The duo behind a new MSP selection platform that’s being compared to Tinder say they were motivated by the “pain” they themselves encountered when running MSPs.
CompareIT was founded by Simon McAlpine and Mark Flinders, who sold their respective MSPs – Infinity IT Solutions and MFG – to Air IT on the same day in 2021.
It is designed to enable businesses to search for and compare more than 8,000 MSPs based on their technology requirements, using a combination of conversational AI and provider data to identify the strongest matches.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, McAlpine said his ambition is for CompareIT to be recognised as “the number-one destination for MSP selection and finding new IT partners”.
“Other people have coined the phrase – and I don’t know whether it’s one I like or not yet -‘the Tinder of tech’.
“It’s that matching service. The primary principle is really trying to figure out and cement a solid match.”
“There’s got to be a better way to do this”
Although it already features 8,000 providers, MSPs who pay to join the platform can bolster their profiles with more detailed information on their skills, sectors and ideal customer profile (ICP).
Packages range from £100 to £500 a month.
CompareIT was born out of the duo’s entrepreneurial desire to “fix things”, McAlpine confided.
“Lead generation has been a problem that Mark and I have lived throughout our own MSPs,” he said.
“After we sold the businesses to AirIT, we both did a series of transformational roles. I guess the idea came from us feeling the pain of rising client acquisition costs.
“We said, ‘there’s got to be a better way to do this’. It’s simply down to matching the right buyer with the right MSP. And then for the MSP, it’s about giving them the right kind of leads – or ICP matching – which is really important because a lot of enquiries that go into MSPs are just from the wrong type of business.”
“Absolutely, totally unique”
CompareIT goes beyond traditional MSP directories in several ways, including the sheer size of its data pool, McAlpine claimed.
“And unlike a directory, we operate a matching service. You can search by capability across 197 datasets, so there’s much deeper scrutiny over capability to identify a better match,” he said.
Whereas directories require visitors to talk in the jargon-heavy language of MSPs, CompareIT’s uses AI to enable them to use their own language, McAlpine added.
Finally, the platform enables customers to “monitor” MSPs across API feeds from the likes of Companies House, Google, Trustpilot, Glassdoor and CreditSafe.
“That is absolutely, totally unique,” McAlpine said.
McAlpine was quick to tip his hat to Assurix, a real-time MSP trust mark recently launched by another MSP founder who sold their business to Air IT.
“We’re all in very similar space,” he said.
“I think what they’re doing is great. We support anything that’s driving more transparency across MSPs that’s allowing buyers to make more informed decisions. That can only be applauded.”
Asked about CompareIT’s ambitions, McAlpine said the duo “tend to achieve our goals quite quickly”.
“We’re already in conversations about how we can take this outside the UK territory,” he said.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
