I’ve asked five people, who are both friends and MSP experts, what they think is going to happen to MSPs next year. Let’s jump straight into our experts’ predictions for what could happen in your world in 2026.

Welcome to this SPECIAL Episode 318 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

5 expert predictions for MSPs in 2026

Hello and welcome to the first of four special episodes to take us through Christmas and into 2026. And that’s actually where we’re starting, with predictions for next year.

You’re going to hear predictions about the demand for cyber security, how content marketing might die as a marketing channel, a really cool idea about creating free apps as lead magnets, why you should help your clients reign in the usage of SaaS tools, why you should invest into your leadership and how to beat much bigger MSPs in your marketplace. And as you’d expect, there’s a lot of talk about AI.

Hi there, it’s Jamie Warner, CEO of MSP eNerds and SAS vender, Invarosoft. So what are my predictions for 2026 in the MSP industry? Well, I’ve got a few to tell you. First one is SMB, small to medium businesses, are always going to need an IT partner. I think people have been saying for many years, our relevance won’t be there in the future. As long as you have non-technical people that don’t understand technology, we’ll always have a huge amount of business to chase and a huge amount of opportunity there for outsourced IT services and to be an IT partner for them.

I think the number one trend though will always continue to be cyber security. I’m definitely noticing in my world, in the eNerds world, that new clients are always very cautious and worried about their security posture. So certainly focusing on that and ensuring that you’re following one of the best practice frameworks so that you can articulate how your service delivery will meet those cyber security requirements is going to be important.

Another one, artificial intelligence, obviously it’s a huge buzzword. How do MSPs get engaged? There’s a lot of people out there trying to tell you how you can just do certain things around AI. I think firstly, let’s get the platform right as MSPs, and then of course it’s going to be the Microsoft platform with Copilot. So making sure that you are crystal clear on how Copilot works. One of the things we are doing is running webinars with the big vendors and distributors with their experts around this space. Or you could become your own expert if you like, and making sure that you are being proactive with your advice around how to actually use AI in the Microsoft Suite. It tends to be 90+% of businesses are on the Microsoft platform unless you’re purely a Google shop or the like, but ultimately that’s a really good place to start and make sure that you are best in class around.

The last one that I would say, and it’s that my biggest bug bear if anyone see me talk, is just how we articulate our services when you get a new business lead.

One thing that will not change in 2026 is that when clients are looking for a new IT partner, they’re essentially looking for a step up in service delivery and in the experience they get.

So when you get a new lead, your only job is to convince them that your service delivery methodology is going to be a step up. And so your job is to argue the case of how you are going to deliver a service that will be best in class. So what are you going to talk about?

The big things is actually explaining and visually explaining, for example, your customer experience technology, how visibly you’re going to provide them with a one pane of glass. It could be your technology business reviews actually showing them how you’re going to do a gap analysis, a traffic light report, how you’re going to do your Essential Eight report or whatever the cyber security framework you are using and actually showing them how this looks. What does onboarding look like? How does account management look like? All of these different things are arguments and things that you need to put into your sales process to demonstrate that you are going to be a step up.

I don’t think that’s going to change in 2026 and as an example, my company eNerds, we only target small to medium businesses just like you. It’s the same and last year we grew by a million dollars in revenue and this year we’ll grow by another million dollars in revenue just by signing up a lot of clients and being really efficient at doing our advisory with those clients. Making sure we’re having those relevant conversations and actually squeezing the lemon of getting that deal flow that’s out there that relates to advisory.

These are things they need, not things they don’t need, and just being really efficient around that process. And you’ll find yourself growing by a quarter of a million, half a million, a million each year if you get your new business arguments right, and you sign up more clients and then of course you go and have a chat to them around advisory. So I think those things are going to stay the same in 2026. I wish you continued success and hopefully we all have a absolute cracker of a year next year. Take care.

Here’s Matt Solomon from Channel Program. So my prediction for 2026 is that MSPs are going to battle a very similar challenge that they’ve had over the years, which is differentiation. The reality is that 92% of an MSP’s core stack is the identical stack to their competitors. And so MSPs who will stop selling tools and tickets and really start focusing on business outcomes, I think are going to be the ones who really set themselves apart by aligning services directly to their customer’s bottom line.

MSPs will really need to rethink what efficiency means to their small business customers. It’s no longer about lowering internal labour costs. It’s about driving measurable savings, productivity, and profitability for your clients.

Another major shift is the work on SAS sprawl. In 2026 MSPs will take a far more active role in helping customers reign in all of that chaos, not just from security and compliance standpoint, but also in managing the license utilisation, the renewals and the vendor contracts. The MSPs who can provide visibility and control access to that massive sprawl that they’re experiencing will earn the trust and get the margins that they need. The average SMB is using over 80 SaaS tools and they’re not managing them properly, and it’s only getting worse with AI tools because everybody’s adding them. I think the MSPs that will thrive will be the ones to connect the dots between costs, compliance and customer outcomes.

2026 isn’t about adding more tools. It’s about making every tool, every process and every relationship work smarter for the customer’s bottom line.

Hey, this is Brian Gillette from Feel-Good MSP and the host of the MSP Sales Podcast, and here are my predictions for what will happen to the MSP channel in 2026. My predictions unfortunately are bleak for some, but they’re very optimistic for others. I think that with an increase in marketing resources that are being made available to MSPs, the amount of people who are trying to do marketing as a service or content as a service, and frankly with the exponential increase of AI slop that’s being generated, I think that the traditional content marketing methods for MSPs is going to flatline in its efficacy for the average MSP.

If you’re just doing the same thing that everybody’s doing, you’re going to become even quieter or even less noticeable than you are right now because so many more people are going to be trying to do it the easy way.

So what’s the result going to be? I believe that the MSPs who are traditionally and unfortunately smaller who don’t have their business development and their go-to-market stuff together, I think they’re going to struggle and frankly, I think some of them are going to go out of business. Because it’s getting harder and harder to get attention if you’re phoning it in, and frankly, the average technical acumen of the small business is growing. So if you’re only working with the five to 15 user clients, those people might not think they need you as much as they have in previous years.

The inverse of that is that many of those small MSPs are going to start losing clients because they don’t know how to get their narrative and their value proposition together. Those clients are going to aggregate to the MSPs in your region who have the best go-to-market strategy, not the strongest stack, not the most experienced, the ones who have the cleanest, clearest narrative to the small business community of how that MSP is going to transform their life. So I do think there’s going to be an aggregation in some ways of clients towards the MSPs who have their stuff together.

The second prediction I have that is also related to AI, is I believe that vibe coding is going to unfortunately or fortunately, become much easier, and I foresee that the pioneering the forefront MSPs are going to start using things like vibe coding to put together really functionally specific highly valuable resources that they can use as introductory offers or lead magnets. If you could give a practice manager or an office manager an application that could give her all of her resources in one place that’s HIPAA compliant and that could plug into all the apps that she’s already using, make it easier for her to organise her day, she’s going to use it. If you can come up with any resource like tha