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The strongest managed service providers (MSPs) are not defined by one product or a single AI feature. Recent industry surveys point to a broader mix: automating repeatable work, delivering credible security and resilience services, demonstrating customer value, and managing staffing and profitability with discipline. These are reported patterns, not a universal formula—and no available source establishes one global ranking of the “best” MSPs.
What does “best MSP” mean?
There is no single, consistently measured global leaderboard in the available evidence. Surveys and benchmarks use different respondents, definitions, and methods, so a high-performing provider is better understood by what it can reliably deliver for its customers than by a rank or a headline percentage.
Fit also depends on the customer. A small organization may need responsive support and dependable backup; a regulated or larger business may place greater weight on compliance, security operations, and resilience planning. Geography matters too. The UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) estimated 12,867 active MSPs in the UK as of March 2025. Its study, conducted by Frontier Economics and Glass.AI, says changes from the preceding year’s estimate reflect refined methodology and eligibility criteria as well as actual market entries. That country-specific estimate is not a count of global providers.
How are stronger MSPs using AI and automation?
They automate repeatable internal work
MSP GLOBAL’s Spring 2026 report summary says 55% of respondents used AI internally for tasks such as ticket routing and reporting. Kaseya’s 2026 State of the MSP Report, released in April, separately says 53% of surveyed MSPs used AI to automate ticketing, patching, and monitoring. These are results from different surveys with different task descriptions; they should not be combined or treated as a measure of automation quality.
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The practical distinction is whether automation improves a workflow the provider can observe and manage. Routing a ticket, preparing a report, or identifying a patching task can reduce routine handling, but those actions do not by themselves show that resolution is faster, service is more reliable, or customers are better protected. Providers should be able to explain what is automated, where a technician reviews the result, and how errors or exceptions are handled.
They distinguish behind-the-scenes AI from a customer-facing service
MSP GLOBAL reports that 39% of respondents embedded AI within existing services, while 36% offered client-facing AI-enabled services. The figures describe different approaches: AI may operate inside an established service without being a separate customer offering, or it may form part of a service presented directly to clients. The summary does not establish that either approach produces better outcomes.
Kaseya’s survey adds a demand signal: 48% of respondents ranked AI and automation as the top client need for 2026. That is a survey finding about respondents’ perception of client needs, not proof that every MSP customer is asking for an AI service. A capable provider should connect any AI offer to a defined business task, explain the human oversight involved, and show how success will be assessed.
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Why are security and resilience central to MSP strategy?
Security is a strategic focus, but the useful question is how consistently it is delivered. MSP GLOBAL’s Spring 2026 summary says 34% of respondents selected cybersecurity as a key business focus. In Kaseya’s 2026 survey, 71% reported year-over-year growth in cybersecurity revenue, and 50% reported growth in business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) revenue. Revenue growth indicates commercial momentum in that survey; it does not establish service quality or customer risk reduction.
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Sophos’s 2026 MSP Perspectives Report covers 800 MSP partners across seven countries. Its summary emphasizes security leadership and compliance services, and identifies fragmented tools and automation as sources of inefficiency. The accessible summary provides no detailed percentages for those findings, so they are best read as qualitative themes rather than a basis for numerical comparison.
For a customer, security and resilience should be evaluated through the actual scope of service: what is monitored, how incidents are escalated, how compliance obligations are supported, and whether recovery arrangements are defined and tested. A security label on a service list is less informative than clear responsibilities, reporting, and response procedures.
Rank #4
How are MSPs dealing with growth and technician capacity?
Winning and serving customers remain operational challenges. Kaseya’s April 2026 report, based on a survey of more than 1,000 MSPs worldwide, says 71% named acquiring new customers as their top challenge. It also reports that 16% had difficulty hiring skilled technicians. The report describes shrinking larger customer-spend deals alongside the hiring challenge, a combination that can make growth harder to convert into sustainable delivery capacity.
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These findings make customer acquisition and staffing part of the operating model, not just sales and HR concerns. A provider needs a clear explanation of the value it delivers, a service scope it can fulfill consistently, and enough skilled capacity to support the customers it wins. Growth that outpaces delivery capability can strain service quality; the survey figures do not show how individual providers handled that trade-off.
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- Author: Bungay Stanier, Michael.
- Publisher: Page Two
- Pages: 244
- Publication Date: 2016-02-29
- Edition: 1
What do profitability benchmarks say about operating discipline?
ConnectWise’s June 2026 release summarizing the Service Leadership Index 2026 Annual IT Solution Provider Industry Profitability Report says MSP total revenue grew 9.6% in 2025 and adjusted EBITDA grew 17.1%. The release describes benchmark coverage across 104 countries. It also reports adjusted EBITDA of 19% or more for “best-in-class” IT solution providers for a sixth consecutive year. That last figure is a best-in-class benchmark, not the average result for MSPs.
The release attributes stronger performance to a sharper focus on efficiency and AI automation, among other factors. Those observations support treating process discipline and labor economics as relevant management concerns; they do not prove that AI alone caused margin growth or that every high-performing provider uses the same tools. Because the public figures come from a ConnectWise-hosted summary rather than the full report, they should be read as reported benchmark results.
How should you compare MSPs without relying on a single score?
Use evidence that matches your organization’s requirements, and ask each provider to describe its own scope and results in comparable terms:
- Automation: Which recurring workflows are automated, where do people review decisions, and what service outcome is tracked?
- Security and compliance: What is included in monitoring and incident response, which compliance needs can the provider support, and how are responsibilities divided?
- Continuity: What backup and recovery services are included, and how are recovery expectations documented?
- Service and value: What is included in the recurring service, how are exceptions handled, and what reporting demonstrates value to the customer?
- Delivery capacity: Who will provide the service, how are escalations staffed, and how does the provider manage demand when workload rises?
- Scale and economics: Can the provider explain how its operating model supports consistent service as the customer base grows?
When comparing published figures, align the year, geography, respondent population, and metric definition first. MSP GLOBAL says its 2025–Spring 2026 research series surveyed more than 1,100 MSP professionals across four waves, while Kaseya and Sophos describe different survey populations and coverage. The results offer useful signals about industry priorities, but they are not interchangeable measures of provider performance.
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