Kaseya Promise: New Unitrends Done Deal Program Gives MSPs Paying Customers, Not Just Leads
Kaseya is providing an unusual promise to its managed services provider partners: The company guarantees it will provide actual signed customers for its Unitrends data protection technology.
Kaseya's new Unitrends Done Deal program is very simple, said Fred Voccola, CEO of the Dublin, Ireland-based provider of MSP management and data protection technology.
"If you are an MSP and adopt Unitrends MSP as your backup and recovery technology, we will give you paying customers," Voccola told CRN. "Not leads. Paying customers. Lots of MSPs have strong engineering and technical expertise but find it hard to get leads."
Voccola said that an MSP may pay up to $875 to generate a single lead, and typically only one of three leads turns into a paying customer.
"Unitrends MSP is the best data protection technology hands down," he said. "That's objective. What's not objective is that we will provide paying customers, not just leads. They are paying MSPs money the day they sign up."
Kaseya, a provider of a leading professional services automation platform for MSPs, in May acquired Unitrends and has since integrated the Unitrends data protection platform into its PSA platform.
The Unitrends Done Deal is already in place in North America and isexpected to provide 220 paying customers to MSPs, Voccola said. On an annual basis, he expects Kaseya to provide over 3,000 paying customers to MSPs, he said.
"It's frickin' awesome," he said. "The customers we are providing for our MSPs are larger midsize businesses with their own internal IT capabilities who are looking for managed services providers to provide some element of managed services. These companies have IT, and are not normally targeted by MSPs."
Customers who sign contracts with Unitrends will be passed on to MSPs based on geographic regions, Voccola said. Kaseya guarantees to provide at least one paying customer to its MSPs every 90 days, although the actual period for now is about 35 days, he said.
There is no limit to the number of paying customers Kaseya will provide, Voccola said. "We have some large MSPs who can expect 30, 40, 50 new paying customers."
MSPs who do more business with Kaseya Unitrends MSP will get more pre-signed paying customers, Voccola said. "I don't want to give out the details of how the customers are assigned," he said. "But this is contractual. There are no back-room deals."
The Unitrends Done Deal program is a bonus for MSPs that standardize on Unitrends for data protection, said Brett Johnson, president of Simpleroute, a South Burlington, Vt.-based MSP and Kaseya partner.
"The paying leads will come from those customers who have come to Unitrends and expressed interest," Johnson told CRN. "Most of these leads are from larger businesses. Our leads typically come from companies with under 100 people, but leads going to the vendors usually are from companies with over 100 people. So with this, MSPs get in the door of larger opportunities. You have a customer who is interested in talking with you."
It is also a good program for Kaseya and its MSPs because of other potential opportunities that will likely come with a data protection sale, Johnson said.
"If Kaseya flips every third lead to a paying customer, that means we can sell those customers more services and PSA licenses," he said. "It's a win-win all across the board."