Per-seat software pricing was designed for a 50-person MSP. Most MSPs aren't one.

A lot of RMM and PSA pricing is built around an implicit customer: an MSP with a growing headcount, where a per-seat or per-technician price amortizes down as the team scales. That model isn't dishonest, but it isn't neutral either — it was optimized for the vendor's median customer, and at one to five employees, you are very likely below that median.

Where the "small MSP tax" actually shows up

• Minimum seat counts — a floor price built for a five-tech minimum that a two-person shop pays in full regardless.
• Tier walls — the features that actually matter for a lean team (automation, a real CRM, compliance tracking) are often gated to a "Pro" or "Enterprise" tier priced assuming a bigger team is splitting the cost.
• Per-tool minimums stacking — six tools each with their own floor price adds up to a fixed monthly cost that doesn't meaningfully shrink no matter how small the team using it is.
• None of this is unique to any one vendor — it's a structural feature of software priced primarily for the mid-market, applied to a segment the pricing model wasn't really built around.

What consolidation actually changes about the math

One platform doesn't just save the sum of six subscriptions — it removes the six separate minimums stacking on top of each other. A single platform priced for the work you're actually doing, instead of six tools each independently priced for a bigger customer than you, is a structurally different number, not just a smaller one.

Six minimum-priced tools don't average out to one reasonably-priced platform. They stack.

Where we're honest, and where we'd rather be honest than vague: Nexus doesn't have public pricing yet. We're in the private-beta phase, working directly with a small design-partner cohort on terms that fit a real one-to-five-person operation, not a rate card written for a mid-market MSP and offered to everyone regardless of size. If that describes your shop, that conversation is exactly what joining the design-partner list starts.