750 SuperOps vs Syncro: An Insider's Take

What is up MSP? Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IIT Business Podcast and I'm here with a very special audio podcast. This one's going to be a little tricky because for the audio shows for 2024 they have been sponsored by SuperOps, the all-in-one PSA RMM tool and I say interesting because today we're going to be talking about SuperOps but probably not from the perspective that you're used to hearing me talk about it from. I've got my good friend Paco Lebron here to chat about this. 

Paco, how you doing? Oh you know Uncle Marv, better than good, better than most as I like to say. All right, for those that do not know Paco is an MSP in the greater Chicago area. He's got his firm ProdigyTeks, also the mastermind behind MSP Unplugged with his friends Rick and Corey now. 

Got a newbie on the staff and they put on TechCon Unplugged which was a great event that I participated in this past September. The reason we're doing this is, you know, I poke around in the forums every now and then. I don't really say much. 

I don't really call myself a troll but I guess what we're doing is trolling. But I saw a post recently that somebody asked for feedback on SuperOps from anybody that had moved to or from and I was perusing through the comments and some good, some bad and I said you know what, I should probably ask about this. I myself have not used SuperOps. 

I've not even done a demo and I know the one and only would be upset to hear that I've not yet demoed but you know me, I have my stack. I'm locked in and no sense doing a demo if I know I'm not going to change. So I don't want to offend anybody but I've heard SuperOps has been a good product for some, for others not so much. 

But Paco, the reason I asked you is you were somebody that recently, was it a year and a half ago, moved from Syncro to SuperOps. Yep, yeah it's actually about a year and a month now we've been on the SuperOps platform. All right and Syncro was a product that I actually did demo and at the time I said, oh I can't make the move. 

I wanted to incorporate the PSA product because the product that I'm using and I'll say it aloud, N-Able, it's been good to me and I have it for my RMM, my patching, I use the built-in antivirus, I use the web protection, I use the built-in backup for desktops, I have a couple of servers on the server backup portion. I'm not using Cove as an independent product but they've been pushing me to. I did try to use Sentinel One with it and it blew up my client system so I ripped it out. 

Not to say anything bad with Sentinel One, I just think at the time it was, just didn't work. So that's where I come from, where I've looked at Syncro and I'll be quite honest and Syncro, I'll be honest with you folks, they've not been a sponsor but they have donated to the show. My good friend, Emily Glass, was the CEO the last time we chatted. 

I've not talked to any of the new people but at the time it just wasn't the right move for me. There were some things that I just didn't like about the way it looked and of course if you've been with something for a long time, you know, it all depends on how things feel, how things flow and I just, I wasn't ready to move my stuff. So you were on Syncro, how many years were you on Syncro? From the beginning. 

So we, Syncro debuted in 2017. So I had been on their platform since then. So that would have been, what is that? Seven years I was on the platform or sorry, six years because we switched on October of 2023. 

And yeah, I was, you know, it was a crazy time back then. I think, you know, at the time there really wasn't a PSA or RMM company that really adhered to our size MSP, right? And so at the time, you know, I was very good friends with Troy, Ian and Richard. They were all the co-founders of Syncro at the time. 

They merged two companies, Repair Tech and Repair Shopper. And when we were doing our repairs, our computer repair shop, we were a big repair shopper and ninja shop at the time. So we left that, went all in, helped, you know, provided feedback, grow that product line, adopted a lot of the things that they had. 

And, you know, I even went on to say that I was a Syncro lifer for many, many episodes and many years. But exactly like you said, right? I think that, you know, there's sometimes where two things happen. Either you, your business changes and you need a system that can change with you or you happen to just do a different way of business from a different philosophy and things just have not, didn't come to how you really wanted it folded and molded as you were looking at it. 

So, you know, the last two years of us being on the platform, unfortunately, just left a lot to be desired. And so we just happened to have been at TechCon in New Jersey and Juan was at another company at the time and he just said, hey, you know, just curious, have you ever heard of SuperOps? And I said, yeah, but, you know, there's a bit of an image thing that I think that there's probably some issues for there. But he helped me understand that, hey, take a look at the tech, see what you think, just curious on your thoughts. 

And so, again, I'm speaking of Juan Fernandez. Juan Fernandez is a very good friend of mine. I consider him a very close friend and a business colleague.

And so of course, John Dubinsky, who is essentially contracting our ops manager over at Prodigy Tech overhears this and he just was not a fan of how we were doing business inside of Syncro. So he said, “I’ll take a look and immediately fell in love. And so he says, we need to take a serious look at this platform and really jump on board with it. 

So I did a trial, did a demo, looked really cool, answered a lot of the issues that we had, which I can go into in a little bit of what we were having and operational-wise and we made the switch. And then, you know, the announcement comes later that Juan is now the channel chief of SuperOps. So that's how I ended up finding out from all that conversation. 

So a lot of people think that I switched because of Juan, which that may be partly true, but it wasn't, it was more of he wasn't even involved with the company outside of just, hey, have you taken a look at it? And it kind of just went through its natural wheels of motion and where we are today. All right. So let me go back and ask this question and it kind of ties into some of the comments that I saw. 

You had mentioned that, you know, SuperOps in the early days. Now, as far as I know, SuperOps started in 2020. And I'll be honest, I had not heard of SuperOps.

And that may be one of two reasons. One, just because I hadn't heard of them. Or two, I may have heard about them, but didn't listen. 

Sure. There's a lot of noise out there. So there are times where I'm like, do you know what, since I wasn't changing, I don't need to hear about it.

But I've heard and read that they had some marketing issues in the beginning, that they were, I don't want to say sleazy. I don't think that's the right word. But that they had a lot of problems, like integration didn't work and stuff like that. 

So, you know, some people had talked about moving from Syncro to SuperOps back to Syncro. So I wanted to ask you, you know, do you know about the early days since you kind of mentioned that? Sure. Yeah. 

I mean, similar to you, you know, SuperOps was an up and coming PSA and RMM platform back in 2020. Our good friend and colleague, Kramer Snuggs over at Cascade Technology was the one that actually introduced me to SuperOps. He was all in on their advisory board and helping to really drive a lot of that chain. 

Me and him were on the Acronis partner board at the time. And so that's how I first heard about it. And then I remember that I was at some event and I can't recall what event I was flying to, but I remember when I landed, there was this announcement of that Datto got acquired by Kaseya. 

And so, you know, everyone was really displeased by it, you know, personal preference behind the brand. I don't have an opinion either which way, because I only use some of Datto's products. I haven't used any of Kaseya's products, maybe a few prior to their acquisition, but they weren't a fit for us while trying them out. 

No lenience or nothing to say against Kaseya, because I have no experience on those products. But there was a lot of, at least from our peers, you know, being you and I were stewards of the MSP industry and then of the channel. So we hear a lot of these comments, right? And the commentary for that. 

And so what ended up happening was SuperOps at the time, a marketing move to capitalize on this decision and listening to the MSP channel and industry of the displeasure of what happened. And so, you know, in my opinion, they capitalize on a move. They did some great guerrilla marketing. 

They stood out and now people have heard of SuperOps, right? And got on the map. Well, a lot of people didn't like how that occurred. And then there was some other issues where they were kind of advertising this marketing platform in some of the forums. 

Reddit included. There were some MSPs that weren't fans of it, felt that it was not a kosher or was not a great look to have that type of marketing that they had done. And so they decided to quote unquote, not do business with SuperOps, but be very vocal to not have them around. 

I think they may even have banned the company at some, and some of the Reddit forums and such. So are you saying that they were using a tactic of not a fan of Kaseya come with SuperOps? I mean, yeah, that's literally all the time. Yeah. 

I think they just, you know, they, they, I think that there was a lot of just displeasure on how they went about it. I think there was, there's, you know, again, this is what I'm aware of, of that campaign at the time. And then I believe there was some weird thing where they were, some people were sharing gifts and that it wasn't their owners. 

And apparently some MSPs were upset that they weren't using material that wasn't their own. And there was a big thing of something of that nature, but again, marketing move, nonetheless. And, you know, oftentimes you see other companies making bad marketing moves, you know, as you can even see, Pepsi had, you know, had a bunch of marketing opportunities that they've made. 

And again, it's all per perspective. You know, I said bad marketing move, but really it's up, it's, that is up to the perspective of who's seeing it. Right.

But, you know, to carry on to that, I think a lot of MSPs just really hung their hat on because of this, I won't do business with SuperOps, but I think, you know, the other piece of this where it's very interesting is that, you know, for those that are looking for a, for feedback on the technology of SuperOps and really what the system does, they bring up this whole perception of this bad marketing move, which again was several years ago. And I think Juan and the U.S. team have really progressed the image of SuperOps this year being community first, you know, really focusing on, you know, going back to those communities that felt some type of way because of how they marketed and really have grown that brand. Like if you look at the brand, how it was back then to now in the U.S., I think, you know, the U.S. team, along with obviously SuperOps corporate had did a really great job on really transforming in the way that they're trying to support and doing what we call quote unquote, the right things. 

Right. But, you know, again, I think, you know, we have seen some of these articles, some of these forums that they'll say, Hey, genuinely thinking about switching from this platform to this platform, you know, in this case, we had saw an article from Syncro to SuperOps and, you know, there's people giving their live feedback of, Hey, this is what I love. This is what I did. 

This is what I didn't like. This is why I stayed with whatever. And then you always have the one that always says, well, they did some sleazy stuff back in the day. 

So I'm not, I've never decided to do business with them. Great. But you didn't answer the question and, you know, me, I have a huge, I don't know what's the right way of saying it, but, you know, I hate when the question is not answered when someone's being asked and they come up with their own answer, which is kind of like you saying, Hey, has anyone heard of this product? And they say, it's garbage. 

You have got to try this product instead. Didn't answer the question. Thank you for playing. 

Try again next time. Right. So that's kind of my opinion out of it. 

And then, you know that's really what the hope for on what they are doing on that. But as far as technology wise and kind of why none that switch, you know, it's pretty solid outside of, you know, some grumblings that people have had in years prior. So while you were talking, I was trying to scroll through it. 

Cause I was trying to remember the one company I had on that. I mean, this was probably one of the few episodes whereby the time I woke up the next morning, I had, I don't know, seven or eight emails. How in the world can you have this company on your show? And it was that company that was on, um, I can't remember their name for whatever reason.

Do you want me to say it? Cause I remember. Go ahead. Yes, please.

It was PC Matic. PC Matic. I knew it was PC something. 

Yeah. PC Matic. Yeah. 

PC Matic. And listen, I really don't know much about them except for, yeah, they had those weird commercials and some people say they're crap, but some people say they're great. So it's funny nowadays. 

I like to say, okay, tell me what's good. Tell me what's bad. So. 

Right. And it goes back to exactly like you said, right? Like they're going off of marketing and again, you know, I don't use the product, have not used the product, haven't demoed the product, but you know, they're comparing PC Matic, what they're doing for the MSPs versus what they were doing for the consumers. Right.

And I can't speak to the consumer side of the business. I haven't done anything, whatever, but I think that it was their, their commercials and how they advertise that quote unquote, lost credibility, according to some MSPs who have said this. And so that's carried on with that.

And so I would guarantee you that if BC PC Matic rebranded to a completely different name, they would probably have so much more penetration inside the MSP space because those who kind of were frou-frou of it, didn't know that they were PC Matic would give them a try. Right. And so it just goes back to, you know, you're, you're not allowing yourself to look at the technology.

You're going ahead and looking at the marketing efforts on some things. Now, whether they screwed people over on the consumer side or anything like that, I don't know. I haven't tried any of that. 

But, you know, I have a lot of great friends over at PC Matic. You know, talk to them all the time when I see them on the shows and then on the road. So, you know, I don't think they would stick around if the company wasn't a genuine company.

So, you know, that's my two cents on, you know, something like that. It's all about perspective. I mean, I'm just also thinking of there's that body odor company or body soap or whatever it is that's on the market. 

And it's gone through like four or five name changes just in the last year alone. And I just saw one the other night. It's now being marketed to men as Mando, the full body deodorant. 

And it had some weird goofy name before. And some of those commercials were kind of ridiculous that they're like, you know, hey, this is so great. Use it on your arms. 

Use it on your legs. Use it on your pits. Use it down below.

And I'm like, OK, you didn't need to say that. But, you know, I think it's the same with everybody. All right. 

So the good things that I've heard about SuperOps is their interface is user friendly. They do have responsive support. They have great automation and efficiency. 

And at least now they are truly doing continuous improvement. So that's what I heard. What was it that really put you over the edge when you made the change? You know, our biggest thing was at the time, you know, when I started with the platform, it was just myself. 

Right. And so, you know, growing a team at the time, you know, I didn't have a good way of getting rid of that technical debt. And really our issue was transparency. 

I kind of talked about this actually on this specific webinar. It was ex-Syncro users who switched to SuperOps was, you know, we could not figure out who was doing what. And we just kept just throwing up on ourselves. 

The right hand wasn't talking to the left. So we didn't have the ability of knowing who was working on the tickets actively and in real time. You know, if someone needed help to try and assign tickets to them, we had things where trying to have some type of format where because how we organize our tickets, we don't organize them by like hardware, software, printer, internet, et cetera. 

We organize our tickets with the philosophy of the Phoenix Project, which is a book by Gene Kim. There's four types of work. And there's internal projects, business projects, unplanned work, and changes that are requested by your clients. 

And so that's how we organize them. But it wasn't really a good way to provide some of those metrics. We did kind of shift some things around to conform to what we needed. 

But it was a lot of that, that we just had problems trying to even get an update. The way that the update structure, the way we're trying to update and get updates from a particular ticket was really hard. Or even searching to find those tickets. 

And again, these are all experiences that I had last year. I've heard there's been many improvements into the Syncro platform. I'm not aware of. 

But this is what we had. So when we tried the system, again, the efficiency was what mattered. And so this ticket did everything that we needed. 

We know when someone's working on a ticket, when someone's looking at a ticket, when someone's idle, we now can put mentions. It's rich form text to provide all the ticket comments. And when someone emails in notes, we can see an actual update versus a trail of email change, which a lot of the older systems would have, not just Syncro included. 

So these were things that we just struggled with that allowed us to move into this new platform. And it just has fit essentially well with everyone else. The other big issue was, they always say you shouldn't be emotional with things in your business. 

And so I was all in with Syncro and loved the people, loved what we had came to be at the time. But the last two years of that being on the Syncro system, nothing really changed. There wasn't really a lot of improvements.

There was more stability, things that were being improved on. I think they were really rebuilding their teams at the time. And so although it was great and it was also fitting on culture, I think they introduced phone support at the time for the last two years.

There was nothing improvement-wise feature-rich that allowed me to say, I think this is moving forward. And so that was my decision. And I just felt like it was going to be more of the same.

And we needed something that was going to be like the old Syncro days of improvements and things of that nature. And so that's what essentially made us do that switch. All right. 

And then areas for improvement. We talked a little bit about marketing, which was, but then it's, let's see, learning curve. Some users mentioned that while the platform is generally easy to use, there can be an initial learning curve due to the unique features and interface and then feature gaps in terms of functionality, especially when it comes to sales automation and CRM. 

Do you see those as areas that need to be improved? Yeah. I mean, I think that how they have it is like, they're getting to that point of being that CRM light and being able to improve on that. And especially on the sales side as well, they haven't introduced any functionality, but it was interesting basically how I was kind of informed. 

So for disclaimer, I'm on the SuperOps Advisory Board. So I try to help provide as much feedback in our size community as much as possible. The concept prior to a couple of years ago, or at least prior to the last year was when they would develop the system, they would develop it component by component. 

So PSA, RMM, IT documentation, and how that will interact with each other very fluidly. Now what they've done is, and what they're doing to correct a lot of their own technical debt, even though only being a four-year company is they are rebranding and remolding certain sections of these components. So although there is some need to wants for some of those things that have been requested and some that may have been showstoppers for some MSPs, they are now making a lot of these adjustments and things of that nature. 

So right now they've just made a great improvement in introducing chat. They're working on the way that billing has always been a big issue with a lot of PSAs and ensuring that bundling and making sure that that's all kind of done properly, things of that nature. They are working on that. 

And then the inclusion of AI, everyone's throwing around the AI word. And so they've now just really fully enhanced a lot of those features, which can translate into how can you provide better data from your CRM's perspective and really bringing those touch points to your customers. So yeah, there are a couple of things that they are working on that are not there right now. 

So if you do want a true CRM, the HubSpot’s of the world, will it get there? I know they're working on that CRM light, but yeah, there's sales and things that don't exist right now that you may have to use an additional system to combine with it or just kind of wait to see what's to come because there's quite a bit that's coming here in the next even couple months slash new year. Yep. So you mentioned remolding. 

Let me ask this and I don't know if you can speak on behalf of them. And I tried, I think I tried to ask Juan this, but are they rebuilding in the sense of putting together something like, you know, ConnectWise did with their ASIO platform and what Kaseya is doing with their K365 where they're kind of making it a hub and everything works off the hub so that it's not, you know, built-in integrations that may or may not work? I don't know if I can say on NDA. I know that there is trying to see, remember, make sure I can say this the right way. 

I believe if you hold tight, there should be some information behind that on what is the next thing. I know that if you were at Pax8 Beyond, Juan did do his keynote session to discuss how they are going to be integrated with side of Pax8 and how Pax8 now, you know, is reselling their platform as the first PSA and RMM solution. I will say there are some exciting things to come for those that need something like that. 

All right. Fair enough. I try. 

I just, you know, it's one of those where it's crazy because I'm just so privy to a lot of the things being on the board or just conversations and things of that nature, but, you know, bound by NDA, I don't know what is it that was said publicly. It was funny because I was on a webinar where I said something publicly and then it was actually in beta. And so it was something else that got released. 

And I was like, oh, sorry, I meant this. And so it was a little bit of backtracking on that. But again, you know, it's, I also need to pay attention to know what I can and cannot say as well. 

But yes, to answer that question there, stay tuned. All right. And full disclosure to the listeners, when I did reach out to Paco, he did say, hey, I'm on the board. 

Does that matter? And I, you know, I don't care. As long as you, you know, hold true to what you're allowed to say and not. I was just looking. 

You were the first person I thought of that I knew was on a platform that I had looked at Syncro and it moved over to SuperOps. Because like I said, in those forums, I saw people talking about moving from Syncro to SuperOps and back to Syncro. And I was like, why would you move back? Which was always my thought. 

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there's two different ways of how they, how it's formatted and done differently. Right? Like billing is done differently inside of SuperOps than it is inside of Syncro. 

Again, and I'm only speaking to my experience from Syncro last year. So over the last 12 months, and then now they just announced Andy Cormier being their channel chief. You know, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of great things that are going to help build upon those that for those that are on Syncro and are trying to, you know, understand my feedback from here. 

Right. But what I can tell you is that from my experience of what happened is, you know, why would someone switch back? Yeah. There were a couple of missing features like chat was missing, which is now inside of SuperOps. 

You know, the billing is done differently than it is inside of SuperOps or outside of Syncro. So I'm sure maybe some people who are in that atmosphere, you know, there are probably some integrations that they really were hoping for and that weren't live inside of SuperOps. But, you know, I can tell you that the amount of integrations that are coming here in the new year is going to be freaking phenomenal. 

And probably a lot more than what we thought. And outside of that, you know, again, different way of doing things, right? You know, one of the features I fell in love with was like trying again, that transparency and trying to keep everything together. 

And so they have this feature called side conversation, where if you're emailing somebody externally or a vendor or a contractor, you can send an email through the ticketing system. That's separate from your ongoing ticketing comments and system. So now if someone replies back, you have two separate conversations going on, but everyone who's reviewing the ticket who needs to be a part of it can actually review and do what needs to be done. 

And it's, everything is all in one place. Right. So again, it's all about being like, you know, getting that single pane of glass, unlike what Jeff says back in the day, you know, not trying to get that single pane in the, you know what? And so really it helped dive. 

And again, they're always improving every day, even to the point where, you know, now prior it used to be, you can only search ticket titles. Now you can actually search ticket, the entire ticket comments. Right. 

And this was a minor feature, which to an MSP, that's huge because a lot of PSAs, you can't search for ticket comments when you're trying to find like a solution you had before or trying to find things of that nature. They did. And they released that right within several months ago, probably even closer to eight months ago. 

And it was like, Hey, we did this minor release to them was minor, but it was huge and the impact. Right. And so they just keep doing those types of things and improving and updating and things of that nature outside of their own major deployments that they have as well.

All right. Well, Paco, thank you for coming on and answering some of those questions. Some easy, some hard. 

And again, folks, full disclosure. Yes. SuperOps is a sponsor of the IT Business Podcast.

In fact, if you were to click on their link in the show notes, it would take you to a 21 day free trial. You don't even have to put in your credit card. I myself do not use Syncro. 

I mean, or I don't use Syncro and I don't use SuperOps, but that's just full disclosure. I'm somebody who doesn't switch my stack up very often. If you heard some stuff today that you want to reply to, or you want to add to the conversation, feel free to respond to the show. 

Send me an email from the website or find me on the social media platforms. I'm there. LinkedIn and the Facebook.

Reach out to me and give me your feedback. But I want to thank Paco again for coming on and chatting. And we'll be seeing you again soon, my friend. 

Yes, we will. All right. That's going to do it, folks. 

Let's see what's coming up. Black Friday preview shows are coming up Monday and Tuesday at 12 noon. We've got a Cyber Monday show the Monday after Thanksgiving at 12 noon. 

And then we got a couple of other live shows and be thinking about the holiday party, folks. It's going to come quick. That's going to do it, folks. 

We'll see you all later. And until next time, Holla!