Key Points
What Is the MSP Pricing Calculator & How Does It Work?
- What It Is: A free tool from NinjaOne that helps Managed Service Providers (MSPs) calculate accurate service pricing, profitability, and tech costs.
- How It Works: Combines automated calculations for Tech Cost Burdened, Cybersecurity Stack, Outsourced NOC Stack, and Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) to generate accurate per-seat and per-endpoint pricing.
- Best Practices: Input precise cost data, use COLA for regional adjustments, include cybersecurity and NOC expenses, and analyze endpoint variations to refine service pricing.
- Why It Matters: Enables MSPs to create transparent, data-driven pricing models that maximize profit margins, adapt to labor costs, and enhance competitiveness in the MSP market.
The latest edition of the MSP pricing calculator provides Managed Service Providers (MSPs) with an effective tool for examining cost insights, overviewing capabilities, and pricing outcomes.
MSP pricing calculator features
I made several changes to the MSP calculator, both visually and in terms of functionality. Below you will find the basic steps along with the major updates and what they do:
- Tech Cost Burdened calculation
- Cybersecurity Stack calculation
- Outsource NOC Stack calculation
- Cost of Living Allowance calculation
- TECH Cost Burden calculation
- Additional MSP calculations
How to use the MSP pricing calculator
- Instructions Key, including color-coding to identify fields that require population.
- Tech Cost Burdened calculation. This is what it costs your MSP to field tech at an hourly rate. This now automatically carries over into the Calculator tab and automatically fills in the appropriate field.
- Cybersecurity Stack: With the emphasis on security these days, it is nice to know what those costs on their own are. And I am finding that some MSPs are offering a protection-only option.
- Outsourced NOC Stack: If you decide to use NOC services and have several packages from your provider, this section will allow you to fill those details in. Plus, it calculates the sub-total.
- Additional calculations: Most MSPs are going based on per-seat pricing. But, it is often good to know how the final numbers translate at the endpoint level. From my experience, I could have two similar clients. But one might, for some reason, have a lot more endpoints we were managing, and this resulted in additional hours spent administering their environment. In light of this, when quoting a prospect under this scenario, I would take that into account and often raise the seat price. These “enhanced” calculations are meant to aid in that process.
- COLA factor – Cost of Living Allowance – on the TECH Cost — Burdened tab – Increasingly, I find MSPs hiring remote technicians and calculating pay may need to adjust wages. This should be based on the cost of living in a particular area. If you have a standard salary for techs but hire one in a different region, you can use the COLA Factor to adjust their pay up or down. This will depend on the value created by the COLA calculation.
- As it is now, if you fill in COLA in C9, then it carries through to all the tech levels. If you need to apply a different COLA for a tech, remove the equation that carries the value through.
- Calculate your COLA factor here:
https://www.easycalculation.com/budget/cost-of-living.php
Added levels to TECH cost burden calculation: We have expanded the levels to accommodate MSPs with more than three techs.
Download your free MSP pricing calculator
Pricing managed service agreements is a complex business. Managed Service Providers increasingly have to provide a broader range of tools and levels of support to clients. Considering the cost of doing business, it becomes imperative that we know where the resources are being allocated. Not to mention, that we have precise totals for those amounts.
In the updated NinjaOne Managed Service Pricing Calculator, many updates were made in calculating the TECH Cost Burden. When delivering IT service under a Managed Services arrangement, the highest monetary cost is generally the cost to field technicians. I recommend spending the most time making sure you capture accurate totals on this portion of the calculator.
Unlock cost insights and plan more effectively.
