ChannelPro just released its second annual Brand Preference Guide, and the data tells a story that no vendor press release ever will.

The methodology is straightforward: 400 MSPs, MSSPs, VARs, and IT consultants surveyed at six in-person conferences. Three dimensions: partner program quality, solution reliability, and peer recommendation. Eighty brands evaluated. The result is probably the most honest vendor scorecard in the channel right now, because the people filling it out aren’t being paid by any of the companies they’re rating.

Pax8 owns the partner experience. Microsoft owns everything else.

Pax8 ranked first in partner program and support. Microsoft ranked first in solution reliability and peer recommendation. Those two results together describe the modern MSP stack in a single data point: Microsoft is the foundation you build on, and Pax8 is how you buy it.

But the more telling number is who’s right behind them. Huntress landed third in partner programs and fifth in reliability. ThreatLocker grabbed fourth and ninth respectively. These are security-first companies that barely existed in most MSP stacks five years ago, now outranking Cisco, Dell, and ConnectWise on partner experience.

That is not incremental. That is a generational shift in how MSPs evaluate their vendors.

The security vendors are winning on trust

Look at the top 10 across all three categories and count the security companies: Huntress, ThreatLocker, Fortinet, Barracuda, SonicWall. Five of the top 16 in partner programs are primarily security vendors. Three years ago, security was a line item. Now it’s a trust signal.

MSPs are telling us something with these rankings: the vendors they trust most are the ones that help them protect their customers. Not the ones with the biggest product catalog. Not the ones with the most aggressive SPIFFs. The ones that make them look competent when something goes wrong at 2 AM.

This has direct implications for any vendor still leading with feature lists instead of security outcomes. The channel has moved past “what does it do” and arrived at “will it protect me when I need it to.”

The distribution tier tells its own story

TD SYNNEX, Ingram Micro, and D&H all appear in the rankings, but none crack the top 10 in any category. Pax8, a cloud marketplace that is technically distribution, sits at number one.

The traditional distribution model is not dying. But it is being redefined by a company that treats the MSP as the customer rather than the throughput. Pax8’s lead in partner programs is not about price. It’s about experience, onboarding, and how quickly a partner can go from sign-up to selling.

For TD SYNNEX and Ingram Micro, this data should be a fire alarm. The MSPs filling out this survey are choosing Pax8 over legacy distributors not because Pax8 has a bigger catalog, but because Pax8 made buying easier. That’s a solvable problem, if anyone at the top of those organizations decides it’s worth solving.

ConnectWise and Kaseya: the great middle

ConnectWise ranked 18th in partner programs. Kaseya ranked 11th. For the two companies that power the operational core of most MSPs, these numbers are mediocre.

Neither company cracks the top 10 in any category. Datto, operating under the Kaseya umbrella, outperforms its parent company in every dimension. That tells you something about what happens to trust when a beloved product gets absorbed by a roll-up.

The Kaseya-Datto relationship in this data is particularly instructive. Datto at seventh in reliability. Kaseya at 12th. Same company. Different trust levels. Brand equity doesn’t transfer through acquisition. It has to be rebuilt, and these numbers suggest the rebuilding isn’t complete.

What this data actually means for your vendor strategy

If you’re an MSP reading this: use these rankings as a starting point for vendor conversations, not an endpoint. The brands in the top 10 earned that position through consistent, measurable partner experience. The ones in the 30-50 range should be able to articulate why they deserve your business despite the gap.

If you’re a vendor outside the top 25: you have a trust deficit with the people who sell your products. That deficit does not close with marketing spend. It closes with better onboarding, faster support response, and programs that reward growth instead of punishing churn.

The channel runs on trust. This data quantifies it. Use it accordingly.