Comparing live pricing and terms from 400+ carriers and platforms
This gets confused constantly, partly because some firms do both and partly because the words are used loosely. Here is the actual distinction, written by an advisor - so read the last section, where we say when you should not use one.
A managed service provider delivers. They run your helpdesk, monitor your endpoints, patch your servers, staff a SOC. They have engineers, tooling and a delivery team, and you pay them for that team.
An advisor does not deliver anything. We carry no products, no engineers and no delivery team. What we do is know the market, compare it honestly on your behalf, source the right provider at the right price, read the contract before you sign it, and stay accountable for the outcome afterwards.
The two are not competitors. An MSP is a supplier you might need us to help you choose. We frequently work alongside the MSP a client already has, and we have talked clients out of replacing one.
| Technology advisor | Managed service provider | |
|---|---|---|
| What they sell | Judgment and market access | Delivered technical service |
| Who employs the engineers | Nobody - we have none | They do |
| Who you pay | The provider, directly | The MSP, directly |
| How they are paid | Residual from the provider you choose | Your monthly fee |
| Product incentive | None - no products of our own | Usually a stack they have standardized on |
| Whose name is on the contract | Yours, with the underlying provider | Usually theirs, with you as the customer |
| What they do when it breaks | Open and drive the ticket, escalate the provider | Fix it |
| Breadth | The whole market, every provider | What they support |
An MSP that has standardized on a security stack has a good reason to recommend that stack. That is not dishonesty - standardization is how they deliver consistently and keep costs sane - but it does mean the recommendation and the commercial interest point the same way.
Our incentive is different, not absent. We are paid a residual by whichever provider you choose. For any given service that rate is closely matched from provider to provider, so there is very little to steer toward. And because a residual only continues while you stay, putting you somewhere wrong costs us the entire stream at renewal - considerably worse for us than any difference in rate.
Ask both of us the same question: what do you make if I buy this? You should get a straight answer from either. If you do not, that tells you something.
Usually the answer is both, at different moments.
When you need work performed - helpdesk, monitoring, patching, incident response, someone on-site. No advisor can do this for you, and any advisor who says otherwise is reselling somebody else's team.
When you are choosing between providers, opening or closing locations, facing a renewal, or cannot get a straight comparison because every vendor is quoting a different shape of thing.
The common case at multi-site scale. The MSP delivers; we source what they deliver on, hold the renewal calendar and escalate the carriers they cannot.
If you have a single location and one internet circuit, you do not need us. Call the two carriers that serve your building, take the better price, and put the renewal date in your calendar. That is a thirty-minute job and hiring anyone to do it is theatre.
If you already have a genuinely competitive comparison in hand and someone internally who reads contracts properly, you have the capability. Our value is that most companies do not, not that the work is mysterious.
And if what you actually need is someone to run your network day to day, you need an MSP, not us. We would help you pick one - but that is a different engagement, and if you only need the delivery, go straight to them.
No advisory fees, no obligation, and you deal with the principal from the first call.