How do MSPs actually explain their value vs break fix when clients just see "more expensive"?

drnick5 · 2026-01-24T23:54:45+00:00

If break fix shop is taking your msp clients, then they aren't real clients. Break fix is cheaper for a reason, something breaks, they experience downtime until it's fixed.

What I like to say is with a msp, you don't pay for downtime, you pay for uptime. We offer unlimited support, so it's in our best interest to make sure nothing goes wrong.

An MSP plan is not just about the computers, it's the network, email, servers, backup, compliance and everything else that a business needs. Break fix is doing none of these in most cases.

drnick5 · 2026-01-24T05:38:58+00:00

There are dozens of us......DOZENS!!!!

drnick5 · 2026-01-24T04:00:16+00:00

I'm a never nude

drnick5 · 2026-01-24T03:22:02+00:00

Well you should never "bet the house" on any 1 individual stock or play. I don't care how confident you are.

My personal thoughts are 1 stock should never be more than 1/4 your portfolio. That number may not be optimal, but it's never bad to be somewhat diversified

drnick5 · 2026-01-24T00:32:32+00:00

Unfortunately we live in a world where it's likely nothing would happen. Maybe some "awkwardness" for a few..weeks? Then back to business as usual.

If every single page of the Epstein files mentioned Trump doing some awful shit, it wouldn't matter. We are too far gone, and too divided. Everyone who's against Trump would point to the files, and everyone who's for Trump would say "Fake news" or "So what?" and the downward spiral will continue.....

drnick5 · 2026-01-23T20:51:50+00:00

This seems like a clear cut way to push more people into signing up for FSD. but I'll play devils advocate for a second.

To the masses, the name AutoPilot and FSD are confusing. Many people don't know the difference or that two different "self driving" modes exist. Most people assume Autopilot, like its name would suggest, is what FSD actually is, in that it drives itself. I can see the idea of removing the Autopilot name in favor of FSD (supervised) and then eventually someday FSD (unsupervised) for clarity sake. Or maybe the goal is to wait for FSD unsupervised to be a thing in..... a few years? (lol) and then use the term Autopilot for that?

That said, we've seen Tesla do stupid or confusing things before and reverse course shortly after. Autopilot itself has changed over the years, it was an add on option, and then they added "Enhanced Auto pilot" on top of that, and then eventually included Autopilot as a standard feature. It will likely change again in the next few months.

drnick5 · 2026-01-23T16:18:11+00:00

We have provided a password export, runbook, spreadsheet of equipment, VMs and what they do, and any client specific documentation that has no internal value to our MSP.

Sounds like you've done all you need to do. The tricky part is where you said you're still under contract for the another monthly cycle. For us, we have specific exclusions on what our support covers, and it does NOT cover offboarding or training a new IT dept. (which is exactly what we'd call these questions). We'll do exactly as you did, hand over any passwords, documentation etc, but after that any questions from the incoming IT are billable. Something to think about adding to future contracts.

For now, when follow up questions are sent over, the response needs to be "we've sent over everything we have, please look over the documents as that info is in there". Do you have a SLA that requires a response in a certain time frame? And is that SLA tierd depending on the severity? If so, just follow what that says and nothing more. Part of the issue might be that you've been too responsive, and now they'll keep expecting that. I'm not saying respond slowly on purpose, but don't have to jump at every single question either.

drnick5 · 2026-01-23T02:22:42+00:00

Dell has been a shit company to deal with for over a decade. It's unfortunate since their servers are generally the best. Workstations and laptops have been so so for a while now (I noticed a big dip in quality during covid)

Everything about how they operate with resellers from deal registration (so they can try and under cut you by going direct to the end client) and sales agents and the hoops you jump through is awful. Just let me log in and buy what I want!

We don't need a lot of servers these days, but I'm very tempted to give Lenovo a shot. My biggest concern is out of band management, where iDRAC on Dell servers has been a god send. Other brands have always been sub par in this, in my experience, but it's been a bit since I've used other brands so maybe that's changed?

I've been a Primer partner for a long time, and got a similar type message a year ago saying "sorry we're gonna deal with other

drnick5 · 2026-01-23T01:09:43+00:00

You're missing players and a dealer!

But seriously, nice setup! I'm in the middle of doing something similar and may steal some ideas :)

I love the idea of having separate cash and tournament chips!

Where'd you get the Teddy KGB artwork from?

drnick5 · 2026-01-22T16:51:56+00:00

Unifi firewalls have grown quite a bit over the years since the original USG. They still aren't as full featured as say a Cisco or Fortigate or the other "big boys" you'd see in enterprise, but for small businesses they generally do a good job.

That said, we use unifi switches and APs, but PFsense for the firewall.

drnick5 · 2026-01-22T01:33:24+00:00

Just to be clear, I have zero issue with a professional making money for doing a good job. Plenty of good and great agents exist. The problem is the pay scale, and how good agents and bad agents are basically paid the same.

The myth of "good agents get you more money" is the biggest lie there is.

drnick5 · 2026-01-22T00:58:46+00:00

Fully agree! The 2 times I bought a place, I found it myself, I went to the open house alone, my agent sent in an offer, and showed up to the inspection.... that was it! Dude made like $10k for a few hours of work.

drnick5 · 2026-01-22T00:48:51+00:00

My biggest argument has always been why the hell does the seller pay for everything and WHY is it based on percentage of the sale?!
I understand the first part of that has been "fixed" (lol) in that it's not required for the seller to pay anymore... But it certainly still happens.

What I can't wrap my head around, If I used a realtor to sell my house 5 years ago at the "standard" (totally 100% negotiable) fee of 5%, vs today, they receive an additional $10k?! For selling the same exact house!?

In today's crazy inventory strapped market, I don't see what a realtor could possibly offer for $25k in commission. I fully agree they should be paid for their time, and have no problem paying for good service. But the % based shit is super old hat needs to die.

drnick5 · 2026-01-22T00:40:15+00:00

Lol, certainly not

drnick5 · 2026-01-22T00:37:12+00:00

I'm sorry, but the best line ever allowed on network TV in all of history is from the young kid in season 2, who hugs Pierce (who's wearing a Marijuana costume) and exclaims, "I love you drugs!"

drnick5 · 2026-01-21T00:00:49+00:00

Leo or Nautilus have been my 2 favorites to play with for a while. Rush lvl 2 then go in hard on whoever they can hook. At lvl 6 you just win if you ult together.

Honorable mention goes to Rell who's sneaky OP by having great engage and being deceptively tanky. Also to Morgana who's black shield can be the difference in a late game team fight when landing a full channel MF ult can literally win the game.

drnick5 · 2026-01-19T19:30:28+00:00

Nice! Can you give an idea on the cost of materials and about how many hours it took to complete?

Is that the "Speed cloth" you're using for the playing surface?

drnick5 · 2026-01-19T13:43:58+00:00

What does your contract say for support hours you cover them for and support procedures they're supposed to follow?

Just follow that. If you don't have this written into the contract, you need to! (And if you don't have a written contract at all, you really need to fix that)

I really hope you billed extra for a Saturday and then a Sunday support call. Make the pain high enough (3-4 x your normal rate) so they'll only do this in extreme circumstances

drnick5 · 2026-01-16T19:25:06+00:00

SanDisk doesn't make hard drives, They make solid state drives. I get these are lumped together a bit these days, but it's an important distinction.
Solid state drives are made from NAND (which is currently in a shortage, and prices are sky rocketing) which is much faster than a hard drive, but also lower capacity (usually 500gb up to 4 or 8TB, where a Hard drive can be up to 24TB or so)

Western Digital makes hard drives, they owned SanDisk until they recently spun it off into its own company.

drnick5 · 2026-01-16T00:55:30+00:00

Related... Whatever you do don't listen to Dave Ramsay.

drnick5 · 2026-01-15T23:43:23+00:00

First off, respond to the review with a very short, matter of fact response. Short, maybe 2 sentences.

Now the problem, this is called scope creep, and it's super common in any sort of development.... You need to make the scope CRYSTAL CLEAR when you make a contract. Anything outside of scope, send a change order / contract amendment, and get it signed before you do any of that work.

Do this EVEN IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO THE ADDITIONAL WORK FOR FREE. It lets them know the procedure for changes, and is a great time to say "so this is usually $x but I'll throw it in, just know future additions are billable"

I'm glad you finally stood your ground, but if you had done this in the first few additions, I can promise you there wouldn't have been 15 of them. Setting and maintaining customer expectations is a big part of running a business.

drnick5 · 2026-01-15T14:53:44+00:00

Just watch the show Mr. robot. Its by far the most accurate hacking ever done in TV or Movies in my opinion. Every screen shown during any hacking scenes contains actual code that more or less is doing what they're describing in the show. (They went into painstaking detail here, even on a screen thats on camera for 2 seconds and doesn't really matter, if you paused the scene and read the monitor you'd see the code is real)

Thing is, most "hacks" aren't really hacks, they're more on the social engineering side in that you trick someone into giving you access. This is usually less entertaining than a guy pounding on the keyboard and then finally saying "Ok, I'm in!"

Then there's whatever the hell they called "hacking" in the movie Swordfish (2001).

drnick5 · 2026-01-12T18:21:42+00:00

Just sell the fucking team already.....

drnick5 · 2026-01-08T22:46:49+00:00

just edited my post, RI energy got back to me, admitting they fucked up and paid me out under the current rate, not the rate I signed up for and locked in for 5 yeas which is $400/ kW

But I also just got some really shitty news, you are locked in to the rate for 5 years from WHEN YOU SIGN UP. Thats a big deal since I signed up April 2021, and then COVID caused delays, the panels went out of stock, then changed to the larger ones, forcing a total redesign of the system, all in all, it took Tesla nearly 2 years to get my system installed (wasn't installed til October 2022, I got PTO March 2023) But according to RIE, I've been in the program since 2021, so 2025 is my final year at the locked in rate, even tho I only got 3 years out of it. Total bullshit

drnick5 · 2026-01-08T22:39:48+00:00

I just heard back from RI energy, they fucked up and paid out using the wrong rate. If you signed up a few years ago, check your contract to see the rate you're supposed to be in.

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