How do I find out what other MSPs charge?

Published pricing is rare in managed services, so build the picture indirectly. Public pricing pages and packaged tiers tell you their posture even when the numbers are absent. Job postings reveal the delivery model they're staffing for. Most usefully, prospects will tell you during discovery what they've been quoted — ask about structure, per-seat versus per-device versus flat, rather than the raw figure, because structure is what you actually compete on.

Who is an MSP's real competition?

Usually not the other MSPs in town. The most common competitor is inertia — the internal IT person, the incumbent provider nobody loves but nobody has replaced, or the decision to do nothing for another year. Positioning against a rival provider when your actual competitor is 'we'll revisit this in Q3' produces messaging that misses entirely.

How often should an MSP redo competitive analysis?

A quarterly refresh is enough for most markets. Between refreshes, the two highest-signal, lowest-effort things to re-check are competitor job postings and pricing pages — both change before anything else does, and both are public.

What makes an MSP genuinely differentiated?

Something a prospect can verify. Vertical depth with reference clients, a specific compliance posture, a response SLA you publish and meet, or deep specialisation in a stack the prospect already runs. 'Great service' and 'we actually answer the phone' are claims every competitor also makes, which makes them worthless as differentiation regardless of whether they're true.

MSP Competitive Analysis: Positioning Against Providers

Competitive analysis for an MSP isn't a slide deck. It's the answer to one uncomfortable question: when a prospect picks someone else, why?

Most providers can't answer it with anything specific. That's not a research gap — it's a positioning gap, and it shows up in every proposal that gets compared on price because nothing else about it was distinguishable.

Why MSPs Skip This (and Pay for It)

Ask ten MSPs what makes them different and most will say some version of responsiveness, great service, we treat clients like partners. Those may all be true. They're also what every competitor in the market says, which means a prospect hearing them learns nothing and falls back on the only variable left: price.

The failure isn't in service delivery. It's that nothing in the pitch was checkable. Competitive analysis is how you find the claim you can make that others can't.

Identifying Your Real Competitors

Competition arrives in three tiers, and most MSPs only think about the first.

Local providers

The other MSPs in your metro. Visible, easy to research, and usually the least decisive of the three.

Vertical specialists

National or regional providers who do one industry deeply. They beat you on credibility in their vertical even when you're stronger technically.

Internal IT and doing nothing

The one that actually wins most often. An overloaded internal admin, an incumbent nobody likes but nobody has replaced, or a decision deferred another year.

Warning

If your messaging argues why you're better than the MSP down the road, but most of your losses are to "we'll revisit next year", you're competing with the wrong opponent. The counter to inertia is cost of inaction, not feature comparison.

What to Gather

Keep it to things that change how you sell. Seven fields are enough.

Verticals served — where they have reference stories
Client size band — the headcount range they're built for
Stack and vendor alliances — what they standardise on
Pricing posture — per-seat, per-device, or flat-rate
Contract terms — length and exit conditions they push
Hiring signals — the clearest evidence of where they're investing
Security and compliance certifications — table stakes in regulated verticals

Where to Find It

All of this is public, and most of it takes an afternoon.

Job postings

The single highest-signal source. A provider hiring three security engineers is telling you their next twelve months of positioning before their website does.

Their own site and pricing page

Which verticals get a dedicated page, which services are packaged into tiers, and whether they publish numbers at all.

Vendor partner directories

Partner tier and certification level indicate both technical depth and where their margin comes from.

Review sites and LinkedIn headcount

Complaint patterns in reviews are your opening. Headcount trend tells you whether they're growing into your market or retreating from it.

Your own discovery calls

The most accurate source you have, and the most underused. Prospects will describe a competitor's proposal in detail if you ask about structure rather than price.

If you're researching competitors for hiring rather than sales, competitive talent intelligence covers that angle.

Turning Findings Into Positioning

Research only pays off when it changes what you say. Map each finding to a differentiation statement built on something a prospect could verify — vertical depth, compliance posture, a published response SLA, or stack specialisation.

Positioning claims

Do This

Name the vertical and the reference client you can point to
State a response SLA you actually meet and will publish
Lead with the compliance framework you're audited against
Claim depth in the specific stack the prospect already runs
Quantify the cost of the status quo they're living with

Avoid This

Claim 'best service' — every competitor claims it too
Differentiate on 'we answer the phone' — that's table stakes
List certifications with no connection to the prospect's problem
Position against a rival when the real competitor is inaction
Make any claim you couldn't evidence if asked in a proposal review

Using It in Sales Conversations

"We're already talking to someone else" is not a rejection — it's an invitation to ask better questions than the other provider did. Competitive knowledge lets you ask about the specific thing that provider tends to under-deliver, without ever naming them.

Disparaging a competitor directly reads as insecurity and tends to lose the room. Asking a question the prospect can't answer, and that the incumbent should have covered, does the work for you. See discovery questions that uncover real pain and cold calling objections and responses.

Keeping It Current

A full refresh once a quarter is plenty. Between refreshes, watch two things: job postings and pricing pages. Both are public, both take minutes to check, and both change before a competitor's marketing does — which makes them the earliest warning you'll get that the market you're selling into has moved.

Key Takeaways

1Your real competitor is usually inertia: internal IT, an unloved incumbent, or another year of deferral.
2Undifferentiated pitches compete on price: if nothing is checkable, price is all that's left.
3Job postings are the highest-signal source: they reveal investment before marketing does.
4Differentiate on the verifiable: vertical depth, compliance posture, published SLA, stack specialisation.
5Refresh quarterly: track job postings and pricing pages in between — they move first.