MSP Vendor Silverback Launches Trade-In Program

lowering its entry-level pricing earlier this week platform

Under the program, Silverback will give MSPs dollar-for-dollar credit for the money spent on any rival MSP platform when they purchase Silverback's MSP platform, said Peter Klanian, vice president of sales at the Billerica, Mass.-based company.

Participating MSPs must commit to spending at least the same amount for Silverback's offering than they did for the rival product, according to Klanian. For example, if an MSP spent $1,500 on a rival MSP platform, Silverback would credit that $1,500 toward the purchase of its new, entry-level $2,999 offering or a more expensive Silverback product, he said. Likewise, $10,000 spent on a rival product would be credited to any of Silverback's newly priced SKUs costing more than $20,000, he added.

"We want to take the investment you already have sunk into competing product licenses and give you a better product," Klanian said.

Over the past year, many MSPs have told CRN they thought Silverback's product topped rival MSP products they were already running. But the MSPs said Silverback's $76,500 price point was too high to justify, since they primarily served small and midsize businesses with relatively low billing rates.

Silverback knew there were MSPs that wanted to use its products but didn't because of the pricing, Klanian said. So the vendor on Monday introduced seven new pricing SKUs.

Silverback's $2,999 QuickLaunch hosted offering enables MSPs to provide network monitoring, device management, full patch distribution and reporting to about five SMB customers, with networks of two servers and a half-dozen or so PCs each, said Jonathan Wolf, vice president of product marketing. Two other hosted offerings, priced at $9,800 and $14,800, each come with more server, device and desktop licenses plus more comprehensive training.

Three offerings that employ Silverback's on-site appliance cost $21,000, $42,500 and $76,500. A top-shelf $99,500 offering delivers 100 server licenses, 100 network licenses and 250 desktop licenses. Silverback includes its BusinessBuilder Plus MSP consulting program with the higher-tier options.

Using a similar hosted approach, Silverback rival N-able Technologies in August lowered its entry-level cost from as much as $10,000 to $70 per customer site license per month. And LPI Level Platforms, which struck a deal in October to help distributor Ingram Micro deliver an MSP offering, has an entry price of about $2,500 for three to five customer site licenses.

Klanian said the performance of Silverback's products compared with that of competing products justifies any higher price. "Up front, you are paying more [for Silverback], but you have to look at the whole value of what you are getting," he said.