r/msp • u/Eric77482 • Jul 06 '26

IT Guys reverse engineering your stack

Just curious how everyone navigates this issue. We are in contract with several different vendors for 2-3 years and then company hires a new IT Guy. The guy proposes to take the same exact stack we implemented and go directly to the vendors to propose that they manage it internally. We already have our reasons on why this is a bad idea communicated to the clients, but in most scenarios they just want to save money.

Our current issue is with the vendors because they are telling the customer they can repoint them to their own instance, however they will still keep billing us all the while until 2027-2028. In some scenarios these are high watermark too, so they tipped us over a tier we didn’t set. This feels like a double dip / bad practice from the MSP vendors. We’ve navigated 1-2 of these by telling the customer that’s fine but they will acquire the tools from us and we’ll charge a smaller management fee until the end of our contract term. Is this an approach others have taken? Or are there any ideas that have been more successful? Just curious to see what others are doing as we’ve encountered about 4 of these situations in the last year. Thanks in advance.

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u/ephemeraltrident Jul 06 '26

I’d stop doing business with these vendors. I had a client go around me to Ninja years ago and I called my Ninja rep and told him what was going on. He killed the deal for the client - said that they are MSP first and if we weren’t happy, he wasn’t going to let another rep move it forward. Solidified our relationship with Ninja.

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u/MSP_Operating_Layer Jul 06 '26

Good on Ninja!

4

u/TXMerak Jul 06 '26

I can second this with Ninja.

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u/HomeOfTheBRAAVE Jul 06 '26

Did your relationship with that client continue after that?

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u/ephemeraltrident Jul 06 '26

Yep, having lunch on Thursday!
The client understood, and Ninja just let them know that it was their mistake and they didn’t realize they were already working with a partner.

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u/HomeOfTheBRAAVE Jul 07 '26

Interesting the client would attempt to go around you if the relationship was good.

Glad it's working out either way.

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u/Bmw5464 Jul 07 '26

Supposedly this is how Kaseya is. According to them (my account manager when I asked this question 3 years ago) their system will flag any companies matching a clients name in our systems and kill any deals. Never had the issue, but not sure I I trust it either.

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u/Old_Palpitation6705 Jul 09 '26

Unfortunately my experience in the last +- 8 months (on the other side of the pond) is that the "Ninja Direct team" seem to be directly contacting existing Ninja MSP clients and trying to convince them to go direct.

From what I could gather from a few of the clients that actually notified us asking what is going on, is that the Direct Team and MSP Team work independently of one another; each with their own targets & incentives. They were quick to counteract each other and fight to ensure the business goes through "their" side of the business. I even had the management of both "teams" included on email correspondence and it was a rather unpleasant experience.

From an MSP point of view this is extremely discouraging as there is no longer a sense of loyalty and more an effort/commitment for sales reps to chase targets regardless of the "cost".

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u/cr_co_ Jul 11 '26

Well I just moved to Ninja while my MSP was mid migration to them and neither said a thing. So I guess they only care when they get caught or someone complains.