The tools I actually
use and recommend.

The gold standard for modern endpoint management. If your organization isn't moving toward Intune, it should be. Cloud-native, constantly improving, and deeply integrated with the rest of the M365 stack.

Formerly Azure AD — the identity backbone of any modern Microsoft environment. Conditional access, MFA, SSO, and hybrid join all live here. If you're not fully utilizing Entra ID, you're leaving security on the table.

The most reliable migration tool I've used for Tenant-to-Tenant, Google Workspace to M365, and mailbox migrations at scale. It handles edge cases gracefully and gives you real visibility into migration progress.

Lightweight, effective, and significantly less invasive than most enterprise endpoint protection tools. Works well alongside Defender and doesn't conflict with Intune-managed devices. Great for SMB clients who need solid protection without the complexity.

For organizations already in the M365 ecosystem, Defender for Endpoint is hard to beat from a value and integration standpoint. Deep Intune integration, automatic attack surface reduction, and solid EDR capabilities built right in.

Managed threat detection built specifically for MSPs and SMBs. Huntress sits on top of your existing AV and catches what it misses — persistent footholds, ransomware precursors, and lateral movement. Their SOC team handles triage so you don't have to.

The industry standard for VM and server backup. Reliable, feature-rich, and the recovery options are genuinely best-in-class. Instant VM recovery, granular restores, and solid cloud repository integration. If you're running VMware or Hyper-V, Veeam is the answer.

Purpose-built for MSPs — BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) with local virtualization and cloud backup in one appliance. The ability to spin up a failed server locally in minutes is a genuine lifesaver in a disaster scenario. Purpose-built for MSP use.

DNS management, DDoS protection, Zero Trust access, and CDN — all in one platform. The free tier alone is more capable than most paid DNS services. For any client managing external-facing services, Cloudflare is the first thing I set up.

Comprehensive network monitoring with a genuinely useful interface. SNMP, WMI, NetFlow, packet sniffing — it covers all the protocols you'd want for visibility into what's happening across your network. The free tier for up to 100 sensors is legitimately useful for smaller environments.

Clean, fast, and actually pleasant to use — which puts it ahead of most RMM tools. Remote access, patch management, scripting, and monitoring all in one platform. The Intune-like policy engine and solid Mac support make it a strong choice for modern mixed environments.

Documentation platform built specifically for MSPs. Standardized templates, automatic asset discovery, password management, and tight integrations with most RMM tools. The difference between a well-documented environment and a nightmare to support is usually IT Glue.

If you're writing PowerShell scripts for Intune, AD, or Azure and you're not using VSCode with the PowerShell extension, you're making your life harder than it needs to be. IntelliSense, integrated debugging, Git integration, and the best terminal experience on Windows. Free, always.