Your IT company wrote that contract.
Did anyone review it for you?
MSP agreements are written by the vendor's legal team to protect the vendor. Most business owners sign them without independent review and don't find out what that cost them until something goes wrong.
DoubleChecked was founded by Justin Kane, who spent nearly 20 years leading technology strategy for growing companies, including managing MSP relationships from both sides of the table. He has reviewed these contracts, negotiated them, and seen what happens when business owners sign them without anyone in their corner.
These three fixed-price engagements exist to put someone with that experience on your side of the table.
30 minutes. No commitment. We will tell you which engagement fits or if none of them do.
Your IT company cannot grade its own work.
Every report your MSP sends you was written by your MSP. Every dashboard that shows "all systems healthy" was configured by the same vendor it's evaluating. When you ask them if the backups are running, they check their own logs. When you ask if the contract is fair, they wrote the contract.
This is not a criticism of your IT company. It is a structural conflict of interest that exists in every managed service relationship, regardless of how good the vendor is. The only way to close it is independent review.
What independent means here
- No referral agreements with any MSP or technology vendor
- No financial stake in which vendor you choose or keep
- No managed services or hardware sales of our own
- The only thing we earn is the flat fee for the engagement
The independence is not a feature. It is the entire point.
Who is doing this work
Nearly 20 years on both sides of the table.
Justin Kane, the founder of DoubleChecked, has led technology strategy and operations for growing companies since 2005. He has been the person MSP sales teams pitch to. He has managed MSP relationships as an IT director and as an executive. He has reviewed MSP contracts before they were signed and dealt with the consequences of ones that were not reviewed.
He started DoubleChecked because business owners making decisions about their IT vendors rarely have anyone in their corner who understands how those vendors operate from the inside. The three engagements on this page reflect what he has learned from being on both sides of those relationships.
Which engagement fits?
Start with the situation you are in.
"You have a deal on your desk and want to know what it really says."
"You think your MSP is not doing what you pay for."
"You are picking a new MSP and do not want to do it alone."
Three ways to get a straight answer about your IT vendor.
Contract Intelligence Review
Know what you are signing before you sign it.
Most MSP contracts are written by the vendor's legal team to protect the vendor. Business owners sign them because the relationship seems fine and nobody wants to slow things down. The Contract Intelligence Review gives you an independent analysis of what your contract actually says, where you are exposed, and exactly what to push back on before you sign or renew. It is not a legal review. It is a technology advisor reading the agreement the same way the vendor's team did when they wrote it.
What's included:
- SLA enforceability: whether missed response targets carry any real consequence
- Termination rights: how hard it is to leave and what it costs you
- Scope definitions: what is included, what they can bill extra for, and where the edges are undefined
- Auto-renewal provisions: when the window closes and what happens if you miss it
- Liability caps: what you can actually recover if something goes wrong on their watch
- Price escalation clauses: what they can charge next year without your approval
Deliverable
A written clause-by-clause risk read. A ranked push-back list with the words to use for each item. One 60-minute debrief call.
Engagement scope
One MSP deal up to 30 pages. Sent in 5 business days of getting the full contract docs. Deals over 30 pages, or those with riders that need their own review, get scoped on their own. Contact us before you book.
Managed Services Audit
Find out if your IT company is actually doing its job.
Your MSP sends you reports. Those reports were written by your MSP. The Managed Services Audit is an independent review of whether your IT provider is actually delivering what your contract says they should. We look at the contract, the invoices, the service history, and we talk to your team, not just the vendor. What we find goes into a written report with a clear recommendation: renegotiate, replace, or stay, with the specific reasoning for each.
This is not a vendor scoring sheet. This is an audit.
What's included:
- Contract vs. reality: are the services you are paying for actually being performed
- Billing accuracy: are you being charged correctly and for the right things
- Security posture: patching, backup verification, and access control basics
- Service delivery: response times, proactive vs. reactive behavior, escalation handling
- Stakeholder experience: what your team actually thinks about the relationship
Deliverable
A written findings report. A clear pick: rework the deal, swap shops, or stay. Each path comes with the why. One 60-minute debrief call.
Engagement scope
Covers one MSP, plus the deal, the bill history, and the service record. Sent in 7 business days of staff talks and getting the docs we ask for. Jobs that need a review of more than one vendor, or a much wider scope, get priced on their own.
Vendor Selection Advisory
Choose your MSP with someone in your corner.
Choosing an MSP without independent guidance means evaluating proposals written by salespeople against criteria you probably did not set. The vendor who presents best in a demo is not always the vendor who delivers best under contract. Vendor Selection Advisory puts an independent technology advisor in your corner through the entire process, from defining what your business actually needs before any vendor gets involved, to reviewing and negotiating the final agreement.
What's included:
- Requirements definition: documenting what your business actually needs before any vendor gets involved
- Structured evaluation of up to three vendor proposals against your defined criteria
- Reference check guidance: what to ask and how to interpret what you hear
- Contract review and negotiation support on the vendor you select
- Written final recommendation with the full rationale
Engagement scope
Covers up to three vendors in a 90-day window. The flat fee covers all advice, scoring, and deal help in that window. If the pick takes more than 90 days due to vendor delays or scope shifts, a flat monthly fee kicks in for the extra time. We will flag that before it kicks in, not after. Each vendor past three: $750 each.
You don't have to know which engagement you need to start.
If you got here because someone sent you a link, because you searched for help with your IT vendor, or because something felt off and you wanted a second opinion, that is enough to have a conversation. The 30-minute discovery call is not a sales pitch. It is a conversation where you describe what you are dealing with and we tell you honestly whether any of these engagements fit, or whether your situation calls for something different.
Most people who call us have never worked with an independent technology advisor before. That is fine. We are used to starting there.
Not sure which one fits?
Start with a 30-minute call. You walk us through what is going on. We tell you which engagement fits. Or we tell you the spot calls for a different path.
Book a Discovery CallSome clients finish an MSP engagement and move into a Virtual CTO retainer (also called fractional CTO) for live oversight. There is no push in that path. If it makes sense once the job is done, it will be plain to see. AI governance and IT vendor oversight increasingly overlap in the same conversation. If AI is part of what you are trying to sort out, that fits here too.
Related reading
Long-form pieces on the MSP contract and vendor questions that come up most often in these conversations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Justin Kane, the founder of DoubleChecked. This is not a staffing model where your engagement gets handed to an analyst. Justin has nearly 20 years of experience leading technology operations, including direct experience managing MSP relationships on both the client and the provider side.