If you run an MSP (managed service provider, meaning you handle IT
for other businesses under contract) and you’re wondering what to
actually put in front of clients, here’s the short list: Microsoft 365
Copilot through your CSP agreement, the AI already built into Kaseya and
ConnectWise, workflow platforms like Rewst and Pia, AI service desks
like Thread, security platforms like Guardz, and general automation
tools like n8n or Make for the custom stuff. That’s a real list of real
products. But here’s the catch right up front, because it matters more
than the list does: picking a good tool is not the same as having a
service. A tool is something a client can buy from anyone. A service is
something only you can deliver, because it’s built around how that tool
actually helps their business. Keep that in your head as you read the
rest of this, because it’s where the money is.
Microsoft
365 Copilot (sold through your CSP agreement)
If you’re a CSP (Cloud Solution Provider, Microsoft’s program for
partners who resell Microsoft 365 and Azure licenses), you can already
sell Microsoft 365 Copilot seats to clients today. Microsoft dropped
the old 300-seat minimum in January 2024, so it’s available to small
and midsize clients now too, not just the big ones. Sherweb,
a Microsoft distributor that works with MSPs, frames the real
opportunity plainly: the license by itself is not the offer, the
services you wrap around getting a client to actually use it are. That’s
the whole game with Copilot. Selling the seat is easy. Getting a
40-person client to change how they write documents and run meetings is
the hard part, and that’s what you get paid for.
Kaseya
Cooper (the AI already inside your RMM and PSA)
If you already run Kaseya’s stack, meaning VSA, Autotask, or Datto
RMM, you’re paying for a chunk of this already. Kaseya’s Cooper Bots let
you set up trigger-and-action automations across your RMM (remote
monitoring and management, the software that watches client machines and
servers) and PSA (professional services automation, your ticketing and
billing system) without custom scripting. A ticket comes in, Cooper Bots
can run a script, rotate a password, or kick off a diagnostic
automatically, and it logs the result straight into the ticket. This
isn’t something you resell to clients directly. It’s leverage for your
own techs, which means it shows up as faster resolution times and fewer
late nights, not as a line item on an invoice.
ConnectWise
Sidekick (the AI layer inside Asio)
Same idea, different vendor. If your PSA or RMM runs on ConnectWise’s
Asio platform, Sidekick is the AI companion built into it. ConnectWise’s
own announcement describes it as automating tasks such as
“generating PowerShell scripts, ticket categorization, summarization,
providing resolutions, and automated responses to end users.” In plain
terms, it triages and tags tickets, drafts scripts, and suggests fixes
so your technicians aren’t starting from a blank screen every time. Like
Cooper, this is operational leverage for your team, not something you’re
pitching to the client as a standalone product.
Rewst
(workflow automation built specifically for MSPs)
Rewst is a multi-tenant automation platform, meaning it’s built to
manage automations across many client environments at once instead of
one at a time, which is exactly the problem a general-purpose automation
tool doesn’t solve well. It connects to more than 80 of the tools MSPs
already run and comes with prebuilt automations, called Crates, for
things like onboarding, offboarding, billing reconciliation, and
phishing remediation. Its AI assistant, RoboRewsty, lets you describe
what you want automated in plain language and it drafts the workflow for
you. This is the kind of tool that turns “we manually do this for every
client every month” into something that just runs.
Pia (AI automation for
your help desk)
Pia sits inside your PSA and automates the ticket lifecycle from the
moment a request comes in through resolution. It uses a machine learning
model to classify tickets and can trigger more than 100 prebuilt
automations, things like password resets, access requests, and
routine onboarding tasks, without a technician touching them. There’s
also a Microsoft Teams-based version, Pia Chat, that lets end users
resolve common issues through chat instead of opening a ticket at all.
The pitch here is straightforward: fewer routine tickets hitting your
queue means your techs spend more time on the work that actually needs a
human.
Thread (an AI service
desk built for MSPs)
Thread is a purpose-built AI service desk that plugs into
ConnectWise, Autotask, and HaloPSA. It automates triage, dispatch, and a
lot of the back-and-forth client communication that eats a technician’s
day, and it’s also rolling out Voice AI to handle phone support the same
way. If your MSP’s biggest bottleneck is Tier 1 volume rather than
complex engineering work, this is the category to look at closely,
because it’s solving specifically for that.
Guardz
(AI-native security you actually resell to clients)
Guardz is a unified cybersecurity platform built for MSPs to deploy
across their whole client base, not just one account at a time. It
bundles identity threat detection, endpoint protection, email security,
and data protection into one dashboard, and uses AI to correlate signals
across a client’s systems so a phishing email, a suspicious login, and
an odd file change get connected instead of showing up as three
unrelated alerts. Unlike the RMM and PSA tools above, this one is
genuinely client-facing. It’s a security offering you’re selling under
your own brand, not just internal leverage.
n8n,
Make, and Zapier (general automation for the custom stuff)
These three aren’t MSP-specific, and that’s the point of including
them. When a client needs something none of the platforms above cover,
some odd integration between their CRM and their invoicing system, a
workflow that only makes sense for their business, this is where you
build it. n8n is source-available, meaning you can read and self-host
the code, and Make and Zapier are hosted platforms with huge libraries
of prebuilt app connections. Here’s the honest part, though: n8n’s
Sustainable Use License lets you run it for your own operations and for
client implementation and consulting work, but it does not let you
resell n8n itself as a hosted product under your own brand without an
enterprise agreement. That distinction matters if your plan is to build
a service around it. Read the license, not the marketing page.
The tool is not the service
Here’s the twist, and it’s the part most “best AI tools” lists skip
past. Every tool on this page is available to every MSP reading this
article. Your competitor can buy the same Copilot license, turn on the
same Cooper Bots, sign up for the same Guardz account. If the tool is
the whole offer, you’re competing on price against someone who bought
the exact same thing you did, and that’s a race to the bottom.
The margin, and the reason a client stays with you instead of
switching to whoever’s cheaper next quarter, lives in what you wrap
around the tool. That’s mapping out which of a client’s actual processes
are worth automating in the first place, designing the automation so it
fits how that specific business actually works, and then measuring
whether it moved a number that matters to them, tickets closed faster,
hours recovered, fewer security incidents. Kaseya’s own 2025 Global MSP
Benchmark Report backs this up directly: 64%
of MSPs said their clients want guidance on best practices, not just
tools, and 95% said connecting their RMM, PSA, and documentation
tools together, not just owning each one separately, is what actually
makes operations scale. Clients aren’t asking you which logo to buy.
They’re asking you to make the whole thing work together and tell them
what it’s doing for them. We wrote more about what that shift actually
looks like in practice in how MSPs add AI
services.
This isn’t a small trend, either. 58%
of small businesses now say they use generative AI, up from 40% the year
before, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Your clients are
already using AI tools on their own, badly, without governance, without
anyone checking whether the output is right. That’s not a threat to your
business. That’s the opening.
Where MIPLY fits into this
MIPLY isn’t a tool, and we’re not on the list above on purpose. We’re
a skills-transfer program that teaches MSP teams how to actually build
and sell AI and automation services, not just resell someone else’s
license. We started as an MSP ourselves: everything we teach was built
and broken first inside our own MSP, and MIPLY exists because MSP peers
kept asking how we did it. It comes from real client work, not slides.
There’s a peer community that comes with it too, called The Guild, made
up of other MSP owners doing this same work, comparing notes on what’s
actually working.
Honest caveat: this isn’t for everyone. If you’re an MSP under 10
employees or under $2M in revenue, or you’re looking for a plug-and-play
product you can flip on this afternoon, this program isn’t built for you
yet, and we’d rather tell you that now than after you’ve signed up.
MIPLY is built for MSPs in the 10 to 50+ employee range, $2M and up in
revenue, who are ready to build a real practice around this, not just
add another line item.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best AI tools for MSPs to resell?
Microsoft 365 Copilot through your CSP agreement and Guardz for security
are the two most directly resellable to clients. Kaseya Cooper and
ConnectWise Sidekick are AI built into RMM and PSA platforms MSPs
already run, mainly for internal efficiency. Rewst, Pia, and Thread
automate your own operations and service desk.
Is AI worth it for MSPs? Yes, when it’s aimed at a
specific bottleneck rather than bought as a blanket upgrade. AI-driven
automation in ticketing, triage, and routine requests reduces the manual
work technicians do on repetitive tasks, freeing them for higher-value
work. The tools that help most are the ones matched to your actual pain
point, not the ones with the longest feature list.
Can AI replace MSP technicians? No. AI tools handle
repetitive, well-defined tasks like password resets, ticket triage, and
script generation. They don’t replace the judgment a technician applies
to an unfamiliar problem or the relationship a client trusts. What
changes is where technicians spend their time, less on repetitive
tickets, more on the work that actually needs a person.
How do MSPs make money with AI? Not primarily by
reselling AI licenses at standard channel margins, which tend to be
thin. The real money comes from embedding AI into how you deliver
service, so it lowers your cost to serve, and from building
outcome-based offers around it, like guaranteed response times or
measurable ticket reduction, that a client can’t get by just buying the
software themselves.
The payoff
Pick two or three tools from this list that actually match a
bottleneck you have right now, not all of them. Get good at the one
thing that’s costing you the most hours today. Do that, and wrap real
process work around it instead of just flipping a switch, and you’ll
have something a client can’t get by shopping around. That’s the whole
point.
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