5 Best MSP Bots to Transform IT Services with Automation

MSP (Managed Service Provider) companies deal with various business and IT contexts in routine tasks, such as data entry, file management, routine maintenance, and monitor alerts. It’s a wise choice to opt to use MSP bots to handle repetitive tasks.

But which is the best MSP bot and how to choose the one that is suitable for your business? Let’s get straight into it!

1: What Is an MSP Bot?

In simple terms, an MSP Bot is a supplementary automation tool or program designed to streamline and optimize the operations of Managed Service Providers.

Bots enable MSPs to handle complex, repetitive tasks with precision and improved efficiency and deliver their IT services easily. It’s kind of like a ‘digital’ assistant, enhancing human capabilities by leveraging advanced tech like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing.

Here are some of MSP Bots key capabilities to get you up to speed:

• Automated Ticket Management: One of the bots' most vital functions is to automate the ticket lifecycle by creating, categorizing, prioritizing, and assigning tickets based on set rules.
• Proactive Monitoring and Alerts: Bots help MSPs lessen the ‘monitoring’ workload by continuously monitoring IT environments for any anomalies and irregularities, and swiftly dispatching automated alerts to technicians.
• Data Backup and Recovery: MSP bots automate regular backups of critical data to avoid scenarios of hardware failures or cyber attacks to restore or recover lost data.
• Customer Support: MSP companies also have to assist in customer support by handling basic inquiries, which can be done by MSP bots.

2: The 5 Best MSP Bots

This part introduces the top 5 MSP bots and the detailed reviews:

MSPBots

MSPBots is a well-equipped platform that provides MSP owners with all the tools they require to enhance and optimize their workflows.

For example, MSPBots has a customizable ‘Business Intelligence Dashboard’ that seamlessly works with MSP tools and supports various integrations, with currently over 70+ integration partners.

This also includes 5000+ prebuilt dashboards and widgets that ease the setup process with Best Practice dashboards, reports, and bots available for the most popular PSAs and RMMs.

MSPBots Key Features:

• Offers real-time monitoring to identify and respond to potential threats.
• Scans for vulnerabilities within the network and provides actionable insights to address them proactively.
• MSPBots actively assists in maintaining compliance with GPDR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS standards with comprehensive reporting and monitoring adherence.
• Streamlines incident management with automated ticketing processes and real-time updates.

Best For: Smaller teams / MSPs requiring a comprehensive package to boost performance and efficiency.

Why Choose MSPBots?

MSPBots is designed and created by a real-world MSP owner to match the requirements of an MSP. MSPBots generates critical data that other services don’t have, such as Time Entry Analysis, which is really important for MSP companies.

Challenge to Use MSPBots: It’s hard to have an all-in-one MSP bot to manage all your IT service because MSPBots allows to create bots tailored to different aspects.

NeoAgent AI Bot

NeoAgent is designed to handle MSP internal service desks with an extensive knowledge base for MSP technicians to refer to, automating repetitive tasks, all while offering intelligent recommendations to encountered issues.

It also features ‘NeoPulse’, a customer-facing MSP AI bot that further streamlines the support process for your clients with an intelligent and capable ‘support team’ that can autonomously resolve crises, available 24/7.

NeoAgent AI Bot Key Features:

• Assists with identifying recurring issues and suggests resolutions for proactive threat management.
• Detects recurring issues to aid in maintaining system integrity.
• Automatically generates comprehensive reports using data, including actionable insights.
• Utilizes advanced NLP to automatically categorize and prioritize tickets, suggest resolutions, and clarify details with customers to streamline the incident management process.

Best For: MSPs aiming to automate workflow and improve response times to customer inquiries with AI.

Why Choose NeoAgent AI Bot?

NeoAgent enhances efficiency, particularly for automating routine tasks, providing intelligent recommendations for issue resolution, and has a focus on the ‘customer experience’ with NeoPulse, a customer-facing MSP AI bot to address inquiries and provide support without the need for human intervention.

Challenge to Use NeoAgent AI Bot: Getting NeoAgent AI Bot up and running can require a steep learning curve.

zofiQ Bot

zofiQ Bot focuses on utilizing its cutting-edge AI to transform MSP workflows by automating routine tasks, boosting productivity substantially. Designed to reduce manual workloads and improve ticket handling, claiming a massive 60% reduction in required manual work.

Aside from that, zofiQ Bot doesn’t do anything ‘special’ in regards to its AI capabilities that other MSP bots can’t do. However, for a robust and attractive UI experience and a flexible pricing strategy that charges you only when they save you time and costs, it’s worth looking into for budget-restricted MSPs.

zofiQ Bot Key Features:

• Aids in faster problem-solving, with 75% of clients receiving quicker assistance, spotting issues before they cause problems, and cutting down on service outages.
• Bots' automation capabilities reduce manual, repetitive tasks by 60%. Allows MSPs to focus on managing vulnerabilities.
• Automated & continuous compliance monitoring for IT systems, and automatically generates compliance reports, alerts for violations, and proposes solutions to remedy compliance issues.
• Enriches tickets with MSP/IT and specific customer information to do the ‘upfront’ work for technicians to have the details they need to address opened tickets.

Best For: MSPs seeking an all-in-one automation solution to enhance service delivery speed and automate routine tasks.

Why Choose zofiQ Bot?

zofiQ Bot streamlines operational efficiency, reducing manual workloads, while making MSP technician lives easier with a seamless and straightforward setup that only requires connecting your PSA and RMM API keys.

Challenge to Use zofiQ Bot: The extensive customization options might be overwhelming for users who don’t have the technical expertise.

ConnectWise Automate

While ConnectWise Automate is a comprehensive RMM solution tailored to work with MSPS, it also has powerful MSP AI bot functionality with powerful automation and monitoring tools.

This includes over 70+ AI-assisted actions that use generative AI to ‘speed up’ multiple aspects that MSPs require, such as triaging tickets automatically, proposing solutions, generating insights, and much more.

ConnectWise Automate Key Features:

• Dedicated features to monitor and manage client networks, aiding in the detection and response to potential threats.
• ConnectWise Sidekick of Security improves security posture visibility by allowing technicians to query alerts, ticket volume across endpoints, and ‘assistant’ features to summarize and assist on tickets using NLP.
• Includes AI-assisted actions to enhance ticket triaging, summarization, translation, and more to improve incident management and resolutions.

Best For: MSPs looking for comprehensive IT management and end-to-end IT support.

Why Choose ConnectWise Automate?

ConnectWise Automate is an all-in-one platform to build an RMM and utilize AI bots in one convenient place with a robust feature set to improve efficiency and tools designed for proactive threat and vulnerability management.

Challenge to Use ConnectWise Automate: It has limited integrations since ConnectWise allows you to connect other tools in its own system.

Datto RMM

Datto RMM is a cloud-based solution featuring an intuitive and user-friendly interface, designed to manage endpoints across diverse networks. With advanced security features, Datto’s RMM has earned the title of being the only channel vendor to be evaluated by Building Security In Maturity Model standards.

Datto RMM Key Features:

• Includes features like Endpoint Detection & Response and built-in Ransomware protection.
• Dedicated tools that proactively identify cybersecurity risks, routinely scanning for vulnerabilities to ensure secure systems across the IT infrastructure.
• Datto RMM allows MSPs to remotely secure, monitor, and manage endpoints, resulting in efficient incident management and response.

Best for: MSPs looking for a capable and feature-packed RMM solution, focusing on security and data protection.

Why Choose Datto RMM?

Datto RMM is a comprehensive platform that provides MSPs with a robust selection of tools for endpoint management, security, and monitoring, all within a secure and accessible cloud-based platform.

Challenge to Use Datto RMM: Datto RMM has limited automation features and the backup policies are difficult to set up.

3: Common Uses of MSP Bots

If you are new to MSP bots, you may want to learn what you can do using MSP bots. This part introduces several common uses:

Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)

One of the most integral and common applications of an MSP bot is to assist with Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM).

Bots will continuously oversee client systems, networks, and endpoints to identify issues with performance or any anomalies that could potentially escalate into a major problem.

For instance, if an MSP bot detects unusual bandwidth usage on a server, it will investigate the cause and automate the resolution of the issue or alert technicians to intervene.

Patch Management

Ensuring all systems in the IT infrastructure are up to date with the latest software patches is critical for system performance and security.

MSP bots automate the patching process by scanning and identifying outdated software, scheduling updates during off-hours, and deploying them across multiple endpoints.

Network and Security Monitoring

MSP bots also keep an eye on network traffic and security logs in real-time. Since there’s always ‘someone’ monitoring the IT infrastructure, it can detect and respond to threats such as unauthorized access, malware, and other cyberattacks proactively.

For example, if the MSP bot identifies a suspicious login attempt, it will immediately isolate the compromised system, notify the IT team, and generate a detailed report for reference.

Incident and Ticket Management

Another important capability of MSP bots is incident and ticket management. MSP bots streamline the entire incident management process by automating ticket creation, categorization, prioritization, and assignment.

Besides managing ongoing incidents, for common issues that can be simply solved, MSP bots can handle and resolve autonomously such as resetting passwords.

This reduces the need for manual human intervention to allow technicians to focus on more complex issues while improving response times and client satisfaction.

4: Why Would MSP Use Bots

If you or your MSP company have one of the following difficulties in running your IT service business, you should consider using MSP bots:

Resource Constraints

With the nature of many MSPs, operating with a skeleton crew, and lacking manpower and budgets, it can be challenging to meet growing client demands.

MSPs may also find it difficult to recruit skilled IT professionals with the necessary experience, leaving MSPs with limited options and resources to manage critical operations.

MSP bots alleviate the issue by automating and handling repetitive, simple tasks, allowing existing staff to focus on critical and strategic initiatives instead of handling ‘simple’ requests.

Complex IT Environments

Modern IT infrastructures and environments are complex, often mixing on-premises systems, cloud services, and hybrid systems. To navigate and manage this complexity, MSPs need to constantly monitor and integrate across multiple platforms.

MSP bots simplify these tasks by providing a centralized dashboard to oversee and automate workflows.

Demand for 24/7 Service

As mentioned earlier, even if there is limited staff for MSPs to handle every issue, in today’s global economy, businesses also expect IT support to be available around the clock.

Even in normal instances, providing 24/7 service is a challenge, even more so for MSPs with a limited staff since it requires maintaining operations outside of regular business hours.

MSP bots bridge this gap by performing critical tasks autonomously during off-hours.

5: Conclusion

And that’s everything you need to know about MSP bots and how they can benefit your MSP’s efficiency. While they’re not ‘integral’ as yet, with the evolving nature of Artificial Intelligence and emerging technologies, it’s only a matter of time till it’s a norm.

For the most part, MSP bots can greatly impact the efficiency of an MSP’s daily operations by providing an extra pair of hands that is available 24/7 to monitor the client’s entire IT infrastructure, making a technician’s life just that much easier to manage.