MSP Pricing: The Complete Guide to Models, Strategies & Growth in 2025

In 2025, pricing isn’t just a business decision, it’s a survival strategy.

MSPs are facing increasing operational complexity and overwhelming agent fatigue. According to the MSP Agent Fatigue Report 2025, over 75% of MSPs experience alert fatigue at least monthly, and those using 7+ tools are 64% more likely to face daily burnout. 

As MSPs reevaluate their service delivery models, streamlined, scalable pricing is now a top competitive differentiator.

4 Key Factors for Effective MSP Pricing Models

1. Profitability

You must understand all direct and indirect costs. If you’re losing money at full capacity, your pricing strategy is broken.

2. Scalability

Your pricing should grow alongside your clients. Models based on user or device count are inherently scalable, unlike one-off or break-fix approaches.

3. Simplicity

MSPs using too many pricing variables risk client confusion. Clear, predictable pricing models reduce billing errors and support smoother onboarding【5†Heimdal Report – MSP Agent Fatigue 2025†L22-L23】.

4. Standardization

Custom pricing for every client leads to chaos. Standardization streamlines service delivery, billing, and compliance, all areas cited as operational pain points in the 2025 Agent Fatigue Report.

There are many fantastic reasons to review your MSP pricing model. If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to find an option that lets you attract new customers and quickly grow your business – which can be easier said than done.

But as your MSP business grows, you’ll find your pricing priorities change over time. You may therefore need to review your pricing when you hit a new stage of growth.

But here’s the challenge: While there are many different pricing models, there’s no silver bullet here.

No single approach is going to work for every business. A large, established MSP will almost certainly have a different pricing strategy to a small, two-person team.

The goal here should be to make your pricing as standardized as possible. The larger your business grows – the more important this is going to be – because more clients and headcount will only increase the confusion.

Top 6 MSP Pricing Strategies (2025 Update)

Now we’ve discussed the main considerations for your pricing, we can start to look at the different options.

While there’s plenty of variation in how MSPs price their services, most use one of six well-known models.

We’ve broken these down into three categories; flat, tiered, and bespoke.

There’s also another important factor to remember: It’s not all or nothing. You are the master of your own business, and if you want to combine the best of two or three pricing models – there’s nothing to stop you.

MSPs can and do offer multiple pricing options, and there are plenty of good reasons to do so. However, always remember that the more pricing options you offer, the more complex it’s going to be for the customer and the more difficult it’s going to be for you.

Flat Fee Pricing Models

1. Per-Device Pricing
Charge per endpoint (e.g., laptops, mobile devices, servers). Offers clear scalability as clients grow.

Pros: Simple to scale, aligns pricing with complexity.
Cons: Can become complex with device variations and virtual environments.

2. Per-User Pricing
Charge per supported user, regardless of device count. Ideal for remote or hybrid workforces.

Pros: Transparent and easy to sell.
Cons: Doesn’t always match support needs.

Tiered Pricing Models

3. Multi-Tier Packages (e.g., Silver, Gold, Platinum)
Predefined bundles tailored to common customer profiles. Strikes a balance between flexibility and simplicity.

Pros: Predictable revenue, standardization.
Cons: Clients may not see value if packages don’t align perfectly.

4. All-You-Can-Eat
One-size-fits-all, comprehensive service with a flat monthly fee.

Pros: Extreme simplicity and consistent billing.
Cons: High barrier to entry; hard to scale clients without upselling.

All-you-can-eat was always my personal goal – to get to one single service that you sell – effectively just the gold or platinum package.

The benefit here is when your company just sells one main service, everything else becomes clearer. There are no awkward telephone calls from clients where your engineers don’t really know what service they’re on. You don’t have any of that, so having a single primary offering is a huge benefit to you as an MSP.

Pete Matheson, Former MSP Owner and MSP Content Creator

Bespoke Pricing Models

5. A-La-Carte Pricing
Clients choose from a menu of individual services.

Pros: Low barrier to entry, easy to upsell.
Cons: Inconsistent revenue, operational overhead.

A la carte can be very dangerous… because customers like to cherry-pick. They’ll say “I don’t want this, I do want this…” and you as an MSP are going to run into some serious problems when you don’t have a budget to go take care of the issues the customer is having. Get them on some kind of recurring contract.

Harrison Baron, Former MSP Owner and Content Creator

6. Break-Fix (Pay-As-You-Go)
Reactive pricing for specific incidents or needs.

Pros: Easy to pitch for one-off needs.
Cons: Not scalable or sustainable for long-term growth.

1.   A-la-carte

As the name would suggest, this offers clients the opportunity to pick and choose their own unique package of services. Each option is generally priced individually. You might, for instance, have one rate for patch management, another for device backups, another for support and monitoring, etc.

The model makes it easier to attract clients who don’t want to be locked into a package or flat-rate service. Ideally, these clients can be encouraged to expand their usage over time – but this won’t always be successful.

A la carte can be very dangerous… because customers like to cherry-pick. They’ll say “I don’t want this, I do want this…” and you as an MSP are going to run into some serious problems when you don’t have a budget to go take care of the issues the customer is having. Get them on some kind of recurring contract.

Harrison Baron, Former MSP Owner and Content Creator

Pros:

• Flexibility – Clients can construct a bespoke package of services, based on their specific needs.
• Consistent margins – With each service being priced independently, you can closely tie the funds you receive to the cost and effort required from your team. This avoids the need to raise the margins on some services to cover the costs of others.
• Low point-of-entry – Individual services can be an easier sell than a whole package or flat rate. This low point of entry can be a competitive advantage to some MSPs.

Cons:  

• Inconsistent revenue – Unlike other options, a-la-carte does not offer recurring and predictable revenue for MSPs. From a business perspective, this can be a real liability.
• Standardization – The a-la-carte model creates extra work and complexity for internal teams – and makes it difficult to offer a consistent level of service for each client.
• Complex pricing – Bespoke pricing can make it difficult to understand which clients require what levels of service. This can create confusion and conflict.
• Scalability – While it may be easier to attract smaller clients with this model – there’s no guarantee they will expand their usage over time. Medium and larger MSPs will generally find these small, non-scaling clients to be more trouble than they’re worth.

2.   Break-fix

The break-fix model is another form of service-based pricing. In fact, it’s one of the oldest pricing models in the MSP industry – and is similar in many ways to the a-la-carte model. It allows customers to choose and pay for services as and when they need them – rather than paying a recurring subscription for always-on services.

As the name would suggest, however, this model tends to be reserved for resolving reactive issues such as downtime, system breakdown, or hardware failure. MSPs will generally price this model in terms of hours, rather than having a bespoke rate for each service.

In practice though, there’s limited difference between the two – in both cases, clients can pick a service and pay a one-time fee. The pros and cons are therefore fairly consistent across both.

Despite its long heritage, few MSPs favor the break-fix model nowadays, since it reduces scalability and standardization – while still not guaranteeing any recurring revenue for the MSP.

Pros:

• Flexibility – Customers only need to purchase services when they need them. This makes it easier to attract those who don’t need full coverage.
• Higher margins – MSPs will generally charge higher rates for reactive, non-recurring services. Customers who have an immediate issue to resolve will generally be happy to pay these.
• Works with other pricing models – Offering a few reactive maintenance services can be a good way to attract and prove yourself to new customers, without the need for excessive pitching or negotiation.

Cons:  

• Inconsistent revenue – The break-fix model is not an effective way to create recurring revenue. MSPs therefore prefer to encourage customers towards a tiered or flat rate model – even if used alongside a limited break-fix offering.
• Reactive – Resolving reactive maintenance requests can be a hugely inefficient use of time. Many MSPs will find it difficult to justify for what could be a small, one-off client.
• Scalability –  This pricing model can be effective if clients eventually decide to move towards more profitable alternatives. However, there’s no guarantee this will be the case and no way to distinguish between accounts that will scale and those that won’t.

Why Heimdal® Is Built for Profitable MSP Growth

In a landscape where only 11% of MSPs enjoy seamless integration across tools, Heimdal® stands out as a unified, all-in-one cybersecurity platform.

During lockdown, we evaluated our entire security stack. We installed different AV products onto a virtual machine and tried to infect them with ransomware. Heimdal blocked everything.

Heimdal has never failed us. Our testing showed it to be better than other more well-known products.

Heimdal® user, review via Sourceforge

Key Benefits:

• One console. Total visibility. Eliminate context switching and reduce alert fatigue.
• Consolidated toolset. Simplify your stack and improve billing, onboarding, and compliance.
• Scalable for any pricing model. Whether you use per-user, tiered, or all-you-can-eat, Heimdal supports you.
• Proven results. MSPs using Heimdal report fewer false positives, faster response times, and happier teams. 

Sound like your cup of tea? If so, try Heimdal® for free today.

Join the Heimdal Partner NEXUS Program

Partner NEXUS is built for MSPs, MSSPs, resellers, and distributors looking to:

• Expand revenue through the largest XDR suite in the market;
• Simplify operations with unified management;
• Strengthen protection with real-time threat intelligence.

NEXUS (Network of Excellence, Unity, and Safeguarding) is a global initiative tailored for MSPs and MSSPs, distributors and resellers that aims at improving customer security and expanding business opportunities.

FAQs

1.   What are the main MSP pricing strategies?

There are six common MSP pricing models that MSPs use to bill their customers: pay-per-device, pay-per-user, bespoke pricing, break-fix, tiered pricing, and all-you-can-eat. MSPs will choose different pricing strategies, or combinations, depending on the size of their business as well as the customer base they’re targeting.

2.   What are the main priorities for effective MSP pricing?

An effective pricing model should be: 1. Simple so customers can understand it, 2. Scalable so you can easily grow your business, and 3. Standardized, so you can easily provide an efficient and effective level of service. No single pricing model can deliver on all these three priorities equally, so MSPs generally have to choose what’s most important to them.

3.   What’s the best MSP pricing model?

There’s no silver bullet when it comes to MSP pricing. Organizations will choose different pricing models based on their own unique customer base and priorities. However, the MSP industry as a whole is generally moving away from customized and bespoke pricing, and towards flat rates that charge clients per user or device being maintained.

Want to reduce complexity and increase profits?
Start with the right pricing model. But don’t forget your tech stack. Book a free Heimdal demo today and learn how to serve more clients with less fatigue.

Gabriella Antal

SMM & Corporate Communications Officer

Gabriella is the Social Media Manager and Cybersecurity Communications Officer at Heimdal®, where she orchestrates the strategy and content creation for the company's social media channels. Her contributions amplify the brand's voice and foster a strong, engaging online community. Outside work, you can find her exploring the outdoors with her dog.