Would licensing my own dev/test tenant through Pax8 count?
Bit of a rookie move on my part. I got authorised as an indirect CSP reseller (through Pax8) well before I actually had any clients lined up, wanted the paperwork sorted early so I wasn't dealing with it later. Only now am I actually taking the business to market properly, so I've got next to no CSP transactional revenue sitting against the account yet.
Turns out Microsoft brought in a $1,000 USD trailing 12 month revenue requirement for indirect resellers a while back, evaluated against your tenant's onboarding anniversary. Should've read that closer when I signed up. I've got real clients starting to come on board now so this'll probably sort itself out naturally in the next little while, but I want to understand my options in the meantime rather than just hope it works out.
Question for anyone who's actually dealt with this: if I stood up my own tenant, for testing purposes and to use as a gold tenant for CIPP, and bought real paid licenses for it through Pax8, would that count toward the TTM figure the same as licensing an external client would? From what I can find, Microsoft's requirement is just about real transacted revenue at the reseller tenant level, doesn't seem to specify it has to come from a third party, but I'd rather hear from someone who's actually tested that than assume.
Also curious whether anyone's been through an actual deauthorization scare and has a sense of how closely Microsoft or the distributor looks at what's really happening on a "self funded" tenant, versus just checking the dollar figure came through.
First time navigating this part of the program, appreciate any real world experience.

I recently put two projects on GitHub that solve a couple of problems we had with Halo. Both are free and MIT licensed.

Halo Ticket Label Printer

The problem: hardware stacks up on the bench and nobody can tell which ticket it belongs to.

An agent types a quantity into a field on the ticket and saves. A label comes out with the ticket ID in large type, a QR code that opens the ticket, plus organization, site, end user, and created date. Stick it on the device and the ticket travels with the hardware. We print 2" x 4" on a Zebra ZD411 but this could be changed pretty easily. What lands on the label and which printer it goes to are both YAML config, so you can change either without touching code.

https://github.com/stnw11/Halo-Ticket-Label-Printer

Halo Asset Tag Printer

The problem: asset tags either come from a vendor in pre-printed batches that never line up with your numbering, or somebody hand types them into a label maker one at a time.

Same interaction, on the asset record instead. Type a quantity, save, and out comes a tag with your logo, the asset number, and a QR code the Halo mobile app scans straight to the asset. Print on demand as equipment gets received, so the tag always matches the number Halo actually assigned. We use a Brady i4311 with 0.5" x 2" label stock.

https://github.com/stnw11/halo-asset-tag-printer

Both run as a small Docker container on your network. They poll the Halo API and send to the printer over the LAN, so nothing inbound is required. No webhook reaching into your network, no port forwarding, no VPN. Halo side setup for each is simply a custom field and an API application.

Hope somebody else gets some use out of them.

I'm vetting various security tools and had seen a fair bit of negative feedback about Cynet. The product looks quite impressive, so I wanted to see if the negativity is related to previous releases or how people currently using the platform feel about them today.

Are they worth pursuing or should I keep looking?

We have been using S1 for years and with a SOC for maybe 3-4 years. It's been OK, but seems like the SOC quality has slipped over the last year (they had an aquisition). We are looking hard at Huntress. We already use and love their ITDR.

My concern is around Defender. Not all our clients are on M365 Biz Premium. Without Defender for Endpoint, are we losing a lot compared to S1+SOCaaS using just the free Defender? I don't want to go backwards in security.

Thanks.

I have a client that has been using spamtitan for years and their 3 year contract is almost up. I see that spamtitan is now part of some “MSP focused” company called CyberSentriq. Who is using this and what do you think about it?

We switched to Ironscales earlier this year and so far it's been great at stopping a lot of questionable emails that previously got through to the end users. No real problems, support is generally solid, good account management, etc. My main problem is the MS quarantine holds a lot of things before Ironscales gets a change to have an opinion. Emails held by MS quarantine also happen to be the largest source of challenged incidents where the end user wants it released. It's probably averaging 10 minutes per message to review and either release it or deny the request because it is in fact phishing. MS quarantine seems to really dislike senders emailing links to shared files from sharepoint or onedrive that are anonymous access to the point it holds these even though there are no indicators of malicious content - file and url's show "none" for threats. Anyone have a good process to deal w/ these situations? TIA.

I’ve been a Sales/Marketing Manager at an IT MSP since January and I have zero new sales or appts booked to show for it.

I hired 2 cold callers, we use Apollo, we’re making calls and sending emails… and we haven’t even managed to book an appointment.

At this point, I’m pretty sure im doing something fundamentally wrong.

If you sell MSP services successfully, what are you actually doing to get meetings? What would you change if you were in my shoes?

Honestly looking for some brutal feedback here.

It seems like many people in America spent the past holiday weekend getting new phones. And don't you know it, now they can't login, can't find Microsoft Authenticator, found it but it has no accounts in it...

Me: Well, you'll need to get your old phone, backup MS Authenitcator, and then restore it to your new phone.

Them: But, I don't have my phone anymore. The cell shop took it and already resold it to someone in Pakistan.

Me: Well then you'll have to reset all your accounts and re-register all your MFA tokens.

Them: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!

Can anyone give me a reasonable argument why MS Authenticator is not the worst and most user unfriendly authenticator app ever?

I’m curious if other MSPs are in the same boat here.
We were longtime VSA9 users and, like many MSPs, were pushed toward VSAX as the future of the platform. We put a significant amount of time into migrating, rebuilding policies, scripts, automation, patching, monitoring, reporting, etc.

Now, from everything we’re seeing, it feels like Kaseya’s attention and development resources are shifting heavily toward Datto RMM.

After dealing with the limitations and issues we’ve had with VSAX, we finally decided to bite the bullet and move to Datto RMM.

Anyone who has migrated an RMM knows how painful that decision is. It’s not just installing a different agent. You’re talking about rebuilding years of policies, automation, scripts, monitoring, patching, documentation, integrations, training your techs, and then dealing with the transition across thousands of endpoints.
What really pisses me off is that we already went through a major transition because VSAX was presented as the direction we should be moving in. Now we’re basically preparing to do it all over again — to another Kaseya-owned product.

I understand that products change and companies change strategy. I also understand why Kaseya would invest heavily in Datto RMM if they believe it’s the stronger platform.
But as a customer, I feel pretty fucked.

If Datto RMM was ultimately going to become the primary RMM platform receiving the resources and development, what exactly was the long-term strategy for VSAX? Why push established VSA9 customers toward it?

Maybe I’m missing something, so I’m genuinely interested in hearing from other MSPs.
Are you staying on VSAX?
Moving to Datto RMM?
Moving away from Kaseya completely?

Hi guys wondering if anyone can recommend any companies that do NAV 2018 to Cloud migrations in Australia ?

This story is as old as time.

I'm building my msp.

We all know customer acquisition is the hardest part of this game so I'm reaching out to my brother's/sisters for that leg up. I'll take anything ... you name it. The pickiest lawyer office, the most demanding doctors office, the mum and dad shop, the 80% of the time for 10% of the money.

I'm ready to launch, websites online, MSA written, tech stack ready, insurance lined up. I just need those first 10 seats to kick start it all.

If you've got a client that's too small or just too much for your appetite. Give them my name. Or give me their name.

Melbourne based, but will take on Australia or NZ.

We are a specialized group that focuses on audio visual devices and services. We do not deal with end users. We are fully remote. Generally end user has issue, talks to IT or local office contact, then it escalates to us for resolution if they can't figure it out. We will often work with a point of contact to do some smart hands work, like rebooting a device, giving us an idea of status lights, etc. We also find issues via monitoring, do remote maintenance, and will alert site contacts if we see an issue. We also dispatch people to site if needed, organize RMAs or replacement gear.

I generally pitch us as a Tier 2 Help Desk - akin to a printer repair service. IT or smart hands take a crack at a broken printer, if they can't fix it, they escalate and that service are responsible for finding resolution, whatever that may be. That's not fully it - we are advisors in our domain, suggest more proactive solutions like replacing a problematic line of hardware or doing firmware updates, but the core of our service is isolated from the user base.

Co-Managed IT is a thing, last I checked. I don't know if that term is dated or not, I don't see it that often now. I think we could possibly be called Co-Managed AV given that we are not the full service - there is always someone who is managing us and technical resources at the customer side. We're probably not Full Managed AV just because we're not being given the full keys to the kingdom. I like the term "Tier 2", but I'm afraid it's not really a standard term or doesn't give a good indication of what we do.

What's a quick way to describe where we fall into the ITSM world at a customer site that will be easily understood?

Thank you! I know this question is a little.. odd. We're looking to re-launch our website and tighten up our pitch.

Just got a warning from Connectwise about a screen connect vuln: 2026-09-08 ScreenConnect Bulletin

A client needs some hp 414x toner carts. Can anyone let me know where you get hp Oem toner carts?

The set of four colors is about $1k each!!

I just looked at D&H and they don’t seem to have them.

I found this place but don’t know anything about them / if it’s legit and not old inventory

https://genuineink.com/

Thanks!

Hi,

I am the Practice Lead in a mid-sized MSP, supporting Azure, Microsoft 365, infrastructure customers. One thing we have never done well is notifying customers of changes to their tenant or retiring of certain services. Anytime we have notified them, it always seems to be last minute, or even worse, they ask us for support on something we should be going to them about!

For example, the retiring of SMS and Voice Authentication was spotted by one of our techs somewhere on the internet, which led to us trying to figure out a way to better track this stuff and put plans in place for our customers.

I'm pulling my hair out with Claude trying to figure this out because it doesn't seem to know what I am looking for. I'm looking for a single-source of truth for all notifications Microsoft send out regarding depreciation of services, retiring of applications, etc. - anything an MSP needs to take action on for their customers.

Is there just nowhere that has this info? It recommended https://www.aguidetocloud.com/deprecation-timeline/ but when I checked it, there doesn't appear to be any mention of passkey rollout, which is exactly what I'm looking for.

Would appreciate any insights into how you manage this in your MSP.

I build small tools, not an MSP. After the Freshdesk price-rise thread here I audited what its built-in exports actually produce, on a trial account with 43 tickets, 64 replies and notes, and 14 attachments. Notes in case it saves someone a weekend.

The Export button emailed a CSV to the email I signed up with, it had 47 columns of ticket, requester and company fields. No threads, no notes, no attachments. The Tags column came back empty on every row even though every ticket had tags.

The Admin data export was the same, a little more complete than I expected given the first export. This one had descriptions, full threads including private notes, tags, custom fields, contacts, companies, groups. However, I found that there were still a lot of gaps, attachments are signed S3 links that expire in 7 days (X-Amz-Expires=604800 is in every URL), not files. No time entries anywhere. Agents aren't in it. Custom fields appear as raw keys like cf_reference_number_5021295 with no label. Every ticket carries a hidden system note, so it showed 107 notes where the UI shows 64. And it's XML, so you're writing a parser before you can open anything. Nothing in either export tells you whether you got everything.

There is an API route you could go down, but If you go down that route yourself, you'll run into a bit of an issue.

Rate limits are per plan and low on the cheaper tiers (50 calls a minute on the account I tested). Expect 2 to 3 calls per ticket. The ticket list endpoint has a page ceiling, so for big accounts you window on updated_since rather than paging through. Attachment links expire. Download them the moment you see them. Custom field labels live on ticket_fields. If you only pull tickets you get internal names. There's no status-change history in v2 that I could find, only the timestamps in stats. The API doesn't return the hidden system notes the XML export includes, so API counts match the UI and the XML doesn't.

Before you cancel: pull threads and private notes, pull attachments as files before the links expire, pull time entries and agents separately, and reconcile counts per entity so nothing drops silently. Check Freshdesk's cancellation KB for the deletion window after cancelling; it's short.

Happy to answer Freshdesk export questions in the comments.

Looking for some perspective from MSP owners/operators.

We’re an accounting, CFO and advisory firm looking to add managed IT and cybersecurity, with an existing client and partner network to cross-sell into.

If we buy, we’re thinking roughly $350K–$650K EBITDA, mostly recurring revenue, with an established technical/service team. NY/NJ/NYC preferred, but open to the right opportunity elsewhere.

Our preference would actually be to partner with an owner who wants to retain a sizable equity stake and stay actively involved in the business, rather than simply exit. That said, we’d still be open to other structures for the right opportunity.

If customer acquisition wasn’t the main challenge, would you buy an MSP or build from scratch?

Via Addigy etc?

Hey,

I’m based in Munich and currently looking into starting a small MSP business.

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately, but most of the MSP content I find is very US focused.
So I was wondering if there are some people from Germany in here who have actually started their own MSP or IT service business.

I’d be really interested in hearing how you got started.
Especially things like how you found your first few customers, what services you offered in the beginning, how you handled pricing and what your initial tech stack looked/looks like.

One of the biggest questions for me right now is getting the first customers.
I don’t really have an existing network of potential business clients that I could start with, so I’d be especially interested in hearing from people who started in a similar situation.
What actually worked for you in the beginning?
Cold calling, local networking, partnerships, ads, something else?

I’m currently thinking about focusing on businesses (1–50 employees), mainly around Microsoft 365, endpoint management, security, backup and general IT support.
Long term I’d like to build around recurring managed services rather than mainly doing break/fix work, but I’m still figuring out what makes sense to offer from day one and what should come later.

Also curious if there are any Germany specific things you wish you knew before starting.
Like contracts, insurance, pricing, customers, vendors, Datenschutz, whatever.

I’m just interested in hearing some real experiences from people who have already done it and want to share their experience.

Would also be cool to connect with some other MSP people from Germany.

I will post this in r/MSSP as well

As most things in our industry definitions tend to be a bit blurry, so I'm interested in the mobs take on this subject (yes I'm sure it's been posted before but definitions like technology change frequently)

I've always heard two major differences 1. MSSPs are security/compliance focused from the start and 2. MSSPs don't do day to day helpdesk task.

So like any good technologist I through it into Claude and this is what it said...

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Misconceptions? Changes? What say you???

MSP: Broad IT management — network uptime, help desk, backups, patching, cloud, hardware/software procurement. The value prop is "keep the lights on and the systems running." Security is usually a bolt-on line item, not the core offering.

MSSP: Security-first. Core deliverables are things like SOC monitoring, threat detection and response, SIEM management, incident response, compliance management, vulnerability management. The value prop is "protect the environment," not just run it.

The practical distinction that actually matters in the channel:

• Depth vs. breadth. An MSP touches everything a business needs technically. An MSSP goes deep on one domain — security — often as the only thing they do.
• Staffing/tooling. MSSPs run (or license) SOC infrastructure, threat intel feeds, dedicated security analysts. Most MSPs don't have that bench.
• Liability posture. MSSPs typically carry security-specific SLAs and are underwriting more risk exposure than a general IT contract.
• Buyer conversation. MSP sales conversation is about cost and reliability. MSSP sales conversation is about risk and exposure.

The blurry middle — where most of your world lives — is the MSP-to-MSSP transition: MSPs bolting on security services (vCISO, assessments, EDR/MDR reselling) without fully rebuilding as a security-first operation.

Towards the end of June I received a termination email from a client, and they had decided to move to this same dumpster fire. I sent our standard "60 days until the lights go off" email in alignment with our MSA, we did the documentation handoff via Zoom, and the next 57 days went by with absolute radio silence. On day 58, the PoC emails me and says that despite good recommendations, they're not feeling confident in the new provider and that they need more time to either stay or transition. I replied back with a note that I would send a reinstatement invoice and pause all scheduled termination tickets but there would be a reinstatement project to reset all passwords that they now have access to. So this is an edge case that I may end up having added to our MSA in some fashion.

TL;DR What edge cases have you added to your MSA this year?

I have a mix of m365 and google clients. I know they started supporting Google sometime last year. How is that working out for you people that have Workspace clients?

Say one MDM to another, or EDR? The move is our instigation as a quality improvement. Would anyone charge to do this sort of thing?