Helios vs Syncro: one bundle against another

Syncro pioneered the all-in-one PSA plus RMM bundle at a per-user price, and thousands of small MSPs run on it. The comparison with Helios is a fair fight between two bundles: one with more billing machinery, one with a working AI and a flat bill.

Written with respect. We ran an MSP on several of the products we compare, we rate them, and without them Helios would not exist. These pages are here because buyers deserve the numbers, not because we want a fight.

Every step above is the platform as it runs today; the same fix is on the Tickets page of the live demo.

What Syncro does well

Syncro's pitch has always been the whole shop in one product: RMM, PSA, and real invoicing with payment integrations, at a per-user price with unlimited endpoints. We will be straight about where that still beats us, and about where it no longer does. Helios now bills recurring contracts: flat, per-device and per-seat lines, an included-hours retainer that nets against the month's logged time, and overage beyond it. That plus time tracked on tickets becomes an invoice in Xero or QuickBooks without leaving the platform, or a CSV any package imports. What Syncro still does and Helios does not is take the payment: there is no card collection from your clients here. If getting paid inside the same tool is your first requirement, that is the one line Syncro has and Helios does not.

What to look at closely before you buy

• Per-user pricing. Core is $129 and Team is $209 per user per month (last verified July 2026). Five seats on Team is over $1,000 a month.
• Pace of the product. A recurring theme in public reviews is long-standing rough edges that stay unfixed for years, including clunky bulk operations around time and billing. Trial the workflows you actually use daily.
• The AI story. Syncro's automation is script and rule based. If an AI teammate is part of why you are switching tools in 2026, ask to see theirs.

How Helios is different

Helios is the younger, AI-native take on the same all-in-one idea. Helio investigates device alerts by reading the machine, writes and verifies fixes under approval guardrails, triages and answers inbound tickets, and drafts your QBRs. Monitoring, patching including third-party apps, security posture, Microsoft 365, backup monitoring, remote access and a branded client portal are all included on every plan, and the price is flat per MSP rather than per seat.

Where Syncro is the better pick

If taking your clients' card payments inside the same tool is non-negotiable, that is Syncro's one remaining advantage on billing; everything else on that list is in Helios now. If the daily grind you want rid of is the technical queue, and you would rather your bill did not grow with every hire, Helios is the stronger half of the trade.

The parts that rarely make a feature grid

Comparisons and price lists tend to stop at monitoring, patching and tickets. Helios has kept shipping, every feature lands on every plan, and this is the part that usually gets left out:

• Client billing that closes the loop. Recurring contracts (flat, per-device or per-seat), an included-hours retainer that nets against logged time, and the finished invoice pushed into Xero or QuickBooks or exported as CSV.
• The kit that will never take an agent. Nominate a machine already running the agent as a site relay and act on the switches, firewalls, NAS boxes and printers around it over SSH. A target only appears if that relay is what discovered it, every command waits for a human, and the password is fetched at the moment it runs and written to the audit trail.
• Network discovery that names things. Agents map each client's network and identify what they find by vendor and type, so new hardware on a client site is flagged the day it appears.
• Replacement dates without a spreadsheet. Machines report their own age from the BIOS date, so Helios can tell you what is due for replacement against a service-life policy you set, per client.
• Reporting built for the review, not the dashboard. A custom report builder, SLA reporting, Microsoft 365 licence-cost reporting, and a day-one baseline per client that stores the numbers, so a quarterly review can prove what actually moved.
• Quotes the client accepts from the portal. Price a piece of work, send it, and the client accepts or declines it signed in to the portal or from the link in the email. Monthly lines go straight onto their contract, one-off lines onto that month's invoice, and every decision is on the record.
• Approvals on your phone. Helios installs as an app from the browser and pushes a fix waiting for approval, a critical alert or an escalation to your phone, each opening the page it is about. Every kind can be switched off per person.
• Everything is addressable. A published REST API, a credential vault with an audit trail, custom fields on clients and devices, and standing rules that limit what Helio may do on its own: block an action or require a human to approve it, scoped to one client, a device group, a device type or a single machine, and to a class of action or one named fix.

What the add-ons cost

Common questions

Is Helios a good alternative to Syncro?

If you want a modern interface and an AI that resolves tickets rather than just filing them, yes. If full invoicing is your first requirement, read the next answer carefully first.

Can Helios invoice clients the way Syncro does?

Nearly, and the remaining gap is one thing. Helios bills recurring contracts with flat, per-device and per-seat lines, nets an included-hours retainer against the month's logged time, tracks time on tickets, and creates the invoice in Xero or QuickBooks Online or a CSV any package imports. What it does not do is take the card payment from your client. Syncro does.

How does Helios pricing compare to Syncro?

Syncro Core is $129 and Team is $209 per user per month, so five seats on Team is over $1,000 a month. Helios is £4 a device on the Launch tier up to 25 devices, then £99 to £399 a month for the company regardless of how many technicians use it.

What does Syncro actually cost?

Short answer: it depends on your endpoint count and your term, and the headline rate is rarely the number on the invoice. The full breakdown lives on its own page rather than here, with the published rates, the buyer-reported quotes, the add-ons and the contract terms each labelled and dated: see Syncro pricing.

Is there a free alternative to Syncro?

Yes, and free rather than a trial. Action1 is free for the first 200 endpoints with no feature limits, Level is free for the first 10 endpoints, ManageEngine Endpoint Central is free for up to 25 endpoints, and NetLock RMM is a free Community Edition for up to 25 endpoints (checked September 2026). Helios is not one of them: there is a 14 day trial that takes no card, then a 4 pound per device Launch tier from 5 to 25 devices. If a zero bill is the requirement, one of those is your answer and we would rather tell you than waste your trial.

Is there an open source alternative to Syncro?

Tactical RMM is the only open source project built for the MSP job specifically: monitoring, alerting, scripting and patching, with remote access from an embedded MeshCentral. MeshCentral on its own is Apache 2.0 and widely used, but it is remote access only, with no monitoring, patching or scripting. NetLock RMM is open core under AGPL with a free tier to 25 endpoints. The honest caveat is that RMM means four things running together and almost nothing in open source does all four, so price in the hosting, the upgrades and the hours. Helios is not open source.

What is the best Syncro alternative for a small MSP?

It depends which axis is hurting. If it is the bill growing with every endpoint, look at flat or per technician pricing. If it is the service desk living in a second product, look at something that has one built in. If it is the contract, check the term and the notice period before the feature list, because that is the part you cannot undo. Helios was built for one to ten technician teams that want the whole job in one bill, which is a fit for some of those and not all of them.

Competitor details on this page were last verified in July 2026 from public pricing pages, announcements and review sites, and may have changed since. They are provided in good faith for comparison; always confirm current pricing and features with the vendor. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. Spotted something out of date? Email hello@heliosmsp.io and we will fix it.