Operating picture · measured 2026-09-03
Half of all US MSPs sit in 237 cities. 1,988 towns have exactly one.
Measured across 4,687 cities: a crowded handful, and a very long tail with no real choice at all.
US cities with exactly one provider on file
35,022 of 39,351 in-scope US providers have a city on file, spread across 4,687 distinct cities. as of 2026-09-03. City is self-reported and normalization is imperfect — read the individual city counts as approximate.
base 39,351
What 'near me' actually returns
35,022 US providers have a city on file, spread across 4,687 cities. The distribution is not remotely even: 237 cities hold 19,803 of them — half the directory — while 1,988 cities have exactly one provider based there.
So 'managed IT services near me' is two completely different searches. In a metro it returns dozens of firms and the problem is telling them apart. Across most of the country it returns one local firm, and everything else on the page is a provider from somewhere else.
The providers are overwhelmingly local themselves: 35,741 of 39,351 run from a single office. Of the 17,200 firms where we hold a footprint classification, 15,419 serve a local area rather than a region or the country.
Why the map lies to you
A results page ranks on proximity and on the strength of a listing, not on whether a firm can actually serve you. A national provider with a registered address in your metro outranks a good local firm with no reviews, and neither fact tells you who answers the phone at 7pm.
Distance is a weak proxy for service anyway. 3,610 providers run two or more offices, and among that minority the furthest office averages 553 miles from headquarters. This industry expands by buying a book of business in another metro, not by opening a branch across town.
What to search instead
Search the city, not 'near me'. A city page is a fixed, comparable list; a proximity search reorders itself for every searcher and every device.
If your town is one of the 1,988 with a single local provider, widen to the nearest metro deliberately rather than accepting whatever the map returns. Most of these firms serve a radius well beyond their own city line.
What this number can't tell you
- ·City comes from the address a firm publishes, and normalization is imperfect. Some metros are split across suburb names and some suburbs absorb their metro, so individual city counts are approximate and should not be read as metro market sizes.
- ·A city is on file for 35,022 of 39,351 firms, so 4,329 providers are not placed at all and appear in none of these counts.
- ·This measures where a provider is headquartered, not where it will travel. A firm in the next city is often the right answer and does not appear in your city's count.
- ·Footprint is classified for 17,200 of 39,351 firms. The local share is quoted against the firms we have classified, not against the whole directory.
- ·We do not rank providers on proximity. Proximity is not quality, and nothing on this card is a recommendation.
What to do about it
- ▸Buyers: start from the city page for your metro, then compare on reviews, certifications and published hours rather than on distance.
- ▸Providers: if you serve a radius rather than a city, name the towns. The 1,988 single-provider towns are the least contested demand in this market.
Where does your firm sit on this?
Claim your MSP with a magic link from your company email to see your own certifications, reviews, web footprint and local rank measured against every provider we track.
Claim your MSP ▸More findings
- 76%76% of MSPs that sell cybersecurity hold no security certification at all.
- 77%77% of MSPs marketing to healthcare don't list HIPAA.
- 15,35615,356 US places have no MSP within 25 miles — 24% of the country's populated places.
- 0.01★It makes no measurable difference. Isolated MSPs average 4.67★ across 20 reviews; MSPs in dense markets average 4.69★ across 21.