Building Your MSP Service Catalog: Silver, Gold, and Platinum Pricing Tiers
Pricing is the most consequential decision an MSP makes. Price too low and you attract unprofitable clients, burn out your team, and cannot invest in the toolstack that delivers great service. Price too high without a compelling value proposition and you lose deals to generalist competitors. The tiered service catalog — Silver, Gold, Platinum — is the industry-standard solution: it gives prospects options, naturally segments your client base by need and budget, and creates upsell paths as client needs evolve. This guide walks you through building a real, defensible pricing model with exact ranges and worked examples.
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Core Pricing Models: Per-Device vs Per-User vs Flat Fee
MSPs use three main pricing structures. Per-device pricing ($25–$75/device/month for basic monitoring and patching, $75–$150/device/month for full management) works well when clients have many unattended devices (servers, network equipment, kiosks). It can become complex to explain and manage as device counts fluctuate. Per-user pricing ($50–$150/user/month for full managed services) is simpler to sell and easier for clients to understand — their monthly bill scales with their headcount, not their hardware inventory. It is the most common model for SMB MSPs serving knowledge workers. All-inclusive flat fee works for very small clients (under 10 seats) where simplicity is paramount — a fixed monthly fee covers everything. Time and materials ($100–$200/hr) is reserved for project work not covered by managed services agreements: new server deployments, office relocations, or custom development. CompTIA benchmarks show per-user pricing is the fastest-growing model among MSPs under $2M in revenue.
Silver Tier: Entry-Level Managed Services
Your Silver tier should be the minimum viable managed services offering — enough protection and support to justify a recurring contract, but priced to win clients transitioning from break-fix. Recommended Silver tier inclusions: 24/7 RMM monitoring and automated alerting, monthly patch management (Windows, third-party applications), basic antivirus/EDR (SentinelOne or Huntress), helpdesk support during business hours (Monday–Friday, 8am–5pm), 8-business-hour response SLA, Microsoft 365 license management, and monthly status report. Recommended Silver pricing: $65–$85/user/month. For a 25-seat client, Silver generates $1,625–$2,125/month MRR. Silver clients are a retention risk — once they outgrow basic support or experience a security incident on the basic tier, upsell to Gold is the natural conversation.
Gold Tier: Full Managed Services
Gold is your core offering and should be the plan you actively sell to new clients. Gold should include everything in Silver plus: 24/7 helpdesk access (including after-hours for critical issues), 4-hour response SLA for priority issues, advanced EDR with managed detection (SentinelOne + Huntress), Microsoft 365 Business Premium licensing management, cloud backup for all endpoints and Microsoft 365, quarterly business review (QBR), security awareness training for all employees (phishing simulation), and vendor management for internet, phone, and copier providers. Recommended Gold pricing: $125–$150/user/month. For a 25-seat client, Gold generates $3,125–$3,750/month MRR ($37,500–$45,000/year ARR). This is the sweet spot for most SMB clients: comprehensive protection, predictable cost, and a named account manager. A 25-seat office on Gold at $150/user is $3,750/month — a real, fundable business at 10 such clients ($450,000 ARR).
Platinum Tier: Security-First or Co-Managed IT
Platinum serves clients with elevated compliance requirements (healthcare, legal, financial services) or mid-market companies with internal IT that need co-managed support. Platinum includes everything in Gold plus: dedicated virtual CIO (vCIO) service with annual technology roadmap, SOC 2 or HIPAA compliance support and annual risk assessment, advanced SIEM and log management, privileged access management (PAM), Microsoft Defender for Business Premium management, penetration testing referral and remediation planning, and 2-hour response SLA for critical issues. Recommended Platinum pricing: $200–$300/user/month. For a 30-seat dental practice on Platinum at $225/user, MRR is $6,750 ($81,000/year ARR). One Platinum client can fund a full-time technician — and clients at this tier churn at extremely low rates because switching costs and compliance continuity make leaving painful.
Hardware Markup and Procurement
Hardware procurement — laptops, servers, network equipment, and peripherals — is an additional revenue stream most MSPs underutilize. Standard hardware markup is 20–30% over cost. On a $1,200 business laptop sourced at cost from a distributor, you charge $1,440–$1,560 and earn $240–$360 gross profit. On a $15,000 server deployment, markup generates $3,000–$4,500. Use Ingram Micro or TD SYNNEX as your hardware distributors — both offer competitive pricing, credit terms, and drop-shipping to client sites. Build hardware procurement into every new client onboarding: assess their existing equipment, document end-of-life dates, and present a 3-year hardware refresh schedule at the first QBR. Clients who buy hardware through you are more sticky and generate incremental revenue without proportional labor cost.
Project Pricing for Migrations and Deployments
Projects fall outside managed services agreements and are priced separately. Common project types and realistic ranges: Microsoft 365 migration from Google Workspace or on-premises Exchange for 25 users = $5,000–$10,000; new server deployment and network setup for 20-seat office = $8,000–$15,000; Azure AD and Intune deployment for existing M365 tenant = $3,000–$7,000; office relocation with network reconfiguration = $5,000–$12,000; ransomware remediation and recovery = $10,000–$40,000 (emergency rate). Use a Statement of Work (SOW) for every project, priced on a fixed-fee basis wherever possible. Time-and-materials projects at $125–$175/hr create billing disputes and scope creep — fixed-fee projects with clearly defined scope protect your margins. Target 40–60% gross margin on projects, factoring in labor hours at your fully loaded cost rate.
Annual Contract Incentives and Pricing Psychology
Offer a 5–10% discount for annual contract prepayment. On a $3,750/month Gold client, annual prepayment brings in $40,500–$42,750 up front versus $45,000 billed monthly — the discount is offset by the cash flow benefit and reduced churn risk. From a pricing psychology standpoint, always present three tiers with Gold pre-selected (it should appear most prominent in your proposal), and include a brief ROI calculation: 'One hour of network downtime costs a 25-person company approximately $2,500 in lost productivity. Your Gold plan at $3,750/month prevents an average of 4–8 downtime incidents per year.' Anchoring your price to the cost of the problem it solves shifts the conversation from 'is this expensive?' to 'is this worth it?' — and for most business owners, the math is obvious.
RECOMMENDED TOOLS
ConnectWise
PSA platform with built-in proposal and quoting tools — manage tiered service agreements, automated billing, and contract renewals
NinjaRMM
RMM that powers your Silver, Gold, and Platinum tiers — monitoring, patching, and remote access included at ~$3–4/device/month
Some links above are affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you sign up — at no extra cost to you.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Should I publish my pricing on my website?
This is debated in the MSP community. Publishing general pricing ranges (e.g., 'plans starting at $75/user/month') filters out prospects who cannot afford managed services and saves discovery call time. Publishing exact tiered pricing reduces your negotiating flexibility for larger deals. A common middle ground: publish your tier names and feature lists without exact pricing, and ask prospects to request a quote based on their user count and needs.
How do I handle clients who want to cherry-pick services from different tiers?
Politely decline and explain the bundling logic: your pricing assumes full-stack management because security gaps in a partial deployment create liability for both parties. If a client wants only RMM monitoring without your helpdesk or backup, you cannot guarantee SLA performance or data recovery outcomes. This conversation also helps you qualify prospects — clients who resist full-stack managed services are often better served by break-fix, and that is okay to acknowledge early.
What is the right gross margin target for MSP services?
Target 65–80% gross margin on managed services recurring revenue and 40–60% on project work. At 70% gross margin on $400,000 ARR, your gross profit is $280,000 — from which you pay salaries, rent, and operating expenses. If your gross margin is below 60%, you likely need to raise prices, renegotiate vendor contracts, or reduce the service scope included in lower tiers.