The Best PSA Tool for MSPs

Over my time running my MSP, we kept testing and trying other apps and services, just to see how they compared to others.

One that we genuinely struggled to find anything better than was Connectwise Manage. Because there just wasn’t anything else out there, that could do what Connectwise could.

Until very recently, when I came across Halo PSA.

So in this post, I wanted to explain why Halo could actually be the very best PSA system for you to use in your MSP.

Why do I care?

Well, over the last 10 years, I started, and more recently have sold my own MSP, so I understand what it takes to grow an MSP from nothing to over £1m in revenue.

A lot of that, for me, was in picking the right tools to do the job, not settling on something because it’s cheap. But finding the right product, that is affordable, but more importantly, will allow me to scale my business without needing to move to a different tool once we’ve outgrown the first one.

So first, let me explain my thoughts and a little history around Connectwise because this isn’t a post-bagging on how crap Connectwise is. 

I’ve used Connectwise Manage for 10 years now. 

It does pretty much everything that I could want a PSA system to do, with a few exceptions that I generally find in pretty much all PSA systems.

A lacking CRM, a bit of a confusing, clunky, and slow interface at times, and limited direct integrations with third-party products. 

Then you add VC funding into the mix, which starts buying up the rest of the market and semi-integrating them.

If I was to explain every single product to you right now, we’d be here for a very long time. So instead I’m going to just give you the good stuff.

Connectwise Manage - Great.

Connectwise Control - Also, pretty good.

Connectwise Sell - Yep, Great. Probably one of the best.

Brightgauge - Also, one of the best reporting tools that money can buy.

All of the other stuff... I either haven’t used it or personally - I just didn’t get on with it.

Now I still like Connectwise. Those products I mentioned are fantastic for growing businesses.

But what set me on this path towards Halo has been a number of times where, since now selling my MSP, I’ve been helping my clients get on-boarded with the various tools that they need to run their MSP, and that has involved all of them from Connectwise to AutoTask, and more recently Halo.

Now that I no longer run my own MSP, I’ve been able to peek a little beneath the veil, so to speak, and speak to their sales teams, and marketing teams and just get an idea of what’s going on.

I’ve won quite a number of clients for Connectwise in the last couple of years and would love to make more content on this website to help those of you with Connectwise and Briightgage to get the most out of your products. To show you how you can set things up, in the real world, and get the most from those products.

But would they give me a demo account that I could use to do this? No.

Instead, I’d have to register as a developer, and then plead my case to them to have an account, by explaining to them what App I’m developing that requires a Connectwise account. Of course, I'm not going to do this since I’m not a developer.

They have no affiliate system in place, so even though I’m technically doing the job of their sales team and finding clients for them, those clients who are spending thousands with Connectwise each year - I don’t get a penny for that.

Now that’s not something that I’m complaining about, from a position of wanting to be paid for recommending something. But bear with me just a second.

Flip over to Halo, who, to get a trial created, is just a case of filling out the form. Halo is then happy to hop on to a call, and give you a good demo of the whole system, openly states their simple cancellation terms for if you sign up but if you decided you didn’t like it a few weeks later say goodbye, walk you through their roadmap, explain how they are trying to limit the number of new clients coming on board by raising the minimum number of licenses, to slow things down and give them space to breathe and hire and train new starters as they expand, AND they are more than happy to provide demo accounts to me and my clients who on-board with Halo and share content online. Oh, and they do have an affiliate system - so er, here's the link: https://geni.us/HaloPSA

This oh so simple difference in experience just goes to show how modern Halo is.

They’re so open about everything, and they’ve thought about these things where others haven’t. They can see value in allowing someone like me, a third party, to help their clients implement a PSA. To help walk them through what I believe are best practices when configuring their tools, and probably to create content at some point to run through how it all works. They understand that possibly, someone might watch one of my YouTube videos or read this blog and sign up for Halo.

I’ve been busy over the last few weeks with getting my own Halo instance set up the way that I like it, replicating everything I did in my previous MSP, and getting it to a stage where I’m ready to share with you.

Without getting bogged down into the detail of Halo, because those posts will be coming, this thing is lightning fast.

It’s responsive. Something that I know Connectwise could do with some work at the best of times, and I'm sure their users would agree with, just due to the sheer size of the product, all of the integrations, and where it’s pulling data from.

Connectwise is a good product, a great product, but Halo does seem to be an opportunity to start fresh, using a modern UI, a modern, responsive, and really customisable interface, and with integrations with the likes of Xero and other third parties that don’t require middle man software like Wise-Sync to sync your invoices over from Connectwise to Xero. 

Dare I say it, but I have a feeling that if Halo does things right, they could quite easily be one of the best PSA solutions out there for growing businesses of all sizes.

So I just wanted to leave you with my thoughts this week, I really think Halo is one to watch for a PSA system, particularly when the world is now reeling from the announcement of Kaseya’s Acquisition of Datto, and many in the community really struggling to get to grips with what comes next for Datto. This is probably not going to be the last one of these stories either. This industry is primed for acquisitions.

If you want to know what the biggest opportunity is for MSPs today, that you are missing out on, that’s affordable, pretty simple, and can deliver huge results, check out this post - and I’ll hopefully see you there.

Thanks for reading!

💌 Sign up for the weekly newsletter: