Last verified October 16, 2026. The dollar figures below are from the vendor pages linked in the billing section, opened that day. Who publishes these notes is on the about page.
I evaluate an MSP stack by writing down five tools and the job each one has to do next month: the RMM, the PSA, the documentation system, the backup, and security (endpoint detection and identity). A demo that cannot finish those jobs does not get a score. I have watched shops buy the tour. The agents come off two years later, and the scripts stay behind.
This is the worksheet I use for a shop with a handful of technicians. The fillable version is the MSP stack evaluation checklist, listed at $49 on the digital products page.
The five rows
I keep one row per layer. If a product claims to be two layers, it still gets two rows, because the failure modes are different.
The RMM row is the agent on the endpoint: patching, alerts, scripts, and a remote session while the client is on the phone. The PSA row is the ticket, the agreement, the time, and the invoice. The documentation row is where the next technician finds the firewall login, the backup account, and the procedure that is not in someone's head. The backup row is whether you can restore a file, a server, or a mailbox after the live copy is gone. The security row is endpoint detection plus identity: an alert a person will open, and multi-factor authentication on admin accounts and on mail. CISA's Cyber Essentials says, "Leverage multi-factor authentication for all users, starting with privileged, administrative and remote access users." I do not rank security products on this sheet. If an agent will not install, that ticket goes to the vendor.
A stack can be one login or five. I do not award points for "all in one." I award a pass when the job completes in the trial, on a machine that is not a lab VM.
Write the jobs before the demo
I write the jobs in a notebook before I install anything. If I hear them in the sales call, I will grade the call.
For the RMM I use five jobs:
- Patch Windows on a group of machines and reboot them without a pile of tickets the client did not expect.
- Take a remote session while someone is using the PC.
- Push one script to a group, and then find that script again a week later.
- Get one disk or backup alert I would actually work.
- Turn the time from one of those jobs into a line on an invoice, or into an export the PSA can take.
Anything I will not touch this month does not get a vote. A feature list is not a job.
For the PSA I add one ugly agreement from a real client: prepaid hours, a credit, an after-hours rate. If the product cannot bill that agreement, the pretty ticket screen does not matter. NinjaOne's own PSA page says, "Since its general availability in Q1 2026, NinjaOne PSA has included Billing, Ticketing, Documentation, and IT Asset Management," and that larger MSPs with more complicated contracts often pair the RMM with HaloPSA. I treat that as a warning to run the ugly agreement in the trial, not as a reason to skip the trial. If the PSA errors, that ticket goes to the vendor's support.
For documentation I pick three facts a stranger must be able to find: the firewall admin URL, the backup login, and the steps to restore one file. If those three live in email, the documentation product has not been adopted. It has been purchased.
For backup I pick one file and one server, or one mailbox if mail is the business. CISA's Stop Ransomware page says, "Maintain offline, encrypted backups of data and regularly test your backups." A green backup job is not that test.
For security I pick one detection a person would work, and I check that an admin cannot sign in to mail with a password alone. Anything else on the security brochure waits.
The billing unit is the first column
I write the billing unit before I write a feature. Per technician and per device are different businesses.
I opened these pages on October 16, 2026:
- Atera's pricing-model article says you pay per technician, a technician can support unlimited customers and devices, and anyone who needs the console needs a technician license. The pricing guide, updated August 19, 2026, lists Pro at $129 per technician per month billed annually, or $159 billed monthly. A summary table on that same guide lists Pro at $149 a month. I use the $129 / $159 pair and I re-read both numbers before they go into a spreadsheet. The MSP pricing page did not show those dollar amounts in the text when I opened it.
- Syncro's pricing page lists Core at $129 per user per month billed annually, or $159 month to month, and Team at $179 annually or $209 monthly. The FAQ says you pay per technician who uses the product, with unlimited endpoints on every plan. The old
syncromsp.com/pricing/address redirects there with a 301. - NinjaOne's MSP pricing page says it uses per-device pricing. For the commercial, non-FedRAMP instance, it publishes $3.75 per device per month at 50 or fewer endpoints, and as low as $1.50 at 10,000. The same page says the rate also varies by region, products, promotions, and commitment length.
Two annual seats at the published $129 rate are $258 a month, whether the shop has 40 machines or 400. That $129 is the annual Pro rate in Atera's pricing guide and the annual Core rate on Syncro's pricing page. Fifty devices at the $3.75 rate NinjaOne's MSP pricing page publishes for the commercial, non-FedRAMP instance are $187.50. That page does not publish the per-device steps between 51 endpoints and 9,999. The quote does. I ask the quote to list every module, which device types count, any minimum, the term, and the price after a promotion ends. The same page says pricing "varies by region and products purchased," so a quote can include more than the endpoint rate.
Directory listings for the three products are Atera, Syncro, and NinjaOne. The NinjaOne vs Datto RMM page says it places the public summaries side by side and does not rank either product, and it says to use the vendor sites for current packaging. A Datto figure belongs on Datto's own site, read the day you quote it.
Per-technician pricing fits a small crew with a lot of endpoints, if the seat really is a person who logs into the console. Atera's article is explicit that a license is for console access, not for a job title. Per-device pricing fits when the fleet is still small, or when you already sell per device and you want the tool bill to move with the fleet. It fits poorly when a new client of 200 PCs shows up and you only learn the new rate after the quote. That is a fit note about the model. It is not a ranking of the three products.
What I record in the trial
I put the agent on 10 or 15 machines at a client who will tolerate it. I leave the default monitors on for a week and I count the alerts I would work. I open one ticket with the vendor during the trial. The speed of that reply is part of the score. The content of the reply is theirs. If the product is broken, I use the vendor's support, and I write down how long it took. I do not turn this worksheet into a troubleshooting guide for their agent.
Each row on the sheet has the same columns:
| Column | What I write |
|---|---|
| Job | The one-line job from the notebook |
| Pass or fail | Whether it finished in the trial, on a real machine |
| Billing unit | Per technician, per device, per user, or quoted |
| Price I was shown | The figure, the date, and the URL |
| Who it fits | The book of business where the bill stays sane |
| Who it does not fit | The book where the bill or the missing feature hurts |
| Exit | How you cancel, and how the data comes out |
| Support | The vendor's own support URL, not mine |
"Who it fits" has to name a constraint. "Growing MSPs" is not a constraint. "Two technicians and 400 Windows PCs, invoicing inside the same product" is a constraint. "A Mac on the Pro tier" is a constraint: Atera's plan-difference article says the Mac agent and the Linux agent are not available on Pro, and are included on Growth and Power. The pricing guide's Pro list still says patch management covers Windows, Mac, and Linux. I write both sentences on the sheet and I trial Growth if the client has Macs.
Syncro's pricing page describes managed endpoints as Windows, Mac, servers, and network devices, and the patch line it publishes is automated Windows patch management. I write "Linux not named on the pricing page" in the fail column until a trial shows me an agent. I do not treat silence as a no, and I do not treat it as a yes.
Documentation and backup are separate rows even when the RMM has a tab
NinjaOne's PSA page says documentation has been part of the PSA since Q1 2026. That does not retire the documentation row. I still time how long it takes a second technician to find the firewall login without asking the first one. The directory lists IT Glue and Hudu as documentation products. The Hudu vs IT Glue page says it does not declare a winner. I use that page as a pointer, then I do the three-fact test in the trial. I have not copied either vendor's price onto this sheet, because I did not take those prices from their pages for this note.
Backup gets the CISA line in the "job" cell: offline, encrypted, and tested. I write where the offline copy lives, who can log into it, and the date of the last restore I watched. A product that only shows the last successful job fails the row until someone restores a file and opens it. If the restore fails, the next click is the backup vendor's support, not a guess from me.
Whether the rows talk to each other
A pass on each row is not a pass on the stack. Before I sign, one RMM alert has to open a ticket, and a failed backup has to show up in that queue or in a mailbox a current technician reads. If the handoff fails, I open the vendor's ticket and I write down the wait. I do not debug their integration in this note.
Exit, in the same ink as the price
I write the cancellation line next to the price so a discount cannot hide the term.
Atera's MSP pricing page says monthly plans can be cancelled at any time, and annual plans at the end of the subscription period. NinjaOne's pricing page says partners who have not opted into a promotional commitment can cancel with 60 days' notice, and that month-to-month billing is offered case by case through the account manager. A discounted rate tied to a commitment is a different contract from the month-to-month sentence. I ask which one the quote is.
I also ask for the export: devices, scripts, tickets, invoices, and the documentation, in a format another product can take. If the answer is "professional services can help," I write that down as the exit cost.
I run the sheet again once a year, and again when a renewal or a new quote shows up. The billing unit is the column that goes stale first.
Start with the billing unit and the five RMM jobs. The rest of the sheet is what you learned when you tried to leave.
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Works Cited
"About." ITOps Desk, itopsdesk.org/about. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"Atera for MSPs plans and pricing - just pay per technician!" Atera, www.atera.com/msp-pricing/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"Atera subscription information." Atera Support, support.atera.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017051719-Atera-subscription-information. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
Atera Team. "The Ultimate Guide to MSP Pricing: Strategies for Growth and Profitability." Atera, 19 Aug. 2026, www.atera.com/blog/pricing-guide-for-msps/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"Cyber Essentials." CISA, www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/cyber-essentials. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"Difference between the MSP and IT Department products." Atera Support, support.atera.com/hc/en-us/articles/6126425949340-Difference-between-the-MSP-and-IT-Department-products. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"Digital products." ITOps Desk, itopsdesk.org/products. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"FAQ." ITOps Desk, itopsdesk.org/faq. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"Hudu vs IT Glue." ITOps Desk, itopsdesk.org/compare/hudu-vs-it-glue. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"NinjaOne Pricing for MSPs." NinjaOne, www.ninjaone.com/msp/pricing/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"NinjaOne vs Datto RMM." ITOps Desk, itopsdesk.org/compare/ninjaone-vs-datto-rmm. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"PSA Software for MSPs." NinjaOne, www.ninjaone.com/msp/psa/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"RMM and PSA Pricing for MSPs." Syncro, syncrosecure.com/pricing/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"Stop Ransomware." CISA, www.cisa.gov/stopransomware. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
"What is your pricing model?" Atera Support, support.atera.com/hc/en-us/articles/209358127-What-is-your-pricing-model. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.