Build an MSP from Open Source - A new series on building an MSP business using open source software
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- Опубліковано 5 чер 2024
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Show Notes
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=== Timestamps ===
00:00 Intro
00:08 Introduction to the Series
01:36 Thank you to my Patrons over at Patreon
02:12 The Basics of Starrting an MSP
02:59 A VPN
04:14 Our RMM
06:05 Remote Desktop Support
07:54 Backups
09:17 invoicing - Getting Paid
10:21 SSO - Single Sign On
11:10 The Open Source Apps We'll be Using
17:57 Let's Talk About Pricing For a Minute
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What does the money go to?
To Pay for Digital Ocean droplets, donations to open source projects I feature, any hardware I may need to purchase for future episodes (which I will then give to a subscriber in a drawing or contest). - Наука та технологія
For me personally, this channel is way more informative. I do not earn much at the moment, but when I do, I sure will love to payback for the knowledge I gathered from here in the form of patreon or similar things.
I appreciate that! So glad you're here!
Great series. Enjoying this, but stop being apologetic about pricing. If you don’t charge what it’s worth you are actually hurting them, as you will not be able to maintain their network correctly. Every person that goes out their own makes this mistake. Don’t learn the hard way that cheap clients take the most time and clients willing to pay what you’re worth actually respect your time and services.
Thank you for doing a pricing model, and more so a detailed explanation of the whys and what-ifs.. I am not an MSP... but getting started in website management.. and this really helps me.
Hope it's helpful. I'll be updating things as I go, and as I learn.
Regarding inhouse vs outsourced. If inhouse would cost them $130k, DO NOT go in at $30k... Go in at $100k, they still save all the HR , overtime, etc etc AND $30k.... Win/Win.
Agreed. I first set up a managed service in 2000. It’s important not to undercharge for a variety of reasons. For one thing, you really shouldn’t skimp on getting your legal contracts written correctly and completely to protect everyone involved. That’s not free. And there will always be unexpected expenses. In addition, if you want to guarantee a certain SLA, have redundant hot fail-over and robust redundant offline backups protected from cyber attacks. None of this is free.
I love that! 1000% true.
Love the experience and feedback I've been getting on this. I may just do an episode on pricing and pull together all of this feedback. You guys all rock!
There should be a discord channel or something where people trying to achieve this can talk and collaborate :) Thanks so much for your great videos
Feel free to jump over to my Rocket.chat server. discuss.opensourceisaaesome.com
This will be an exciting series. I can't wait to implement it in my home lab
I'm so thrilled to be getting started on this.
Thank you. Subscribed! Looking forward to the future episodes 😊
That is awesome, and welcome!
Really looking forward to the rest of this series. Always learn a lot from your videos.
Glad to hear it! Much more to come.
This is awesome, exactly what I have been looking for
Excellent!
I'm 2 minutes in and I just wanted to say I'm super glad you made this video.
I'm 27 years old and been working in IT for the last 8 years. I work a great job right now thankfully but I'm growing tired of supporting big tech and paying monthly subscriptions for everything.
As I build out my own homelab I have this increasing desire to make my own company as an MSP and evaluate small businesses and switch them to a Linux desktop and open source software to hopefully save them some headache and get away from all the monthly charges and Windows Updates and things.
I'm just on this journey to figuring out if I can do this on the side like how you stated you do currently. Can't wait to see what you have in store!
Stick with me on it. I was going to put out a new one every few weeks, but then decided I'd rather record what I can, edit it and put out the series, first, then add to it over time. So, it's all coming, just taking me time to get it all recorded, edited, and so on.
Literally just what i was looking for.
Awesome!
I like that you mentioned the importance off single sign-on. Not only can this increase the ease of access which leads to an improved user experience but, if you are building a software as a service offering, having a flexible SSO solution allows you to also sell to the enterprise. You have already mention some of the open source solutions in other videos. Another one I would like to mention is BoxyHQ through which you can also get additional enterprise services such as Directory Sync and Audit logs (think compliance). I reckon it would be a great addition to most, if not all, startups.
This series is looking incredibly interesting and I am looking forward to following along. Also interested to see if you can learn more about the SSO story concerning InvoiceNinja.
single sign-on the supper ways to get hacked
@@fmslick7586 Would be very curious to know why you think so. Do you have some examples where single sign-on was the main reason for a breach or data leak?
Single sign on is so important. Solid security setup with strong passwords, and multi-factor authentication will make life so much easier for you, your team, and even the clients.
I think anything has potential to get hacked, particularly if not setup and secured properly. That said, SSO is probably more secure when setup correctly, than the in-built auth systems on most projects.
Do 1 Auth right rather than 20 apps half. Once you setup SSO you go through all your apps and that already improves security of your whole infrastructure.
This is really cool. I've learned so many awesome things from you and I appreciate it. Definitely got me thinking about some things to work on in the near future.
That's awesome, and glad you're along with me on this journey.
Thank you for this, this gives someone who is willing to put in the effort hope that they can build something worth while.
Glad you think so, and glad you're along for the ride.
Thanks for the video! Will definitely be checking out the recommended software
My pleasure!
You are awesome sir! I am aspiring to start a Cybersecurity consulting business and on a budget...This is pure gold along with many of your other videos.
Thank you so much. My next one is coming out next week! Stay tuned.
i love the content and the people you attract here, i wish you all the best
Thank you so much. And I love all of you guys!
A good way to justify the rollup of time to clients is that you need to now add info to the documentation / ticket system, so that the issue can be resolved quickernext time.
Indded, and for ticketing, we'll eventually use Zammad, which also has a nice Knowledge Base that we'll take advantage of.
@@AwesomeOpenSourceAs an open source fan, please look at GLPI for ticketing/asset management (free self hosted option available). I think that is a great piece of software, fully ITIL compilant, built-in multi-customer approach with robust ACL, and have a great inventory agent for nearly all platforms.
I have actually spun it up for this reason. I'm working on learning it so I can do a video. it's pretty nice for sure.
Love all your videos. I am looking forward to this series greatly. I have just started working as an MSP part time and am working on all the tools I need without having a big upfront cost before building a client base. Patch management is another thing I use to look after my clients. I found a great service that gives you 100 endpoints for free, Not open source though unfortunately.
Patch management is super important. RPort was really tops at this, but I think MeshCentral will be able to help us with this as well.
Thanks for the video! Very informative!!!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for this awesome video.
You bet!
HA! Printers are a PAIN! You're alright by me. Just hearing you say that, the way you did, tells me you've paid your dues.
Thank you so much, and indeed, printers are a pain.
The invoicing may not have SSO but you could always put it behind a reverse proxy that requires authentication from something like authelia
True, but my goal would be to add others to the invoicing as the business grows, and SSO just helps make that easier. Not a must have, but a really nice to have.
Needed thisss
It's gonna be furn!
Those prices are low especially if you bundle A/V backup etc. The idea of MSP is to average actual working time over a year. I would also state that this is remote working time and going onsite is time and materials. BTW if you’re solving issues Foolish IT D7X was a great swiss army nice for me when I was starting out. Remember, don’t do anything until you have a backup and pull a possible infected machine ASAP.
awesome information. Would love to see what you think pricing should be. As I said, this is just a starting point, for sure.
Tickets and Knowledge Base are absolutely critical IMO. Clearly you are going to need something to manage cases, and by integrating with a Knowledge Base, you create the documentation for how to fix the problems that is both self-service capable (when appropriate) and saves time for future problems. Every closed case needs to reference at least one Knowledge Base entry. Further, this makes it easier to bring on additional staff to handle cases.
Yep, already have it planned. Just didn't mention it here. Not to worry, we'll get that all done.
@@AwesomeOpenSource Great! I've been looking for self hosted, FOSS, solution for case management and knowledge base.
Definitely interesting series. Past months, I have been building a ISP in same way. Mostly using open source solutions to fulfil base level of requirements. Keep up good work! :)
That's awesome! and thank you, I will.
I really like Tactical RMM and how it integrates with Mesh Central. The scripting and automation as well as granular security make it a slam dunk for us. Code signing is available for a small fee. You should probably focus on "Free to Use" products as well as Open Source if you are just starting an MSP. Milestone Xprotect and 3CX come to mind...
Dwspectrum too
I get the desire to go "free to use", but if they aren't willing to open source their stuff, it makes me wonder when they'll pull the rug. I'm an open source advocate, and i fully believe this can be done well with 100% open source tools.
Thank you, thanksalot
You are very welcome
good content! great topic! - mssp is a good one you should cover in followups
I'll see what I can learn about MSSP.
Love the video and all the tools, i own my own small msp company on the side of my full time job and open source is king for me.
One tool that i mist that I would also consider is a password manager, sso is nice but clients all have different systems with different passwords and passwordpolicies.
check out vaultwarden
I would recommend Bitwarden for MSP. $3.50 per user (instead of the $5), and you can become a "Service Provider" for your customers, allowing you to reset an end user's password, assign roles, etc. And being Bitwarden for Business, you get all the functionalities of giving different permissions for "Sales Dept" or "Marketing" passwords to specific users in the company you manage. Anyways. Good to track your own customer's password and offer the service to your customers
Indeed! I didn't mention all of the software we'll eventually endi up using, as this is meant to be a basic start, then we'll continue to build out, but absolutely a password manager is a must, and honestly it's a must for everyday life these days.
@AwesomeOpenSource I totally agree. I wouldnt be able to live without my passwordmanager. I am looking for an alternative, currently running the free version of Passwordstate but would love to switch to an open-source variation of it.
Do you have any in mind that will be used for the series?
Your videos are always great! Could you cover the installation of zrok too? Should be interesting!
Let me take a look at it. I haven't heard of it.
Great video and always happy to watch your videos as usual. Just one question, is mech central still being supported and developped, i heard it was bought by a big company?
I believe you may be thinking of RPort. It was som ereally great open source software that was purchased by RealVNC, who promptly closed sourced it. Sad honestly, but as far as I know MeshCentral is still fully open source. I've seen a few commits here and there, but the development is a bit slower now. The devs who led it up were employees of Intel, and I believe, given a lot of time to focus on MeshCentral at the time. They are no longer with that company, and I imagine have less time to dedicate to the project now. Much more of a volunteer type thing I would imagine.
@@AwesomeOpenSource The fact that Ylian started working working for Microsoft, and a lot of the link on his site will give you the 404 page and his last video was like a year or more agao, i thought he stopped supporting it or got bought. I had hard time getting meshcommander 0.96 and his download page has only 0.95.
also for the billing of time make sure to include the time it takes to document and run any reports. That time is not free.
Good note. Thank you.
exactly what I'm looking for since while! do you selfhost your MSP tools? thanks
I do, but we'll talk more about the pros and cons of that in future videos.
Great information, thanks. Personally, I think it's best practice to terminate your VPN tunnels on a firewall not opening a port and terminating on a server. That way, it's more secure and your firewall can look at the VPN traffic.
The great thing about Wireguard is that it can "tunnel" out without having to open a port on the firewall, and it doesn't have to terminate at the firewall, but it can.
We really like Tailscale! Awesome tool!
Really nice video! I am like you a super small scale MSP and I am really looking forward to watching this series. One very important thing seems to be missing from your list: Antivirus/EDR. Is there any open source solution you are aware of? Kind regards and keep on your very enjoyable and valuable work.
Antivirus. is clam AV. It's usually seen in it's most basic form, but it is really powerful and extensible. EDR - I've been looking at a few, but I'll have to keep researching before I can really suggest anything.
what would you recommend for documentation? something that could give employees access to certain clients document or certain portions of a clients documentation (for example: giving a network engineer access to routers details and network diagrams, but that person won't need access to the server login details)
Bitwarden is a really powerful open source tool for this type of setup. You can share credentials by groups with permissions to certain things, but not others. IT's encrypted and secure, which will be extremely important for your clients.
I use Tactical RMM which integrates mesh central
It does, but Tacticals license is not open source, which is why I've steered away from them thus far.
Great content just curious do you need to manage secrets? What are your thoughts on hashicorp vault!
I'll be using Bitwarden for my password management. Never used Hasicorp, so no thoughts on it at this poitn.
Everytime you show libreoffice I'm jealous of that icon set. What are you using to get those outlined icons?
I suppose it's just my dark mode on Gnome. I didn't do anything special to it.
I would love to see a video on open source voip software
I've done a series on FusionPBX a long while back, but it's older, and probably outdated, so I'll try to see what I can put together for this series later on.
I just charge hourly rates, it's much easier on everyone.
I have a few categories that are in-house and onsite, such as research, labor, consulting...
So for example if I'm out there fixing or upgrading something, I charge hourly on 15 minute increments for on site labor, if I'm helping them talk to another vendor by participating in a meeting, that's just a consulting rate... Etc...
I like it. but I also like income I can depend on each month, year, what have you. I think it's great to set some fences around what the monthly "subscription" gets them. With the one I have now, it's 2 in house visits included, but anything beyond goes to the hourly rate.
Customers have to pay you for your availability, too. Who pays a monthly fee, get support as agreed SLA, but customers with "one-time" (hourly based) support calls get support in our free time (if we have some; and at a higher hourly rate). We always charge monthly for availability. We can count on this income, customer can count on us to start solving their problem in agreed time frame.
Try to convince an enterprise with your open source siem and good luck :) its good for training though :)
Enterprise is a special beast for sure. But, I've seen a starting shift where Open Source is becoming much more accepted in that space.
I like the video.. but in my tech support business ticketing is a huge thing... I'm currently using asana, it's not open source but it is amazing for tracking tasks and projects
Didn't mention ticketing straight off, but in the long run we'll be setting up Zammad for ticketing. It's really great, and powerful.
Can you do a stack video for vps firewall, proxy manager and container application so we can start our own business
I'll see what I can do. Do you mean to do something like Digital Ocean or Linode?
@@AwesomeOpenSource Yes, exactly we need a good stack for someone who is just started,
And one more thing I am not IT, CS guy I am mechanical engineer started web development can you suggest how for I can go with Oracle 1/8 ocpu with 1 gb memory AMD
and
4 cpu 24 GB RAM arm processor
My application is to create multiple applications* which I can deploy using docker and rancher.
*application will be website like booking, ecommerce, I know ui ux if some one need dashboard for crm, cms i can create it but can I host them on Oracle free tier spec. If so what will be limitations
By the limitations I mean how much request can they handle per day if my visiters can actually use ui of application unlike dribble
Question reguarding Netbird and Authentik. I know Netbird is setup by default with Zitadel with their quick setup but I have been trying to set it up with authentik as I already use it and their instructions aren't easy to follow. Could you please guide me to the docker-copmpose you may have use or instructions so I can give it a try. So far I keep failing that setup.
I would really appriciate it, than you!
I plan to cover that setup in one of my next videos. It's true, it did take me a bit of time to get it to work as I expected.
@@AwesomeOpenSource Thank you so much! Looking forward to it! Thank you for making these videos and for making them easy to follow and explaining them well. It's a rare skill and gift!
Also since the open source Invoice Ninja does not have SSO, since it’s open source you could program it in yourself if you know how.
And there's the rub "...if you now how." I would program this into 1000s of open source applications if I knew how. I think this is one of those things any open source app should have early on it's roadmap these days, if it needs an authentication system, that is.
I think it could work with authelia
Did you thought about ticketing and documentation solution?
I have. I will most likely use Zammad. I like the way it works, and it's got some pretty great features out of the gate. I'll also be talking about solid communication options for you to your clients, your internal staff, and so on.
Any reason you didn't add Tactical RMM which already includes Mesh Central? Just axing not attaxing
Yes, no worries. Tactical RMM is really nice looking, but not open source. I think because people see it's associated a bit with MeshCentral they think it is, but their license states right at the top, that it is not an open source license.
Looking for way to monitor linux software md raid, receive alerts on faulty drives. Any idea?
Zabbix or Check MK either one will give you this. They take some setup and tuning, but are awesome once you get them there.
❤
Thank you!
A couple more questions;
1. Are you hosting rustdesk/meshcentral per client, or just one instance at your office and create groups?
2. If hosting at your office, I would assume you have to connect via your client VPN before you can connect to the host?
I run RustDesk in Docker on our business Synology. Flawless! (the community free version thought witch lacks lots of needed featured when you scale up)
All hosted at my office. One instance with Groups and security. I have a Wireguard VPN tunnel setup that allows me access, thus no ports are open on the client network.
@@AwesomeOpenSource Are the wireguard tunnels always running to client's networks or on-demand? If always-running, isn't that a security risk, if your system get compromised, and all client's networks get accessible from your system by unauth person? I'm in the process of finding a solution to use some type of VPN to all clients, which is on-demand, not always-on. The challenge is to find a solution that eases the admin access from multiple devices without adding all clients VPN configs to all devices by hand... Tailscale and likes are good, but there are many things that cannot run Tailscale client (server BMCs for example), and there are IP subnet overlaps in client's networks that makes impossible to advertise all routes on Tailscale (like) networks. And, as I wrote before, I think, always-on multi-customer VPN mesh tunnels are security risks.
Sure, if someone could get on my Wireguard network, it would compromise the network. Same goes for someone getting on the LAN through an open port, or by accessing a system inside the network and adding their own malware to call out. It's about securing everything we can, and making sure out access is as secure as possible. The most safe method would be to not have internet...;-) but that doesn't really solve the problem. I have my wireguard setup so that you have to authenticate with a user and very strong long password, and with MFA on top of that. It's really the best I can do to make sure the network is secure. It would also depend very much on where / how they person got on my wireguard network, as I employ UAC, and more rules to keep certain users and machines from talking to others. I'll go over that in my series as well. I'm sure there are even more ways to make it better, and as people offer those ideas we will build up our security more and more. These are all great questions, and get my creative mind going, so thatnk you.
What kind of office has 4 employees and 5 printers that need servicing?
He mentioned them having some old dot matrix printers. Presumably they have some particular documents that need to be printed on multi-part forms but normal stuff goes out on more modern printers.
@sonictech1000 is correct. This is a Credit Union. The print Checks, Receipts, and Loan paperwork on dot-matrix with Carbon Copy duplication, and then have a few more modern printers for their other paperwork they keep in hard-copy form.
You have done proxmox but it's not supported on cloud vps running on arm processor with ubantu
Yeah. What's your goal with that setup?
Whats the difference between Rustdesk and meshcentral? Seems like they both do the same thing.
Same question. I find RustDesk (community) to be very limited but works very well for what it does.
For me Rustdesk is the remote desktop support system. A client calls me, says "I can't get x to do y." I say ok, please give emyour RustDesk ID (with them setup on my RustDesk server and private / public key), then I connect, they accept my connection and I help them with the issue.
MeshCentral is more fo a tool for getting to all the systems during off hours, managing updates, upgrades, and other such tasks that you wouldn't want to do during working hours for the client.
@@AwesomeOpenSource that makes sense
@@AwesomeOpenSource How do you setup the Rustdesk client to point to your server? With the recommended script (which installs Rustdesk on client's computer, no rel on-demand run without installation), or you had built a custom version with specific config? We use the script for now, but it cumbersome, but I can't produce a working Windows version nor with the Docker neither the Guthub Actions methods.
I install it for them generally, but they just install the Rustdesk client, then I walk them through setting it to point to my server url, and then I provide them the necessary public key.
Looks interesting. I'm still glad I'm retired though.
Looking forward to those days myself!
good luck... do a video that matters more to the MSP world. How to get more clients !!!
We will get there. Step one have a business. There are tons of reasons someone may be having a hard time attracting clients. I’ll try to go through a few with each video, as well as some ideas to help
Overcome them. The real thing is you are selling yourself as much as your services.
What are you doing for protection? ?
We will run firewalls, and everything over a VPN that we can. There are a lot of great open source tools we can explore for even more security as we go.
I am guessing mobile phones and tablets are difficult to support on open source?
Depends on what you are trying to do. Mobile phones and tablets in the iOS ecosystem are hard to support from a remote access standpoint, regardless of open or closed source. Android has a little more wiggle room there, but there are open source MDM tools. My thought is more around let me guide you. You be my eyes and hands, and I'll be the brain.
Just wanted to throw this out there for a possible open source software that could be used for homelabs or business. The open source software is called Tactical Rmm. I would like to see a video about how to use this or tutorial on this. I’m working on using this but haven’t had much time
Sadly, tactical RMM is not open source. Their license is quite restricting actually. They do use the open source MeshCentral under the covers though.
The Tactical RMM License is not an open-source software license. This license contains certain restrictions on the use of the Licensed Software. For example the functionality of the Licensed Software may not be made available as part of a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) service or product to provide a commercial or for-profit service without the express prior permission of the Licensor.
That looks pretty beta, to me. Would you really run your livelihood on beta software? Where would you get support from? There is not a big enough community around it.
Too bad there isnt any open source security solution with central/ cloud management for your customers like Gravity Zone for instance of Bit Defender.
ps1: Not talking of course for a central firewall since there are couple of them doing a great job (pf/open-sense, firewalla....etc).
ps2:At first you talked about Mesh as a direct analog to Zabbix btu in your prosentation it felt like it was a similar to rustdesk cental in a way. You see the clients via Mesh and you connect via Rust.
How about Wazuh?
@@AwesomeOpenSource
hm..... even though it uses an endpoint security agent I thought of it more like an XDR & SIEM solution.
Have you tried it? What do you use / propose for your clients?
Thanks for your flash-sales like response.
@@AwesomeOpenSource Ive watched (without deploying ) a couple of videos about the way it works and it seems that it focuses more on the logs side of things. I didn t see any antivirus for the end user to be able to scan on demand something. Also the agent is without gui so an exception of a found malware/virus/trojan..etc has to be made (if at all) from the server's gui only.
I guess I misunderstood what you were looking for. The Wazuh stuff has a ton of plugin add-ons, so you can build out what you need, but yes, it's intended to have actions taken from the centrally managed server. So each client will have an agent that then tells it to have files scanned, and if something is found, the actions from the event trigger the server, and the server admin has decided what should happen to the file. I think you are looking more for a central solution to push out software that the end user then had to deal with?
@@AwesomeOpenSource Yes I was looking for another thing which was a free version of Gravity Zone (We have now). Afterwards watched a lot of videos about Wazuh and it s too tricky to deploy it and not with the actions I want for the user to have.
Your RMM Solution long term growth wise wouldnt be good. I manage over 1000 devices and i am not logging in manually to do updates. Automate it
I think this series of videos are for starters on a budget. Which is awesome. There is a millions videos for bigger solutions. This series hits a niche and I like it
Of course. We want to automate as we grow and as we go. The tools I'm suggesting have plenty of automation capabilities, along with tools like Ancible, and so many others. We'll be investigating and going through that as we build up.
What is "nedded"?
Check out my accompanying show notes post in the description. I give you a good breakdown there for what we'll need to get started.
Seriously. I don't think you understand the complexities of what an MSP is. Too many IT or would-be IT professionals think that by simply providing IT support, you're an MSP. This is exactly why most of these types of MSPs never work and always fail. There isn't a reputable MSP that would seriously use open-source projects for clients. Unless you provide at least 100 unique IT services, as an MSP - you're simply a person with IT knowledge who provides IT support. In no way are you an MSP. I can't count the number of companies that we've onboarded that have said, well our previous MSP did this or did that, when it turns out, it's just some run-of-the-mill IT experienced person calling themselves an MSP.
An interesting point of view. I'd love to know what services you think separate an IT person from an MSP. Seriously. I'm trying to learn, and understand, and this is the kind of feedback we all need.
What makes an MSP an MSP for you?
MSP original meaning is that it provides some service/device/infra WITH support and management. This expanded with time to the current meaning of MSP, which is "provide support, maintenance and management for something" (on MSP-provided base system or simply on customer's base system).
So, nowadays, providing IT support and maintenance services as a company is an MSP thing...
Reputable MSP's are not defined by not using open-source and/or free software! Denying this type is the charasteristic of manager-drives businesses, who want to cover their responsibility (asses) with money-bought things instead of competence... Professionals-driven businesses choose tools by value, not by price.
No on the 130k
Yeah, it's just an example. We of course want to make money, and not kill ourselves doing it, but it has to be a net positive for the client as well.
@@AwesomeOpenSource would you be willing to compile a list of all the possible variants? I know you and I have had some good rapport for years and god you have damn near indexed every POPULAR solution and made it easy for us.
My dilemma is we still don't have a proper unified solution but I think if we had an idea of what to look at, maybe we could somehow fork and develop a solution combining some of these projects.
At the end of the day most of basic and medium features we need can be done with a no code tool at the bare minimum but when we need to do some RMM we need a basis to start from. I do like Mesh and Tactical RMM but they kinda need to be merged.
Ill be honest if we didn't have you in the OPEN SOURCE community god we would be struggling its plenty of people telling us about tools its not many folks telling how to form that into a business model!
@@AwesomeOpenSource yea I had a couple of owners of MPS's talk with me and even allow me to shadow them. Your roughly right on that price. MSP vs In House / Internal IT is very very different! I at first didn't want to deal with MSP felt it was an attack on my position, but I learned to love MSPs (as long as they are honest and fair).
Please, do not start an MSP business unless you are actually qualified to do so. You will get sued and the legal fees alone will make you homeless. If you don't have at least 5 years experience managing enterprise IT environments and at least 3 industry certifications, you're not remotely qualified.
An interesting set of thoughts. I would think lawsuit would depend on you being able to do what you say you'll do, and the country you live in. But beyond that, is your concern that someone won't be able to provide the service they are offering? That's the goal of this series. Show you tools. Help you learn how to provide the service clients need. Help you go after clients who you can serve in a way that will improve their work lives and situations from what it is today.
Not every country in the world is like USA (thank god) to get sued for everything by everyone who wants to avoid payment...
On the other side, 5 years of experience and at least 3 industry certifications exactly how guaratees success in fulfilling promises? Knowledge guaranties success, not past years and some papers with stamps. I know many 20-30 years "experienced" IT persons without real usable knowledge...
Of course, the availability of knowledge only shows up in work, really can't be proven beforehand... And after proving in work, THAT will be the reference for future customers.
Perfex CRM one time buy ($40-60) does Support ticket, Client portal, projects, billing, and much more all in one! Way better than ninja!
I'm sure there are a lot of projects out there that might fit a more generalized, here's everything, but the goal is to make an open source system, and we can definitely do it.
The problem with WG is no obvious/ easy 2Fa option. Otherwise WG is the GOAT!
PS. You had me at Zabbix :) Thank you for letting Nagios die!
Both super powerful tools, but I definitely have more comfort with Zabbix right now.