MSP Pricing Models: Per-User vs Per-Device (Survey Data)

Pricing is the single most impactful decision you'll make as an MSP owner. Get it right and you build a profitable, scalable business. Get it wrong and every new client actually makes your situation worse. The uncomfortable truth is that underpricing is easy to miss until growth exposes the margin problem.

If you're just getting started, make sure you understand what an MSP is and the broader business model before diving into pricing specifics.

Why MSP Pricing Is So Hard

MSP pricing is uniquely challenging for several reasons:

Your costs are partially hidden. It's easy to calculate tool costs per user. It's much harder to accurately allocate labor, overhead, and the hidden cost of scope creep across your client base. Owners often underestimate their true cost to serve.

You're selling prevention. You're asking clients to pay monthly for things not happening. That's a harder sell than fixing something that's broken right now. It requires a different sales conversation and a different pricing psychology.

The market is opaque. Your competitors don't publish their prices. Industry surveys give wide ranges. You're essentially guessing at market rates and hoping you're not leaving money on the table (or pricing yourself out).

Every client is different. A 20-person law firm with compliance requirements and a 20-person marketing agency with BYOD policies have completely different support needs — but both have 20 users. Flat per-user pricing can over-serve one and under-serve the other.

This guide owns the "which model?" question. If you already know your model and need the maths for a number, go to How to price MSP services or the pricing calculator.

How MSPs Actually Bill

The best public data on model mix is Kaseya's 2023 global benchmark survey (n=1,091). Kaseya is a software vendor, and the survey is three years old, so read it as the shape of the market rather than a current count.

21%

Kaseya, 2023 Global MSP Benchmark Survey (as published on Kaseya MSP pricing resource), 2023Vendor surveyn=1,091Verified 2026-10-11

Billing model	Share of MSPs
Combination of models	26%
Per user	21%
Value-based	14%
Per device	13%
A la carte	12%
Tiered	10%

Combining models was the most common answer, per-user was the most common single model, and per-device had been losing share. That matches what the rest of this guide describes: per-device still has a place, but it is no longer the default.

What MSPs Charge Per User and Per Device

The same survey asked about price points. These are 2023 figures from a vendor survey, not a price list, and they are not adjusted for inflation or region.

Price per user per month	Share of MSPs offering per-user pricing
Under $50	22.5%
$50-100	31%
$101-150	23.9%
$151-200	15.5%
$201-250	5.6%
Over $250	1.4%

22%

Kaseya, 2023 Global MSP Benchmark Survey (as published on Kaseya MSP pricing resource), 2023Vendor surveyn=1,091Verified 2026-10-11

28%

Kaseya, 2023 Global MSP Benchmark Survey (as published on Kaseya MSP pricing resource), 2023Vendor surveyn=1,091Verified 2026-10-11

A price in one of these bands says nothing about whether it covers your costs. Build yours from cost first: How to price MSP services.

Choosing a Model: Decision Table

Details on each model follow.

Per-Device Pricing

How it works: You charge a monthly fee for each managed device — workstations, servers, network devices, mobile devices, and sometimes peripherals.

Pros:

• Easy to count and verify — devices are tangible
• Scales naturally as clients add hardware
• Simple to calculate margins per device
• Works well for environments with high device-to-user ratios (manufacturing, retail)

Cons:

• Declining relevance as work becomes more user-centric and cloud-based
• Doesn't account for user support needs (a device that nobody uses costs the same as a power user's laptop)
• Clients may resist adding devices to reduce costs, creating shadow IT
• BYOD policies make device counting complicated

Best for: MSPs serving manufacturing, retail, healthcare (lots of shared devices), or any environment where device management is the primary workload rather than user support.

Our take: Per-device pricing has been losing share as work becomes user-centric. If you're starting fresh, per-user is usually the simpler place to start, but per-device can still work well in specific verticals.

Per-User Pricing

How it works: You charge a flat monthly fee per user. That fee covers all devices the user touches, all support they need, and (depending on your tier) security, backup, and advisory services.

Pros:

• Aligns with how clients think about their business (they add people, not devices)
• Naturally covers multi-device users without nickel-and-diming
• Simpler to sell — "it costs $X per employee per month" is a clean pitch
• A larger unit of revenue than a single device, since a user covers several
• Predictable revenue — headcount is relatively stable and easy to track

Cons:

• Some users are far more expensive to support than others (power users vs. minimal users)
• Clients with high device-to-user ratios may be unprofitable (e.g., a user with 4 devices)
• You need to clearly define what constitutes a "user" (does a shared mailbox count? A part-time employee?)

Best for: Most MSPs, especially those serving professional services, financial, legal, and general office environments. It is the most common single model in the 2023 survey above.

Our view: Per-user is a sensible default for a new MSP. Start here unless you have a specific reason not to.

Tiered/Bundled Pricing

How it works: You offer 2-4 service tiers at different price points, each including progressively more services. Clients choose the tier that matches their needs and budget. Security is the layer that most often separates tiers; see packaging and pricing managed security services for a cost worksheet and the bundled, tiered and add-on trade-offs.

Example tier structure (illustrative, not market prices; set yours from your own costs):

Bronze — $99/user/month

• RMM monitoring and patch management
• Help desk (business hours, 4-hour response)
• Basic endpoint security

Silver — $175/user/month

• Everything in Bronze, plus:
• Enhanced security stack (EDR, email security, DNS filtering, SAT)
• Cloud backup
• After-hours emergency support
• Quarterly business reviews

Gold — $275/user/month

• Everything in Silver, plus:
• Strategic advisory and roadmap reviews
• Compliance management
• 1-hour response SLA
• Dark web monitoring
• Annual penetration testing

Pros:

• Gives clients choice and perceived control
• Creates a natural upsell path (start Bronze, upgrade to Silver after a security incident)
• Lets you serve a wider market without custom pricing for every prospect
• Anchoring effect — the Gold tier makes Silver look reasonable
• Higher average revenue per user over time as clients upgrade

Cons:

• More complex to deliver — you need to track which client gets which services
• Clients on lower tiers may feel like second-class citizens
• The temptation to make the bottom tier too cheap (covering costs but not generating profit)
• Scope creep risk — "I thought that was included in our tier"

Best for: MSPs with established operations who want to capture a wider market and build upsell revenue. Less ideal for brand-new MSPs who should focus on delivering one thing exceptionally well.

Critical warning: Your bottom tier must be profitable on its own. Do not create a loss-leader tier hoping to upsell everyone later. Some clients will stay on Bronze forever, and you need to be okay with that financially.

All-You-Can-Eat (AYCE) Pricing

How it works: One flat monthly fee covers everything — all support, all devices, all services, unlimited tickets. Often priced per user or as a flat monthly fee per client.

Pros:

• Simplest model to sell and understand
• No scope arguments — everything is included
• Encourages clients to report issues early (no fear of extra charges)
• Forces you to invest in proactive management (because reactive firefighting eats your margin)

Cons:

• High risk of unprofitable clients (one problem client can consume far more labour than the others)
• Requires extremely good internal efficiency and automation
• Attracts "high-maintenance" clients who want unlimited support
• Difficult to raise prices because you've set the expectation that everything is included

Best for: Mature MSPs with strong automation, documented processes, and the ability to accurately predict support costs. Dangerous for new MSPs who don't yet know their true cost to serve.

Risk management tip: If you go AYCE, build in contract clauses for: a maximum number of devices per user, exclusions for project work and new technology rollouts, and the right to re-price if the client's environment changes significantly (acquisition, new office, major technology shift).

Value-Based Pricing

How it works: Instead of pricing based on your costs or deliverables, you price based on the value you deliver to the client. This requires understanding the client's business well enough to quantify the impact of your services.

Example (illustrative): A law firm bills $400 an hour per attorney. If your managed services recover two hours per month of productive time for each of its 20 attorneys, that is $16,000 a month in recovered billing. Charging $250 per user ($5,000 a month) is easy to justify in that context, even though a market comparison would call it high. Numbers are for the arithmetic only; the client must agree the value is real.

Pros:

• Highest possible margins
• Positions you as a business partner, not a vendor
• Clients who understand value pricing are better clients overall
• Decouples your revenue from commoditized per-unit rates

Cons:

• Requires sophisticated sales skills and business acumen
• Not every client can articulate or quantify the value
• Hard to implement consistently across your client base
• Risk of appearing arrogant or out of touch if done poorly

Best for: Experienced MSP owners who have moved into advisory roles and work with clients sophisticated enough to have the value conversation. This is an advanced strategy — don't start here.

Know Your Costs First

Whichever model you choose, price it from your fully loaded cost to serve: labour, tool stack and overhead per user, plus your target margin. The worked method, with formulas, is in How to price MSP services, and the free pricing calculator does the arithmetic from your own numbers. See also the MSP pricing and profitability hub.

Pricing Review Cadence

Your prices are not set-and-forget. Review them quarterly:

1. Calculate actual cost to serve per client (not just the average — look at each one)
2. Identify unprofitable clients (there will be some; every MSP has them)
3. Check market rates (talk to peers, review industry surveys, check competitor positioning)
4. Evaluate tool cost changes (vendors raise prices constantly)
5. Adjust for inflation and labor cost increases (many contracts include an annual escalator, either fixed or CPI-based)

If your contract has an annual price increase clause, use it. Before you do, work out how many seats you could lose and still keep today's gross profit (the break-even retention formula is in the pricing guide, and how to raise MSP prices without losing clients has a break-even table by margin and a client-by-client sequence).

The Profitability Trap: Why Revenue Growth Does Not Equal Profit Growth

This is the most important section of this article.

Many MSP owners celebrate revenue milestones — "$50K MRR!" "$100K MRR!" — without looking at what's left after costs. Here's how the trap works (an illustrative sequence):

1. You win a new client at a slightly discounted rate ("just to get them in the door")
2. The client is more complex than expected (they always are)
3. You hire a technician to handle the growing workload
4. The new hire needs training, tools, and management overhead
5. Revenue grew, but costs grew faster
6. You're working harder, managing more people, serving more clients — and making less money

The fix: Never take on a client below your minimum profitable rate. Track gross margin per client, not just total revenue. Fire unprofitable clients if they won't accept a price increase. And read our guide on MSP growth strategies to make sure your growth is actually profitable.

Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. See what MSPs report earning in MSP profit margins.

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Pricing is one of the dimensions we evaluate in the MSP Readiness Assessment. Take the free assessment to see how your financial management and pricing strategy scores — and get specific recommendations for improvement.