How We Calculate the
Trust Score
Every ranking on ITreviews.co is produced by the same methodology, applied to every provider, in every market we cover. Here’s exactly how it works — nothing is a black box.
Finding a managed IT provider shouldn’t require cross-referencing four websites, second-guessing paid rankings, and hoping the reviews aren’t fake.
The ITreviews Trust Score exists to give buyers a single, consistent measure of provider credibility — built entirely from publicly verifiable signals, applied the same way to every provider in every market we cover.
No provider submits their own data. No provider can pay to improve their position. Every factor is independently researched. Every weight is published on this page. Nothing is a black box.
The Six Factors
Together these six factors produce a score out of 100. Here’s exactly what each one measures and why it’s included.
The largest component of the Trust Score is what clients have actually said — publicly — about working with a provider. We pull data from three platforms, weighted by how rigorously each one verifies the reviews it publishes.
Missing platform data: If a provider has no Clutch presence, that weight shifts proportionally to Google and Cloudtango. Absence from a platform is never treated as a negative signal — scores are always calculated on available data.
Third-party recognition from credible industry sources is one of the cleanest independently verifiable signals available. A provider either appears on a published list or they don’t — there’s no ambiguity, no self-reporting, and no way to fake it.
Providers recognized across multiple lists or across multiple years score higher than single appearances. Recency matters — a recognition from three years ago carries less weight than one from the current cycle.
Building a managed services client base — and keeping it — takes years. Providers who have done it consistently have demonstrated something newer entrants haven’t yet. Longevity in the managed IT market is a meaningful stability signal.
We establish years in business by triangulating three sources: the company website, LinkedIn founding date, and domain registration date. Where sources conflict, we use the most conservative verifiable figure.
This factor also captures basic operational maturity — whether the provider has a documented team, named leadership, and a website that reflects an actively operating business rather than a placeholder presence.
A provider listing clients in a city while operating from a virtual office with no local staff is a meaningfully different kind of provider than one with a local office, named engineers, and a verified local presence. That distinction matters to buyers — particularly those who need on-site support or prefer local accountability.
We verify address legitimacy, Google Maps presence, and whether the claimed service area is consistent with documented office locations. Providers with a strong local footprint in their listed markets score higher than those with remote-only operations claiming local coverage.
Not every MSP serves every industry equally — and for buyers in regulated or specialized verticals, that distinction matters significantly. A provider with documented healthcare IT experience is a meaningfully different choice for a medical practice than a generalist who lists healthcare as one of a dozen industries served.
We score industry specialization based on what a provider has publicly documented: dedicated vertical pages, compliance certifications relevant to specific industries (HIPAA, CMMC, FINRA), and case studies that reference specific industry contexts.
Claimed specialization without supporting documentation scores lower than documented specialization with verifiable evidence. Listing “healthcare” in a bullet point is not the same as holding HIPAA compliance documentation and publishing healthcare-specific case studies.
Managed IT is not a single service. A provider offering helpdesk support only is a different scope than one delivering helpdesk, cybersecurity, cloud management, backup and disaster recovery, and compliance support under one contract.
We evaluate service breadth based on what is documented on the provider’s website — not listed in a bullet point, but explained with enough specificity to confirm the service is real and operational. A page that says “cybersecurity” with no further detail scores differently than one that documents the security stack, monitoring process, and incident response approach.
Breadth without depth doesn’t score well. We’re evaluating documented capability, not a checklist.
Best For — and Who It’s Not
The Trust Score tells you how a provider measures up against every other provider on the same criteria. But a high score doesn’t automatically mean the right fit for your business. Our research team adds a plain-language editorial layer to every provider profile — a judgment call based on what the research actually found.
What the Trust Score Is Not
How We Keep Scores Current
Trust Scores are reviewed and updated on a regular research cycle. Review platform data is checked for significant changes in volume and rating. Award lists are updated annually following each publication cycle. Physical presence and service documentation are re-evaluated when material changes are identified.
Scores reflect the most recent research cycle completed for each market. The date of last review is shown on every provider profile.