IT Glue alternatives: documentation and credential vaults for small MSPs

Hudu is the most common of the IT Glue alternatives for small MSPs, because it offers the same structured documentation and credential vault with simpler, published pricing and a self-hosting option. Open-source tools such as BookStack paired with Vaultwarden or Passbolt cost nothing but your time, and documentation built into an RMM suits teams who mostly need device facts in one place. The right choice depends on how much structured process documentation you write, and how seriously you treat credential security.

That last point is where most comparisons go soft. A documentation platform is not a wiki. It is the place your passwords live, which makes it the most valuable target in your stack. Here is how the options compare, and when your documentation genuinely belongs inside your RMM.

What an MSP documentation tool actually has to do

Strip away the feature grids and a documentation tool has four jobs, whether the machines belong to clients or to your own company:

• Hold structured asset data. Devices, licences, domains, network kit, contracts. Ideally populated automatically, because hand-maintained asset lists rot within months.
• Store credentials safely. Encrypted at rest, access controlled per client and per technician, with an audit trail of who revealed what and when.
• Hold procedures. The runbooks, quirks and "never reboot this server before 7pm" notes that otherwise live in one senior technician's head.
• Link it all together. The firewall record should point to its admin credential, its config backup and the procedure for changing it.

Skip the fourth and you have a filing cabinet. Skip the second and you have a liability.

IT Glue: deep, polished and priced for growth

IT Glue is the established leader, now part of Kaseya. Its strengths are real: flexible assets for documenting almost anything, mature relationship linking, strong integrations with RMM and PSA tools, and a password vault with granular permissions. If you document heavily and follow a structured methodology, it rewards the effort.

The complaints are mostly commercial. Pricing sits behind tiers and minimums rather than a simple published per-MSP figure, and being part of a larger vendor's bundle tends to steer renewals towards that vendor's other products. If you have already read our piece on which MSP vendors publish a price, the pattern will be familiar. Check the current terms on IT Glue's own pages before you assume anything.

Hudu: the obvious alternative to IT Glue

Hudu set out to be a cleaner, more transparently priced IT Glue, and largely succeeded. It covers asset layouts, a password vault, procedures with checklists, and a knowledge base. It can be self-hosted as well as used in the cloud, which matters to MSPs who want their credential store on infrastructure they control.

Hudu's integrations are narrower than IT Glue's in places and its automation is less elaborate, but for a one to fifteen technician MSP that gap rarely bites. For many small shops it is simply the default answer to "what replaces IT Glue?".

Open-source options: free licence, real labour

The open-source route usually means two tools rather than one:

• A wiki for procedures. BookStack is a popular choice: tidy, self-hosted, permission-aware. It knows nothing about devices, though, so asset data is manual.
• A dedicated vault for credentials. Vaultwarden (a lightweight Bitwarden-compatible server) or Passbolt, which is built around team sharing. Both are serious, audited-in-the-wild tools.

The cost moves from licence to labour. You patch the servers, you back them up, you test the restore, and you own the incident if the vault host is compromised. That is fine if you would already run that infrastructure well. It is a poor trade if you are adopting it purely to save money.

Documentation built into an RMM

Most RMMs already know a great deal: hardware, software, OS versions, warranty dates, network details, installed licences. Some add notes fields, client-level knowledge articles and basic credential storage. The appeal is obvious: the asset data is live rather than typed, and there is one less tool to pay for and secure.

Be honest about the limits. RMM documentation is usually device-centric. It is weaker at relationship mapping, at structured documentation for things without an agent (a leased line, a domain registrar account, a printer contract), and at granular vault permissions. If your RMM stores passwords, ask the same security questions you would ask a dedicated vault. Our explainer on which tool does what across RMM, PSA and endpoint management covers where those boundaries usually fall.

Comparing IT Glue alternatives on price and security

Whichever you pick, insist on these regardless of brand: enforced multi-factor authentication, per-client and per-role access, an audit log of password views, an export you have actually tested, and a clear answer on what happens to your data if you leave.

Does your documentation belong in your RMM?

Dedicated tools go deeper. That is not in dispute. The useful question is whether you would use the depth.

Keep a dedicated tool if you write structured runbooks for most clients, document plenty of non-agent infrastructure, have several technicians who need tightly scoped credential access, or answer to clients with compliance requirements that demand detailed audit trails.

Lean on your RMM if your documentation is mostly device facts plus a page of notes per client, your team is small enough that everyone sees everything anyway, and the dedicated tool has become a place where pages go to age quietly.

A documentation tool nobody updates is a museum with a login screen.

A sensible middle path is common: let the RMM own live asset data, keep credentials in a proper vault, and keep procedures wherever your technicians will actually maintain them.

Where this fits with Helios

Helios is a unified RMM and PSA: monitoring, patching, security, Microsoft 365 management, remote access, ticketing, time tracking and billing in one product, with an AI agent, Helio, that investigates device issues and builds its own library of fix playbooks. That covers the live device data side of documentation well. It is not positioned as a replacement for a dedicated credential vault or a structured documentation platform, so if you need IT Glue or Hudu depth, pair Helios with one of them. You can see how it compares with other platforms on our comparison pages.

Common questions about IT Glue alternatives

Is Hudu cheaper than IT Glue?

Hudu is generally regarded as the more affordable and more transparently priced option, and it publishes its pricing rather than relying on quotes. Exact figures change, so compare both vendors' current pricing pages against your own technician count and any minimums before deciding, rather than trusting a figure quoted in a forum thread.

Is it safe to self-host a password vault for an MSP?

Self-hosting a vault such as Vaultwarden or Passbolt can be safe, but only if you patch it promptly, restrict network exposure, enforce multi-factor authentication and test backups and restores. The vault holds credentials for every client, so a neglected self-hosted server is a far bigger risk than a well-run cloud service.

How hard is it to migrate away from IT Glue?

Migrating away from IT Glue is mostly a data-mapping exercise: export assets, passwords and documents, then map flexible asset types onto the new tool's layouts. Hudu offers import routes for IT Glue data. Plan to rotate sensitive credentials after the move, and keep the old account read-only until you have checked everything arrived.

Researched and written with Helio SEO, our AI writer for business blogs.