How active is this really? The trackers don't agree

Every M&A advisory firm seems to run its own MSP deal tracker, and they don't converge on a single number. One widely-cited report put 2025 closed MSP and MSSP transactions at 466, a 20% increase over 2024. A separate tracker, using Canalys data, reported 267 deals for the same year. Both describe the same underlying trend — accelerating consolidation — but they're clearly not counting the same universe of deals, likely because a meaningful share of MSP acquisitions (especially smaller, private ones) never get publicly disclosed at all.

What to take from this: don't anchor on a specific deal count from any single report. The consistent, cross-source signal is direction (up, for several years running) and who's behind it (private equity, overwhelmingly) — not the precise number of transactions.

On that second point, the sources agree far more closely: private equity was involved in roughly 69% to 72% of disclosed MSP deals in 2025, depending on which tracker you use — a tight enough range across independent sources to treat as a reliable directional fact, even without a single precise figure.

Why private equity likes MSPs specifically

The logic shows up consistently across M&A advisory research: MSPs generate predictable monthly recurring revenue from multi-year contracts, typically retain 85-90% or more of clients annually, and operate in a market that's still highly fragmented — thousands of independent shops, most too small to be on any institutional buyer's radar a decade ago. That combination — durable cash flow, high retention, and a fragmented base of acquisition targets — is close to a textbook private equity roll-up thesis.

Three types of buyers, and they behave differently

This is the part that actually matters for how you target outreach, more than the aggregate deal count does. Advisory research consistently describes three distinct acquirer models:

1. Integrated roll-ups

These platforms fully absorb acquired firms — migrating clients onto unified systems and consolidating financials under one brand. Once an MSP is folded into an integrated roll-up, its individual purchasing decisions typically disappear into a single, larger buying process at the platform level.

Examples cited in industry coverage: Thrive, Ntiva, Dataprise

2. Decentralized holding companies

These preserve the acquired brand, management team, and local culture, while centralizing back-office functions and vendor purchasing leverage. Local purchasing autonomy tends to persist longer under this model than under a full integration.

Examples cited in industry coverage: Evergreen, New Charter Technologies

3. Vertical aggregators

These concentrate acquisitions within a specific regulated industry — healthcare IT, legal technology, financial services IT — where compliance expertise creates pricing power and a moat against generalist competitors.

What consolidation does to your buying committee

If your contact list still shows an MSP as an independent company, it's worth checking whether that's still true — a platform acquisition can quietly convert what used to be one purchasing decision-maker into someone with far less autonomy, or conversely, into someone now purchasing at 10x the scale on behalf of a much larger combined entity. Neither outcome is necessarily bad for you as a vendor, but they call for different messaging and different deal sizing, and treating a newly-acquired MSP the same way you'd treat an independent one is a common miss.

Valuation multiples: what "quality" means now

~2x
Multiple expansion since before 2020Quality MSPs transacted at roughly 4-6x EBITDA before 2020. Reports for the 2024-2026 window put quality platforms at 7-11x, with top-tier, security-capable, high-recurring-revenue businesses reaching 10-14x.

What separates a 5x business from a 12x one, according to the advisory research, isn't just size — it's recurring revenue percentage, security-service attach, and increasingly, AI-integrated tooling. One valuation report specifically noted that AI-integrated and cybersecurity-capable platforms are commanding premium multiples while commodity break-fix and project-based businesses are seeing multiple compression. That's a useful proxy signal for vendors: an MSP actively investing in security services or modern tooling is plausibly also a business positioning itself for a future sale — which can mean an active buying window for anything that helps that story (security attach, automation, AI-driven service delivery).

MSSPs specifically: a sub-consolidation worth watching

Coverage of the 2025 deal data specifically flagged MSSP-focused platform consolidation as a distinct sub-trend, separate from general MSP roll-ups — security-only platforms are being tracked and consolidated on their own trajectory. If your product sells specifically into the MSSP segment, it's worth monitoring this sub-cycle separately from the broader MSP M&A conversation, since the buyer landscape and valuation logic differ somewhat for pure-play security platforms.

Practical implications for vendor targeting

  • Check whether a target MSP has been acquired recently before treating it as an independent decision unit.
  • For integrated roll-up acquisitions, the platform's central buying team is likely a more useful target than the original local contact.
  • For decentralized holding company acquisitions, local contacts likely still matter — but the parent company's vendor-leverage team may be worth a parallel outreach track.
  • Treat security-capable, high-recurring-revenue MSPs as plausible acquisition targets themselves — which can be a buying signal, not just a firmographic detail.
  • If you sell security tooling specifically, track MSSP-focused consolidation as its own trend, separate from general MSP M&A.
  • Don't anchor your market-sizing on any single tracker's deal count — use the directional trend, not the precise number.
Deal counts, multiples, and market-sizing figures in this guide are drawn from M&A advisory firms and industry trackers publishing in 2025-2026. These are commercial research and advisory publications, not audited or peer-reviewed data, and figures vary meaningfully between trackers — treat specific numbers as directional rather than precise.

Sources & further reading