A lot of the chat at MSP GLOBAL 2026 was around AI, price wars, and vendors changing the rules mid-game. All in all, the last 12 months have felt kinda manic. But when we lined up five pulses from our State of the MSP Industry survey (more than 1,500 responses from July 2025 to July 2026), the industry vibe turned out to be far steadier than the headlines suggested. But—and it’s a big but—underneath that calm, a few things really did shift.
Here are three lessons we took from a year of listening to the MSP community.
The baseline is more useful than the latest quarter
Quarterly data is addictive. A priority jumps five points, and it’s tempting to call it a trend. Across the full year, most of those swings turned out to be noise. Cybersecurity’s apparent rise and fall as a priority, for instance, sat comfortably within normal variation.
What held steady may be more valuable. Confidence in the industry and in MSPs’ own businesses stayed between 4.1 and 4.3 out of 5 in every wave. Price pressure and commoditization were the top long-term risk every time. About two-thirds of MSPs partner actively. These are numbers you can hold your own business up against, and if yours look different, that’s where the interesting conversation starts.
AI has moved in, but it isn’t paying rent yet
AI and automation topped MSPs’ technology plans in all five surveys, so no surprise there. The real change was in how MSPs use it. Between April and July 2026, internal AI deployment jumped from 55% to 71%—a shift too big to be mere chance.
Selling AI is another matter entirely. Only 42% offer client-facing AI services, which leaves a sizable gap between using AI and earning from it. MSPs are clearly feeling the squeeze. One respondent asked how peers are “structuring your pricing model to stay profitable as AI reduces the billable hours needed to resolve client tickets.” Expect that question to dominate the year ahead.
What MSPs say and what they do aren’t always the same
Some of the most revealing findings are found in the gap between intention and behavior. The share of MSPs who’d go direct to vendors if pricing were equal climbed from 41% to 54%. Yet only 6–8% are actually bypassing distributors, and 35% are adding more.
Partnering shows a similar pattern. Most MSPs agree collaboration brings mutual benefit, but around half say trust and competitive tension hold them back, far ahead of practical hurdles like revenue sharing or finding the right contacts. For anyone looking to build partnerships, the relationship work will matter more than the logistics.
Get the full picture
The full State of the MSP Industry report goes deeper into each of these storylines. It also covers changing business models, how views differ by role and business type, and gives an early look at the October 2026 survey.
Create your free CloudFest Account to download the report and see how your business stacks up against a full year of industry data.
