For MSPs · By people who ran one

Most MSPs know their revenue. Few know their margin per seat.

After 20+ years running MSPs, our team knew the same problem by heart: pricing lived in someone’s head, margins were a guess, and nobody could tell you what a given client was actually worth. ClarityCalc is how we fixed that.

Start free →See how it worksFree to start · no credit card required
Margin per seat across a 7-client portfolio
Sample data · standard MSP stack · M365 + EDR + helpdesk
← at risk · healthy →
5Healthy plans
1Watch · drifted
1At risk · action
A chart showing margin percentages for seven client plans. Five plans are healthy, above 50%: Aperture Laboratories at 54.2%, Arasaka Corporation at 59.8%, Black Mesa at 52.6%, Planet Express at 50.1%, Vault-Tec Corp at 50.0%. One plan is on watch: Massive Dynamic has drifted from 50.0% in January to 43.2% in April. One plan is at risk: Blue Sun Corporation at 31.1% — a client that appears profitable on the surface but whose margin is below the 35% threshold.

Every MSP we've worked with grew the same way. In the early years, pricing was a conversation. You quoted what felt right, adjusted to win deals, and honored whatever you promised a client two renewals ago. It worked, because everyone in the business kept the whole picture in their head.

Then you hit twenty clients. Then forty. Three techs became eight. A quoting process that was once a founder-in-a-room became a game of telephone — with the inputs scattered across spreadsheets, PSA notes, and whatever the last rep told the client on a Tuesday.

"Show me your ten lowest-margin clients."

If that question takes you more than ten minutes to answer, you have the problem this was built for.

— A question we asked in too many MSP owner rooms and watched land the same way every time.

Every mature MSP we've seen eventually tried to solve this with a spreadsheet. A good one, probably. Built by an ops person with real care. The problem isn't the spreadsheet — it's what happens when vendor costs shift, when a client needs an exception, when a new tech joins and needs to quote something. The model degrades quietly, and nobody notices until a renewal comes in that shouldn't have been renewed.

Line chart showing margin degradation for a typical client plan over four years. Starting at approximately 55% in Q1 2022, declining steadily to approximately 42% by Q4 2025 — an 8 percentage-point loss representing approximately $47,000 per year in reduced revenue.

A typical client plan, left un-recalculated as vendor costs rose. This is what "we'll look at pricing next quarter" actually costs.

ClarityCalc is the discipline layer between your vendor stack and your client roster. It holds what a seat actually costs to deliver, what you charge for it, and how much margin that produces — at the client level, the plan level, and the portfolio level. Everything else is derived from that.

02 / How it works

Prices derive from costs. Not the other way around.

The core invariant of ClarityCalc: you never set a service price directly. You define what it costs to deliver — labor, tools, licenses, overhead — apply a margin target, and the price-per-seat falls out. Change an input, watch it flow.

Managed Workstation plan · worked example
How a $99/seat price gets built, component by component
50% target margin
Component costs
Microsoft 365 Business Premium / user$22.00
SentinelOne / workstation$6.67
Proofpoint Essentials Business / mailbox$3.03
Duo Essentials / user$6.00
KnowBe4 Gold / user$1.80
Help Desk Services / user · 0.22 hr × $45$10.00
Total cost / seat$49.50
Seat definition
Seat = 1 user
(organization setting)
Includes 1 M365 license, 1 workstation, 1 mailbox, and ratable helpdesk time
$49.50 / seat
True cost
Target margin
Target margin: 50%
(plan-level setting)
Price = Cost / (1 − 0.50)
Price = $49.50 / 0.50
Solve →
Derived price
Price / seat
$99
Monthly recurring
Change any input, this moves.

Every number in your portfolio — every client plan, every SOW, every margin report — traces back to the inputs on the left. When Microsoft raises the M365 price, every downstream number updates, and ClarityCalc tells you which plans now need a conversation.

03 / What you produce

Two views of the same reality.

ClarityCalc is built around a simple principle: the document your client sees and the analysis you see should come from the same source of truth. Not a spreadsheet and a Word doc that have to be kept in sync.

What the client sees

A clean statement of work

Managed Services Agreement
Massive Dynamic · Enterprise Managed 2026
Productivity & Collaboration
Business productivity apps including email and document tools
Video conferencing and online meetings
Cloud storage and file synchronization
Endpoint Security
Laptop and desktop antivirus protection
Security monitoring and threat detection
Email Security & Awareness
Email spam and phishing protection
Employee security awareness training
Identity & Access
Secure login and identity management
Safe internet browsing and web filtering
Help Desk Services
Named-user help desk with asset inventory
Compliance Consulting Add-on
Monthly compliance oversight and reporting
Seats
154
Price / seat
$175
Monthly
$26,950

Every included component is traceable. When a client asks “what am I paying for,” you can show them, line by line.

What you see

The margin behind the number

Massive Dynamic · margin analysisApril 2026
Blended margin
43.2%
Below 50% healthy threshold · drifted from 50.0% since January
Service / PackagePrice / seatMargin
Productivity & Collaboration$4540%
Endpoint Security$3550%
Email Security & Awareness$1545%
Identity & Access$1845%
Help Desk Services$4052%
Compliance Consulting Add-on$2220%
Blended$17543.2%
Recommendation: Compliance Consulting Add-on is the drag. At 20% margin vs. 50% target, this plan needs a renegotiation or an SOW adjustment at next renewal in November.

Same client, same month. The view you use to make the call your client never sees.

04 / Integrations

Pulls from what you already run.

ClarityCalc reads your client list and unit counts directly from your PSA and documentation tools. Not your pricing — that still lives here, where you control it. Everything else syncs.

We'll tell you what syncs, what doesn't, and what's coming — out loud. No "connects to 50+ tools" marketing. These four, well.

  • Autotask PSALive · verified
  • IT GlueLive · verified
  • HaloPSABeta
  • HuduBeta
  • ConnectWisePlanned · Q2
  • Pax8Planned · Q2
Start here

Run your first plan in twenty minutes.

Free tier, no credit card. Pull in one client from your PSA, build one plan, see your real margin. If it doesn’t change how you think about a client’s pricing, close the tab — you’ll have lost nothing.

Free to start · no credit card · upgrade when it’s earning its keep

20+ years

MSP experience across our team, before building this.

4 integrations

Autotask, IT Glue, HaloPSA, Hudu. More when they’re ready, not before.

$0 to start

Free tier, no credit card, no time limit. Upgrade when it’s earning its keep.