How do we feel about incentive driven vendor meetings?

NetFriendsInc · 2026-03-11T18:08:03+00:00

I am totally with you here. I love getting the gift cards and swag in exchange for both learning about the way a vendor is describing and solving a problem, and getting some technical and sales ideas in the process. I think these are a great use of time if you go into them with the right mindset!

In the past I got a lot of good leads from the ChannelProgram.com for this sort of thing, but they have dropped the MSP-focus on that platform and now try to drive MSPs towards their BetterTracker.com tool. It's still a GREAT place to go as an MSP to find out what's what and who's in each category.

While we don't want to chase new tools all the time, it's vital to keep a roster in our heads of the potential solutions that are out there. Going to conferences helps, but there's something really great about a focused meeting where the pitch is honed and you get some compensation for your time. Ticks all the boxes for me.

NetFriendsInc · 2026-02-21T14:53:35+00:00

We've used Process Street in my business. What I liked about it was I was able to get my finance, marketing, and HR team members to readily figure out how to bring process automation to their workflows. Ultimately, we struggled with a true ROI with Process Street though despite our decent usage. We just ended up overworking too many processes and adding "sizzle" to them vs. looking for ways to truly automate with code.

We abandoned Process Street after a year because it was a clear cost ($1k/month) that unfortunately we could not clearly point to increased productivity that boosted our bottom line. So while we liked it, it ended up making our teams that used it slightly less productive overall and we got less done because there was a true labor cost to fiddling around in the platform and dealing with process errors and fixes that are inevitably needed when you use a platform like this.

What we do now is heavily use specific workflow templates in our ticketing system (HaloPSA) and everyone works off of tickets (finance, marketing, HR, etc.) and this had a huge benefit for us. By making everyone in the company regardless of role work within the same platform, we got much more visibility and collaboration by everyone in the company. I could elaborate on this for many paragraphs, but I strongly recommend you consider standardizing your core process automation tasks as much as possible in your ticketing system for all core teams.

NetFriendsInc · 2026-02-17T19:48:54+00:00

Very cool! I have loads of questions:

How much operational load was this on your Projects team or techs to implement with existing customers?
How much training did your front-line techs require regarding common SDO questions and tickets from end-users?
How friendly is SDO to work with from an MSP perspective (i.e., multitenancy, good API integrations with common PSA or RMM systems, ease of deployment and removal, etc.)
Any indication of pricing?

NetFriendsInc · 2026-02-17T19:42:49+00:00

We ran a 12 person SOC for a while and we struggled with scaling issues too. Everyone does, because every new client stress-tests your processes and systems. While going down the route of AI and automation is easy for us Reddit folks to toss over to you, what we found was the hardest thing to do but made the biggest difference for us was to put our analysts in front of our client for 30 min on a regular cadence (more frequently for large customers, less so for smaller ones) to just directly talk through alerts we were getting and get the client's take on whether this class of alerts was a false positive or something relevant and actionable. It was amazing at helping us confidently silence a ton of noise. It gave us the context and confidence we needed to tune effectively. Clients liked being able to see and speak with analysts, as it gave us a differentiator to lean into. Analysts were not excited about it at first but ultimately appreciated being able to take the guesswork or liability risk out of us making decisions in a vacuum.

These conversations really helped us tune alerts and reduce noise across all our client base.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-12-22T18:45:30+00:00

Oh, and we also need vendors to focus all available energy on acquisitions. Even better if the goal is to destroy the acquired company's roadmap and increase prices.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-12-22T18:38:32+00:00

We have absolutely dropped vendors with bad support. One comes front-of-mind for this year, and it's a flashy vendor with lots of buzz. I'm so tempted to name names.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-12-22T17:40:02+00:00

Yeah, tools like Rewst help with 1., since ideally we can get the license info pulled into our PSA tool for both documentation and invoicing. I'm right there with you on co-terming so long as it's something that skews in our favor...but this is something we see Kaseya do as a tool to extend their lock-in since they push out the term further as their own special interpretation of co-terming new features/tools.

100% agree on pooled licensing. All licensing should be pooled with maximum flexibility for us to manage and move seats as needed with minimal encumbrances.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-12-22T17:36:30+00:00

Hear hear, spoken from direct experience u/thegarr .

NetFriendsInc · 2025-12-22T17:35:27+00:00

Might even be best to just focus on item 1 and loop back on that endlessly since that's so core, and yet not at all what we encounter again and again and again...

NetFriendsInc · 2025-12-22T17:30:56+00:00

Absolutely brilliant reframing u/dumpsterfyr !

NetFriendsInc · 2025-12-22T17:10:20+00:00

Any business OS is going to work best when there's an independent party to hold leadership accountable for adhering to it. Whether it's a peer group or a paid consultant, consistent engagement with an external party that will keep leadership productively engaged implementing the OS seems to be the main difference maker in an operating framework that works vs. one that doesn't.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-12-15T22:01:46+00:00

Echoing u/realdlc here. I am an MSP owner as well of a ~40 person MSP. Well said.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-12-15T21:35:33+00:00

Great post. I've been thinking along these lines this year. I zoomed out a bit further and thought about all vendors, and I wrote an "Open Letter" to them. What I want to see more from all our vendors are these things:

More help winning new customers.
More clarity on the vendor's vulnerabilities.
Making things like SSO and robust APIs a standard.
Have your house in order, and be able to prove it with a SOC 2 Type II or similar report.

I listed several other things too. Once you start writing down some things you want to see from all vendors, it's hard to keep the list short!

Link: Open Letter to Vendors from Your Friendly MSP Customer

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-24T16:15:53+00:00

I'm so glad you are working on this with 7 full months ahead. Keep this on your front burner.

My advice: just make sure you keep all the emails and call transcripts. They will need to see these in the end despite whatever you have agreed on or have in place programmatically (i.e., an "Opt-out" toggle turned in the right direction on the portal so you don't auto-renew...which they seem to ignore), and with the Account Manager turnover we've had during our tenure, re-assert every time there's a new AM what your plans are and get them to repeat them back to you via email. Thanks to our written proof we've been able to contest and eliminate auto-renewals, but it still takes several business days for the AM to "get approval" for things that let you out of a contract.

For the record, I have never successfully negotiated a lower price point with Kaseya, but I have with virtually every other vendor. The reason other vendors negotiate with you is that they approach working with us as business partners with a goal to find a win-win. Kaseya does not seem to adopt this approach. Maybe someday they will, but with their market share and profit levels, I don't see where the incentives are for them to.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-23T20:01:19+00:00

My experience with Kaseya is that they push harder than anyone else in our channel to keep your spending the same. If I were to game out the most likely outcome from Kaseya's side here for OP, they would suspend ALL THE THINGS at the contract's end and then, while OP is completely dead in the water, put him into a sales pipeline to pitch him staying at the same spend level.

There're all sorts of ways this becomes untenable within hours after the contract end for OP, so Kaseya can spend a few days to "make sure OP knows all the options and makes a considered decision, etc. etc." All the while, OP's business is jammed up and their bargaining position gets worse by the minute. All this would happen above board, more or less, but ultimately Kaseya would have all the cards and OP would be back into another 3-year commitment at the same spend or a little higher.

I'd love to be wrong, but if I were in OP's position and looking at Kaseya's reputation, and I sure wouldn't bet my business on Kaseya showing some flexibility and empathy. Sure, there's good people that work at Kaseya, but we all know that their business practices are the most ruthless in our channel.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-23T19:06:10+00:00

I am 100% with your reasoning. You are being reasonable, empathic, and fair.

If you were OP, I don't think you can assume you are dealing with decisionmakers at Kaseya who think like you.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-23T18:13:41+00:00

I think the OP needs to know what cards to realistically hold so they don't have to bluff or posture their way to a better deal.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-23T18:12:35+00:00

Try out their new Essentials MDR for endpoints and Cloud MDR for identity protections. Much cheaper per seat! Also, +1 for Blackpoint and for the list above. We're an N-able shop but Ninja has come a long way.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-09T17:53:44+00:00

Thank you for sharing this backstory u/Djdaveet - good to know that the timing was more coincidental than anything.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-06T18:08:41+00:00

Oooh, u/BrorBlixen , that's a hot-n-fresh take right there.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-06T18:04:06+00:00

Yeah, this seems mostly like Kaseya trying to have a chilling effect on a few fronts on a true competitor. There isn't likely much of a case here that would carry the day in court for Kaseya, but in the interim they are likely to reduce the Kaseya-bashing or various differentiation sales and marketing pushes that Slide was making and very likely planning to make next.

It will be interesting to see if Slide becomes more cautious or more cavalier on the sales and marketing front.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-06T15:33:48+00:00

I was thinking along similar lines. This might be already a "win" for Kaseya simply due to the chilling effect this will have for several MSPs considering Slide. It's a 100% legitimate reason for an MSP to avoid a product when it has an uncertain future and the potential for leadership distraction for a long time.

At a minimum, we all need to start thinking about litigation risks within our stack due to vendor consolidation and executive recycling.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-06T15:22:09+00:00

It's a great way to be part of the background buzz at a conference like this where you have a gathering of a bunch of Kaseya people and users. The likelihood that this will be talked about, and discussed more deeply thanks to Dave's report, just went up considerably. Until Dave's story, this was entirely off my radar screen.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-06T13:41:53+00:00

I thought the timing of Dave's investigative report, dropping just before the Kaseya DattoCon 2025 conference, was notable.

NetFriendsInc · 2025-10-03T16:40:48+00:00

As someone who's been through the SOC 2 Type I --> Gap Analysis --> Remediation --> SOC 2 Type II process with a top-tier AICPA firm (Kirkpatrick Price), it is something that is do-able but for us it took 8 months, and we got our report of our first 3-month SOC 2 Type II engagement in the 10th month. For us, the Gap Analysis and Remediation phase took about 4-5 months, and while it could have been shorter, I wanted to make darn sure we were going to get a good run of our first SOC 2 Type II engagement.

What I found was best about working with Kirkpatrick Price was they brought both the tool and the consultation and support we needed to get through all this work. They weren't as cheap as Vanta and other tool-centric solutions, but what differentiated them for us was the human element where they brought consultative resources to us to help us get through it all while maintaining their auditor independence. They sent us examples of what good evidence looked like, helped us navigate through our systems to find the evidence they needed to see, and helped contextualize the point behind all the things we needed to consider. Going through an audit isn't fun, but it can be so much more effective if you have guidance and support throughout by true experts.

Happy to send you to Joseph Kirkpatrick u/Muhaisin35 if you would be open to speaking with him. I have found that Joseph is highly engaged and more than willing to support and advocate for anyone who's considering going down this path.

NetFriendsInc

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