For UK MSPs comparing SOC options

SocGenie vs white-label MSSP.

The numbers-first comparison for MSPs deciding how to deliver 24/7 security operations without hiring a night shift — or selling their margin to a middleman.

 
Typical UK white-label MSSP
SocGenie
Economics
Per-tenant monthly costAll-in, 30-tenant book, 120-seat avg tenant
£1,400 – £1,800
£400 – £650
Pricing modelWhat grows your invoice
Per-seat, per-GB, both
Flat per-tenant
Your margin on the SOC lineAfter passthrough and delivery costs
4 – 8%
38 – 52%
Contract lengthMinimum commit to sign
24 – 36 months
12 months
Minimum seat commitWhat you pay for even if you lose a tenant
1,500 – 3,000 seats
None — billed per live tenant
Brand & client relationship
Client sees your brandOn the ticket, in the email, on the call
Partially — white-label gaps leak
Always — SocGenie stays invisible
Your analysts on the investigationWhose expertise the client benefits from
MSSP T1 pool, rotating
Your team, on every HITL gate
Escalation pathClient → you → resolution
Client → you → MSSP → you → client
Client → you → resolution
Client-facing reportsWho owns the narrative
MSSP template, their framing
Your template, your framing
Detection & response quality
Detection tuningHow detections adapt to each tenant
Portfolio-average rules, static
Tenant-tuned, continuously
Median time to triageAlert lands → verdict on analyst's screen
2 – 4 hours
62 seconds
False-positive rateMeasured across UK MSP baseline
18 – 24%
6 – 9%
Alert volume handled per tenant / monthBefore escalation fatigue sets in
800 – 1,200 (filtered)
Full 18,000 – 25,000 (investigated)
ATT&CK + D3FEND mappingOn every incident
Only high-severity
Every incident
Controls & compliance
Human approval on destructive actionsHITL gates for revoke / disable / quarantine
Varies by MSSP policy
Mandatory, always
UK data residencyWhere your logs process
EU or US, varies
UK South only
CE+ / ISO 27001 / SOC 2 evidence captureAudit-ready artefacts
Quarterly report
Continuous, 330+ checks
Signed audit log of every decisionWho approved what, when, why
Basic
Tamper-evident, legally admissible
Onboarding & operations
Time to first investigationContract signed → first real alert triaged
8 – 12 weeks
An afternoon
New tenant onboardingAfter the first
2 – 4 weeks
3 minutes (OAuth consent)
Agents / middleware / log shippersWhat you have to deploy
Often required
None
Ticketing write-backJira / Freshdesk
Generic API, often manual
Native, bi-directional
Your numbers

Run the math on your book.

Set your tenant count and average seat count. See what you'd spend — and save — each year.

30 tenants
120 seats

Using market midpoints: MSSP at £13/seat/mo + £400/mo Sentinel passthrough per tenant. SocGenie Monitor+Respond at £650/tenant/mo, flat. Your actuals will vary — email hello@socgenie.io for a bespoke quote.

Annual SOC cost, both paths

White-label MSSP£702,000
SocGenie Monitor + Respond£234,000
£468,000
saved per year — reinvest in detection engineering, threat hunting, or margin
Honest advice

When to pick which.

We're not going to tell you SocGenie wins every scenario. It doesn't.

Pick white-label MSSP

You need 24/7 in 4 weeks and will sign a 3-year commit.

An MSSP has analysts today. If a regulated client gave you a deadline and you missed the window to hire, a 3-year contract gets you coverage tomorrow. Accept the margin compression as the cost of speed, and plan a migration in year 2.

Pick SocGenie

You run 15–80 tenants and want SOC to be a profit centre.

The unit economics of per-tenant AI triage dominate per-seat MSSP billing from ~15 tenants upwards. You keep margin, you keep brand, you keep client relationships. Onboarding is in weeks, not months. This is the sweet spot.

Run both

You have a regulated tenant with bespoke compliance needs.

FCA- or MoD-regulated clients sometimes require a named, accredited SOC provider. SocGenie covers the 29 standard tenants at sensible economics; a specialist MSSP covers the 1 regulated tenant. Both work side-by-side without stepping on each other.

Migration

How MSPs switch without a gap.

A four-phase plan from current MSSP to SocGenie, with coverage maintained throughout.

Week 1

Pilot, 3 tenants

SocGenie runs read-only alongside your MSSP on 3 friendly tenants. You see every alert triaged both ways. No client-facing changes.

Week 2–4

Expand, 10 tenants

Pilot widens. HITL gates go live. You start actioning alerts via SocGenie on pilot tenants. MSSP still handles the rest.

Week 5–8

Cutover, full book

SocGenie takes production for all tenants. MSSP runs parallel read-only as a safety net. Compare results daily.

Week 9+

MSSP wind-down

Give MSSP notice per contract. Wind down at next break clause. No coverage gap, no client-facing disruption, full audit trail.

Bring 3 tenants. Run both for 2 weeks. Decide on the evidence.

14-day pilot, no contract, delegated access only. We onboard in an afternoon. You compare triage quality, response time, and margin side-by-side against your current MSSP. The numbers make the case.

Start 14-day pilot → Talk to a human