Before you dive into the nitty-gritty aspects of starting an MSP business, take a minute to iron out your vision—i.e., determine what type of MSP you want to be. Are you going to focus on small businesses? Remote workforces? Regulated industries? From your services, tools, and team to your business plan, nailing down your niche early shapes everything else. 

After the vision is clear, it’s time to manifest it and understand what your MSP will oversee. At a high level, MSP core responsibilities typically include: 

• Managing IT infrastructure

• Providing ongoing monitoring and support

• Ensuring security through patching, backup, and endpoint protection

• Supporting compliance and governance needs

• Helping clients scale with more intelligent, more secure tech

Now, don’t feel like you need to offer all this right out of the gate. As they say, slow is smooth, smooth is fast—as long as you have a vision, niche, and a clear roadmap of where you want to see your services go, you’ll have a better chance at successfully scaling your business (and setting yourself apart from the competition).

The early days of running an MSP startup will probably feel like juggling while trying to swim—you’re setting up the backend infrastructure, choosing tools, building out pricing and packaging, all while you’re trying to generate revenue. To help with this balancing act, here’s a quick MSP startup checklist to keep you grounded: 

1. Choose your service offerings

2. Nail down your pricing model

3. Draft your service-level agreements (SLA) and customer onboarding process

4. Build out your tech stack

5. Create an operating framework 

6. Have an escalation plan 

The most important thing about being an MSP is being a reliable partner who prioritizes client security. Customers don’t care about bells and whistles—they care about keeping cybercriminals out.

In general, MSPs make money like any other service provider: recurring revenue, smart upselling, tight margins, and minimal churn. 

The key is having a business model that allows scalability without burning resources. While that’s easier said than done, many successful MSPs focus on automation, proactive support, and value-added services (cybersecurity bundles, compliance support, etc.). 

If you want to add more security services to your MSP offering, you may want to consider starting a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) business. The good news is that everything we’ve discussed about starting an MSP is a solid foundation. 

Even if your business starts as a security-focused MSP that grows into a full-fledged MSSP, your baseline offering must include: 

• Managed EDR

• 24/7 monitoring via a SOC

• Vulnerability management and patching

• SAT

• Account monitoring and dark web scanning

Like we said in the section about creating your vision, don’t feel you need to bite off more than you can chew. Instead of trying to build out all this from the get-go, partner with the right vendors. This will allow you to offer robust protection without having to hire all the necessary talent to get the job done.

You need marketing to generate new logos. Building out your MSP marketing strategy should be about standing out—i.e., clearly communicating the pain points your customers used to feel before partnering with you. 

It’s not about selling shiny tech or listing out services. It’s about selling peace of mind and trust and then backing that up once the contracts are signed. 

Finding new clients can be done through various channels, but the most effective marketing strategy is nurturing relationships with former colleagues, LinkedIn, and local business groups. 

You’re building a business that people will trust to protect theirs. That’s a big deal. And when it comes to cybersecurity, you want backup you can trust.

That’s where Huntress comes in.

We built our platform with MSPs in mind—because we’ve been in your shoes. We’re here to help you scale your security offering with:

• A 24/7, human-led SOC that actually responds to threats (in real-time)

• Managed EDR that doesn’t flood your inbox with noise—it filters for what matters

• Clear, actionable reporting you can show clients to prove your value

• Tools that grow with you, whether you’re onboarding your fifth or five-hundredth client

You’re already wearing 37 hats. Let us wear the security one.