Headline finding · measured 2026-08-11
8,667 US places have no MSP within 25 miles — 27% of the country's populated places.
A quarter of populated America has no managed service provider in driving distance.
US places with no MSP inside 25 miles
Computed across all 32,487 US places against rooftop and city-precision firm locations. as of 2026-08-11.
base 32,487
What we found
We measured every one of the 32,487 populated places in the United States against the location of every MSP we track. 8,667 of them — 27% — have no provider inside a 25-mile radius.
A further 3,586 towns have exactly one. For those places, the local IT market is a single firm with no competitive pressure on price, response time or quality.
The deserts concentrate in the agricultural interior: Texas (543 places), Iowa (448), Kansas (410), Oklahoma (393) and Minnesota (367) lead the count.
Why it matters
The industry narrative is saturation — too many MSPs, commoditised offerings, a race to the bottom on managed workstation pricing. That narrative is a description of metropolitan markets, and it is wrong about a quarter of the country.
Remote-first delivery has made the 25-mile radius less binding than it was a decade ago, but it has not made it irrelevant. Hardware, cabling, on-site incident response and the simple fact that buyers search locally all still favour a provider with a presence.
The read for MSPs
This is an expansion-planning asset. A single-MSP town within reach of your existing service area is a market where you arrive as the alternative rather than the eleventh option.
Coverage, not headcount, is the moat in these markets. A satellite address and a named local technician change the search result before they change the cost base.
What this number can't tell you
- ·Distance is measured to the firm locations on file. A provider that genuinely serves a town remotely but publishes no nearby address will not count toward that town's coverage.
- ·Populated places include very small communities; the count is of places, not of people.
What to do about it
- ▸Check the single-provider towns within 25 miles of your existing footprint before spending on metro ad inventory.
- ▸If you already serve a desert town remotely, publish that coverage — it is currently uncounted and uncontested.
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
- 69%69% of MSPs that sell cybersecurity hold no security certification at all.
- 72%72% of MSPs marketing to healthcare don't list HIPAA.
- 0.05★MSPs in one-provider towns average 4.63★ across 31 reviews. In competitive markets they average 4.68★ across 45.
- 70%70% of rated MSPs sit at 4.8★ or higher. Half have fewer than 10 reviews.