Won't a local MSP have too small a staff to actually be available when I need help?

The intuition is that more employees means more availability, but availability is a systems property, not a headcount property. Coverage at 2am comes from monitoring software that never sleeps plus an on-call rotation that pages a human for critical alerts; a well-run eight-person firm and an eight-hundred-person firm both provide it the same way. What headcount actually determines is capacity, and capacity only matters relative to load: a national provider's impressive staff is spread across thousands of clients, so the number that predicts your experience is clients per technician, not technicians in total.

There is also a quality to being a meaningful client rather than a rounding error. At a local firm, your business is a noticeable share of the book: the techs know your office, your systems, and your names, and losing you would hurt. At a national, you are one line in a database, supported by whoever is on shift, and staff turnover means re-explaining your environment to strangers. Big staffs also do not queue-jump for small accounts; being client four thousand of a large firm is routinely slower than being client thirty of a strong local one.

The way to settle this concern is with verifiable questions rather than vibes: What is your client-to-tech ratio? What is the after-hours process, concretely, and is it in the agreement? What were your actual average response times last quarter? Can I call two clients my size? Any provider, local or national, who answers those crisply deserves consideration; any who cannot has answered the availability question for you.