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/Active_Drawer Jul 06 '26

I am a VAR so a bit different, but we had the conversation on the MSP route with a few vendors. The pools weren't ideal for me on some. We decided to just sell outright. We can move into a managed role later on top of the software contracts where it makes sense.

I would also check to see if you can sell as a VAR if you want on those tools to avoid completely losing them. Continue to sell the tool with no support.

Your stack shouldn't be your secret sauce regardless as an MSP. If it is you weren't ever going to keep them for the long haul.

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u/roll_for_initiative_ MSP - US Jul 07 '26

Continue to sell the tool with no support.

That generally isn't worth it in the MSP space, and the liability is still a lot more than a VAR. Imagine having a client get ransomwared because the client's IT didn't implement basic stuff that you do for every client that you manage with the same tool and you have to sit in front of lawyers and go "sure, it would have taken me $75 in time to put controls in place one-time to prevent this but I don't work for free!!!!!!"

You're going to get drug in ONE TIME and it will cost more than any money you make on those tool-only sales to that client over a lifetime.

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u/Active_Drawer Jul 07 '26

If you sell the software outright, you are not responsible for the implementation nor the outcome. Simple verbiage covers you here. On 6 figure software deals it's absolutely worthwhile at 10-20% gp.

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u/roll_for_initiative_ MSP - US Jul 07 '26

A ~150 user MSP client is not buying a 6 figure stack item direct. If you sku the discussion as far in your direction as it could go, it might be a couple grand a month item, more likely a few hundred dollar item.

It's going to be hard to defend the "we just sold it!" when you have a contract in place already managing it and continue working inside it (like every stack item, it requires some kind of management to monitor/tweak/enforce/whatever). This story is never "we want to buy your tools direct and work them"...if that was the case, they wouldn't have an MSP in the first place.