What should the first 90 days with a new MSP look like?

The first 90 days reveal whether you hired a system or just a new phone number. A professional onboarding starts with documentation: every device, license, credential, and vendor relationship mapped, usually surfacing surprises the previous provider never wrote down. In parallel, monitoring and security tooling deploys to every machine, giving the new provider actual visibility.

The middle stretch is remediation: the accumulated deferred maintenance (unpatched systems, unverified backups, security gaps, the printer nobody ever fixed properly) gets worked through as a project list with priorities you can see. Expect the ticket volume to be HIGHER than normal in these months; that's the backlog draining, not the new provider failing.

By day 90 you should have: current documentation you own, verified backups with a test-restore on record, a security baseline (MFA, endpoint protection, email security), and a noticeable decline in the recurring problems that defined the old relationship. Ask for a 90-day review meeting where the provider shows exactly this.