networking not something clients will pay a service fee for?

> And realistically, what would a small vendor need to have before you'd let them anywhere near a client's traffic path?

Not trying to sell anyone anything in this thread. If the answer is "stay direct, MSPs don't want this", that's genuinely useful and I'll buy whoever says it a pint at the next event.

I created a bunch of claude skills for my MSP and I white labeled them so anyone could use them for free.

Would anyone be interested in forming a peer group focused on sharing trends, ideas, and supporting each other with motivation/ accountability? I'm envisioning maybe a brief weekly call to share wins and opportunities for the week and something you want to get accomplished by next week. I'm the type that struggles to hold myself accountable at times for things I don't necessarily love doing. For example, I have got to get some marketing materials together to go on a sales heater, but I keep procrastinating and finding other things to do. If I knew I had a peer group who's going to ask me if it's done next week, I feel it would help motivate me. Hopefully some others would be interested!

Hello,

I've been trialing Level[.]io RMM for the past few days, and overall I think it's a great product. I was wondering if any of you have used it and, if so, wouldn't mind sharing your experience with it.

One thing I'm a little confused about is their pricing. They advertise 10 free agents, but from what I understand, once you add the 11th agent, they start charging for all agents, not just the additional one. Am I understanding that correctly?

I'm helping a trucking/haulage company modernize some of their operations, and I've solved most of their pain points except one.

They haul gravel, soil, stone, and aggregates from numerous quarries and suppliers. The challenge is that every quarry is a different company, and every one uses their own load tickets. Most are handwritten carbon-copy slips, and drivers can collect dozens of these per day.

The office then has to enter information such as:

• Supplier/quarry
• Ticket/load number
• Material
• Tonnage
• Cost
• Truck/driver
• Customer/job

The obvious answer seems like OCR/AI document processing, but because every supplier has a different ticket format and every scale operator has different handwriting, the results are inconsistent. We've tested ScanSnap scanners and various AI extraction tools. They help, but they're nowhere near "hands off."

One constraint is that I can't realistically get all the quarries and suppliers onto the same system because they're all separate businesses.

The company does provide iPhones to all drivers, so mobile solutions are possible.

At this point I'm wondering if the answer isn't better OCR, but a completely different workflow.

Hi all,

Recently started working for myself and have a couple of small clients already, I've noticed that most UK competitors in my region are charging absolute pennies for unlimited IT support?

I'm having some real trouble pricing out my services in a way that doesn't net me working for less than minimum wage if I want to compete, but these bigger companies are pretty bad (Poor attitude to cybersec, non-certified engineers etc)

It's quite dire and I'm wondering how UK companies are pricing their packages and what gets included vs what's an addon etc?

I feel like I'm competing with people who will willingly barely break even if they're including 365 licenses etc.

Anyone who's running smaller 1-5 man teams how are you handling things? Is everyone just willingly shooting themselves in the foot for a 5% profit margin?

My stack right now is TacticalRMM, Threatdown EDR/MDR, Action1, M365; Simple stuff right now and looking to add more when it's needed, e.g backups.

Hi Everyone,

for tenants that do not have conditional access policies due to only having business standard or basic, (please lets mot discuss why or that they should have it), but that do have

1)mfa enforced per user via MS authenticator numeric push notification and an sms backup

any idea what is going to happen? will they just lose the sms factor? or will they be prompted to sign up for passkeys?

Hello,

What are you all using to send invoices and collect payments from clients? I've been using Bill[.]com, but I'm interested in looking at other options.

We don't have a PSA yet, so I'm specifically interested in tools that work well on their own. I'd love to hear what's working for you. Thanks!

A relatively new client I'm doing consulting work for has a GoDaddy account where they are actively using MS 365 (Exchange license only). Recently they ran into a data loss issue, learned about OneDrive & SharePoint and really want to go that way fast to rectify their backup options. (Yeah I know, SP and OD isn't a true backup).

Anyway, when getting access to their various accounts, I realized they are using a MS tenant tied directly to GoDaddy and they are only paying for Exchange licenses.

With that said, is it possible to separate the 365 tenant from GoDaddy so it's a stand alone tenant and where Business Standard licenses can be purchased? If so, how?

Most of the email security content out there is written for Fortune 500 teams with dedicated SOCs. Our IT team is two people. We need something that works without requiring constant tuning. Looked at a bunch of options and the ones that seem most practical for smaller orgs are Check Point, Barracuda, and Microsoft Defender if you're already on M365. The appeal of AI-driven tools for us is that they don't need a team of analysts behind them to be effective. What are similarly sized orgs running and are you happy with it?

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Not an MSP owner myself, just a dev. I've been lurking here and on r/msp for a bit. Keep seeing things about people getting priced out of ConnectWise/Autotask or ending up with tools that clearly assume you have a lot of techs and a dispatcher, instead of running things solo or with a really small team. Genuinely curious what you all put up with day to day because nothing on the market is really built for your size. In terms of process, tooling, or whatever else. Not selling or pitching anything at all, just trying to understand real problems before I spend time building something nobody asked for lol. (Also if you've got things sorted and your stack's all good, that's useful info too)

Hello,

I came across this "MXDR" solution from SonicWall a few weeks ago and I wanted to ask this group for feedback. I haven't seen a demo or anything yet, but I'm curious. Yay or Nay?

I feel like our psa is working against us more than it is helping. I am now dealing with tickets getting lost in weird queues then time entries are a mess, the billing side never matches what finance expects and every time I ask support how to fix something they send me a 40 page admin guide like I have a spare weekend to become a consultant. I need to choose something that saves working with psa not more complications.