How to Price MSP Services: A Service-Tier Playbook
Most MSPs price by feel, then wonder why margins compress every year. Here's the operator playbook for building good/better/best service tiers that actually grow MRR.
George Fassett, Jr. · July 6, 2026
If your MSP MRR has been flat for two quarters, pricing is almost always the culprit — not sales, not marketing, not the tech stack. This is the same tiering framework I used to scale and eventually exit an MSP, boiled down into something you can implement this quarter.
Why "per-seat, all-you-can-eat" is quietly killing your margin
The classic MSP pricing model — one flat per-seat rate that covers everything — was built for a world where labor was cheap and vendor costs were stable. Neither is true anymore. Microsoft, security stack, RMM, PSA, and cyber insurance all raised prices in the last 18 months. If your pricing hasn't moved, your gross margin has.
The three-tier framework
Build three tiers and stop negotiating. Every prospect picks one; no custom quotes for under 50 seats.
- Essential — reactive support, patching, backup, endpoint AV. Priced to be the "obvious no."
- Managed — everything in Essential, plus proactive monitoring, quarterly business reviews, and a real vCIO cadence. This is your target tier — 70% of new sales should land here.
- Secure+ — everything in Managed, plus 24x7 SOC, EDR, DNS filtering, phishing simulation, and a written incident-response commitment. Priced 40–60% above Managed.
The pricing math that actually works
Start from your fully-loaded cost per seat per month: labor, tooling, licenses, insurance, overhead. Multiply by 2.5 for Essential, 3.0 for Managed, 3.8 for Secure+. If your Managed number feels uncomfortable, you're probably in the right place.
What to change on Monday
- Publish the three tiers on your website with real prices — no "contact us."
- Move every existing client to a tier by the next QBR. Grandfathered pricing dies at the anniversary.
- Tie every technician's bonus to Secure+ attach rate, not ticket volume.
Want the full checklist we use with MSP clients? Grab the MSP Pricing & Service Tier Audit — it walks through the exact numbers and the client-conversation script.