Ops & productivity
Agent-Native MSP Documentation Drift Detection
Per-account IT docs for small MSPs that diff client runbooks, assets and credentials against live RMM/PSA/cloud state, not per-technician pricing.
Founder thesis
The bet is that small MSPs care more about documentation matching the live client environment than about feature lists. IT Glue prices per user on a 36-month term with a 5-user minimum and sells discovery as a $453/mo add-on, while Hudu undercuts per user at $27 with no minimums. The opening is a per-account price that bundles continuous comparison of documented assets, relationships and runbooks against live RMM, PSA and M365 state, with self-hosting at the same price.
What others got wrong
IT Glue prices per user on a 36-month term with a 5-user minimum and a one-time onboarding fee, so a 2-technician MSP pays for seats it does not use or pays the $49-102/user small-team rate.
IT Glue meters the useful parts: Network Glue discovery at $453/mo flat per account and MyGlue client portal at $407/mo.
Document-level diff is treated as a differentiator even though Hudu's comparison page lists 'Version History with Content Diff' for both Hudu and IT Glue.
Agent access is treated as new even though Syncro already ships an MCP server and 'Agentic Service Delivery'.
What should work
Bill one flat price per account for unlimited technicians, with no minimum, no multi-year term, no activation fee and self-hosting at the same price. Hudu's own offer shows this packaging is what buyers respond to.
Include drift detection in the base price instead of metering discovery at $453/mo like Network Glue.
Import from RMM, PSA and M365, compare each documented asset, relationship and runbook against live state, and open a review item when the two diverge.
Undercut on arithmetic: a 5-tech MSP on IT Glue Basic is 5 x $29 = $145/mo plus the activation fee and no discovery, so $79/mo per account sits about 45% below that and still includes discovery.
What kills it
- Hudu already undercuts IT Glue per user at $27 with no minimums, no contract and self-hosting, so a per-account price alone wins nothing.
- Drift detection is not validated by any buyer, and both incumbents already list content diff and AI documentation assistants.
- No technical moat: the core is CRUD over documents, assets and relationships, and the data model can be mapped.
- The incumbents' per-user model implies documentation seats are the unit of value, so a 2-technician MSP buying per account may be too small a market.
What users want
3documentation that matches the running state.
A self-described 20-year datacenter networking veteran wrote that the source of truth 'almost always diverges from the running state', and that after the builder leaves the real topology lives in people's heads.
documentation that does not break.
An HN commenter reported an IT Glue bug that made half their documentation 'illegible' unless each image was force-opened in a new tab.
a store their own team actually reads.
An HN commenter wrote that 'every single company with confluence was a disaster of unreadable garbage' and that at one unnamed company ops and support kept a 'secret server' of internal docs.
- Sources
- 7
- Checked
- 7
- Competitors
- 3
- Gaps
- 5
- Page checked
- 7 · 100%
- Snippet only
- 0 · 0%
- Documented
- 7 · 58%
- Interpreted
- 5 · 42%
- pricing3
- complaint3
- market1
Competitors
3Parsed from public pricing blurbs (entry paid tier when available). Max in set: $199/mo.
| Competitor | From | Free tier | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| IT Glue | $199/mo | — | itglue.com✓ |
| Hudu | $27/mo | Yes | hudu.com✓ |
| Syncro | $129/mo | Yes | syncrosecure.com✓ |
What customers complain about
5| Gap | Src |
|---|---|
IT Glue's entry pricing penalizes small MSPs: a 5-user minimum, 1-4 user options at $49-102/user/month, a 36-month term and a one-time onboarding fee, so a 2-technician MSP pays for unused seats or a small-team premium. Whether MSPs leave over this is not measured, and Hudu's 'Stuck in a contract with IT Glue?' is vendor messaging. | |
Discovery is priced as a premium add-on: Network Glue at $453/mo flat per account against Hudu's Radar at $9/company/mo, about 50x on the headline numbers, though the two are not like-for-like. A 3-tech MSP documenting 20 client networks pays $453/mo versus about $180/mo. That buyers refuse the add-on is not measured. | |
Documentation drifts from the running state: relationships (connects-to, depends-on, ownership) decay first, and after the engineer who built a system leaves 'the real topology lives in people's heads', so the docs 'is probably a lie... but it still runs'. One anecdotal post, not a studied sample. | |
Internal documentation stores become unreadable and get replaced by shadow copies: one commenter said 'every single company with confluence was a disaster of unreadable garbage', and that at one unnamed company ops and support kept a 'secret server' of docs 'which were mostly links to text files'. The secret-server company is not identified as an MSP. | |
A documentation platform can take content-damaging bugs: an IT Glue bug, acknowledged by the company, stopped hover-preview of large images, making half of one user's documentation illegible unless images were force-opened. Reported directly by the user, not reproduced here, and dated August 2023. |
Documented Interpreted
How competitors find customers
3| Tactic | Src |
|---|---|
| Hudu runs an IT Glue comparison page, a public 'IT Glue savings calculator' and a 'we'll bridge the gap' migration offer aimed at teams still under an IT Glue contract, and repeats a '5,900+ IT teams' figure on the page. | hudu.com✓ |
| Hudu offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card for cloud and self-hosted, set against IT Glue's 'Demo only' entry, which is Hudu's label; IT Glue's own page shows a 'Get a Demo' call to action and no self-serve signup. | hudu.com✓ |
| Hudu runs a public feedback board (feedback.hudu.com), a community forum and a subreddit, and sells 'community-driven development' and roadmap voting as the promise. No conversion metric was found. | hudu.com✓ |
Your angle & pricing wedge
| Piece | Claim | Src |
|---|---|---|
| Angle | A per-account documentation tool (unlimited technicians, unlimited clients) that an agent runs continuously: it imports from RMM, PSA and M365, compares each documented asset, relationship and runbook against live state, and opens a review item or proposes an update when the two diverge, with self-hosting at the same price. IT Glue already sells auto-documentation (Network Glue, $453/mo) and an AI SOP generator, and Hudu sells Radar ($9/company/mo) plus Hudini AI and a Version History with Content Diff feature, so continuous content-level drift detection against live external state and the per-account price are the only potentially new parts, and both are unproven. | |
| Wedge | Mechanism: bill one flat price per account for unlimited technicians, with no user minimum, no multi-year term, no activation fee and self-hosting at the same price, and include drift detection instead of metering discovery separately. A 5-technician MSP on IT Glue Basic is 5 x $29 = $145/month plus the activation fee and no discovery, so $79/month per account sits about 45% below that and still includes discovery; Hudu already undercuts IT Glue per user at $27 with no minimums, so the only defensible increment is unlimited seats plus the drift feature, and whether buyers switch for that is unproven. |
How others got traction
2| Move | Why | Src |
|---|---|---|
| Hudu sells one flat per-user documentation platform with no minimums, no contract, a free no-credit-card trial and a self-hosted option at the same price, and says 5,900+ IT teams use it. | It answers IT Glue's 36-month term, 5-user minimum and activation fee head-on, though Hudu's own material does not prove which of price, self-hosting or migration support drove adoption. | hudu.com✓ |
| IT Glue sells per user with unlimited organizations and documentation, and charges separately for discovery at $453/month (Network Glue) and client-portal access at $407/month (MyGlue). | Because the base product and its highest-value add-ons are metered per user or per add-on, a per-account rival has an arithmetic opening at small team sizes. | itglue.com✓ |
Market heat
IT Glue runs tiered per-user pricing: Basic $29, Select $38, Enterprise $44 per user/month on a 36-month term, with Network Glue $453/mo, MyGlue $407/mo and myITprocess $199/mo add-ons, and a 5-user minimum on standard plans.
More ▾Hudu claims 5,900+ IT teams, flat per-user pricing with no minimums and self-hosting. Company-reported, not audited.
Syncro sells RMM and PSA at $129/user/mo (Core, annual) or $179/user/mo (Team, annual) with unlimited endpoints per technician, and now ships an MCP server and agentic service delivery.
More ▾A single Ask HN post from a self-described 20-year datacenter networking veteran says documentation drift is persistent and worsening: the source of truth 'almost always diverges from the running state'. Anecdotal, 2 points, not corroborated.
More ▾
Revenue signals
5| Signal | Src |
|---|---|
Hudu: 5,900+ IT teams, company-reported and not audited. No revenue figure is disclosed. | hudu.com✓ |
IT Glue list pricing: $29-44/user/month on 36-month terms plus $453/mo Network Glue and $407/mo MyGlue; a 5-tech MSP on Basic lists at 5 x $29 = $145/mo before add-ons. | itglue.com✓ |
Hudu list pricing: $27/user/mo billed annually ($30 monthly), no minimums; a 5-tech MSP lists at $135/mo before the optional $9/company/mo Radar. | hudu.com✓ |
Syncro, adjacent RMM and PSA, lists at $129-179/user/month with RMM, PSA, a documentation module and credential management included. | syncrosecure.com✓ |
Whether a per-account $69-99/mo entrant is sustainable is a guess. The incumbents' per-user model implies documentation seats are the unit of value, and no source discloses infrastructure cost per account. | syncrosecure.com✓ |
Should you build this?
The category is proven and monetized and the pain is real, but it is crowded and commoditized, and only the drift-detection wedge is possibly new. Hudu already undercuts IT Glue per user at $27 with no minimums, no contract and self-hosting, runs the comparison-plus-calculator-plus-migration playbook, and already lists content diff and an AI documentation assistant. A solo founder should not build this on the per-account price alone, because that price is not a new undercut and drift detection is unvalidated and copyable. Run one test first: recruit 15 MSPs with 2-8 technicians that already pay for a documentation tool, have each place one client's documented environment beside live RMM/PSA/M365 state and count divergences (missing assets, wrong relationships, stale runbooks) and show their monthly bill. Kill it if fewer than 5 of 15 pre-pay $79/month per account with unlimited technicians, if fewer than 8 can produce real divergence examples, or if most already switched to Hudu and report no drift pain.
More ▾
All sources
7| Source | Kind | Status | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 |