Table of Contents
If you are searching this, the decision to switch is already made in your head. What you want is permission to act on a timeline you can plan around, without losing a quarter to the move.
Some MSPs describe migrations dragging on for a year or more before they feel fully migrated. Those cases are real, and they are almost always about operational fit-out rather than the technical move itself.
The quick version: you are operational in days, and fully cut over in months. Most MSPs hear “3 to 6 months” and stall because the folklore treats those as one number. They are two different timelines, and pulling them apart makes the whole thing plannable.
The rest of this guide breaks each side down using migrations we have documented at Gorelo, then gives you a week-by-week plan you can start on Monday.
In a nutshell
| Phase | How long it really takes |
|---|---|
| Working in the new platform | Days. Provisioning and first live tickets happen in week one. |
| Client data import | One to two weeks, via CSV. |
| Scripts and automation | Two to four weeks. PowerShell ports natively, proprietary scripts get rewritten once. |
| Full cutover off the old PSA | Three to four months, paced by client communication rather than technical work. |
| What actually sets the pace | Onboarding fee gates, proprietary scripting languages, documentation with no clean export path, and clients who keep emailing the old address. |
Three migrations, three timelines, one patternThese are real cases with published numbers behind them:
These are real cases with published numbers behind them.
- Mt Warning IT (Australia, owner-operator, around 200 endpoints). Paid $7,000 for a HaloPSA implementation and abandoned it halfway, three months in, still unable to run the business through it. Setup on Gorelo took about three hours and he was fully operational the following week. Monthly software spend dropped from around $1,450 to roughly $130. Full case study.
- Hall Computer Services (10 techs, 1,600 endpoints, 110 clients). Consolidated ConnectWise and N-able into one platform, cut over $5,500 a month in endpoint fees and reclaimed 20 to 30 hours a month through automation. Full case study.
- A 10-technician US MSP and IT consultancy. Fifteen years in business, previously on ConnectWise Automate and then Syncro. Started moving clients on 1 January and had processed well over 1,000 tickets in Gorelo by month four, while older client data was still importing in the background. Saving roughly eight hours a week across the business. Full case study.
Three different shops, three different paces. The pattern that holds across all of them is that technicians were working real client tickets within days, while full cutover took weeks or months depending on how much legacy automation each shop was carrying.
Three myths worth settling before you plan
Most of what stalls MSPs comes from search results, not their actual stack.
| Myth | Reality |
|---|---|
| PSA migration takes six months | Full operational cutover runs three to four months at the outside. Working in the new platform takes days. |
| You need a paid consultant to migrate | Some platforms gate migration behind a mandatory paid implementation. Plenty do not. Gorelo does not. |
| You will lose a week of productivity at cutover | Run the platforms in parallel and you lose hours, not days. |
How long does each phase of a PSA migration take?
Most migration articles either hedge with “it depends” or quote a vendor timeline built around a paid implementation engagement. Neither helps when you are an owner-operator planning around live client work.
The industry expectations below come from published migration guidance for MSPs, which puts smaller shops at four to six weeks and larger ones at three to four months for an RMM move alone (Infrassist, June 2026). The realistic column traces to one of the three migrations above.
| Migration phase | Industry expectation | Realistic timeline |
| Account provisioning and setup | 2 to 4 weeks | Days |
| Tech onboarding and first live tickets | 2 to 6 weeks | Days |
| Client data import (contacts, assets, contracts) | 4 to 8 weeks | 1 to 2 weeks |
| Scripts, automation, recurring tickets | 8 to 12 weeks | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Full cutover from the legacy platform | 6 months | 3 to 4 months |
| “Days” does not mean click once and you are live. It means your team can work real client tickets in the new platform inside the first week, while everything else moves across in parallel. For what that first week involves in practice, see how to switch your PSA/RMM to Gorelo. |
Where time goes in a PSA migration
Four things account for most of the schedule, and the technical work is the smallest of them.
The onboarding fee gate
Some platforms gate migration behind a mandatory paid implementation engagement. Mt Warning IT paid $7,000 for a HaloPSA implementation and walked away from it halfway through, three months in, because the platform was making the work harder rather than easier. The friction there was the cost gate and the configuration burden, not the technical migration underneath it.
Proprietary scripting languages
ConnectWise Automate, originally LabTech, used its own scripting environment, and those scripts do not port. The founder of the 10-technician US MSP had already moved his automation out to PowerShell before he switched, which is what made the RMM side of his migration straightforward. PowerShell scripts get called natively on the machine, so they survive whatever platform you move to.
If your automation is still locked to a proprietary language, rewrite it once in PowerShell. After that it is portable for good. Gorelo supports PowerShell, Command Line and Bash, and scripts can be tested against a single asset before you deploy them through a policy. More on the automation side.
Documentation lock-in
Hudu and IT Glue have a migration path between each other, but PSA platforms generally do not import documentation cleanly from either. Moving a full Hudu library into a new platform is weeks of manual work today, because no clean export-to-import path exists. Most MSPs leave documentation where it is and run it in parallel during the migration, then move it over time. Gorelo’s documentation module supports both structured and unstructured docs when you are ready to bring them across.
Client communication
Moving 50 clients onto a new ticketing portal means 50 emails, 50 quick-start notes, and a handful of clients who will still email the old address for weeks. The technical migration finishes long before the client behaviour migration does, and almost every MSP we have spoken to says this was the longest tail of the project.
Draft your client comms before you start: one short announcement, one portal walkthrough, and one note on what is not changing. Send it at week three, then again at week five.
Three things Gorelo doesn’t solve for you yet
Worth being straight about the gaps before you plan around them.
- Documentation migration is still manual. There is no automated import from Hudu or IT Glue. If you have hundreds of docs, plan for weeks of manual work, or run them in parallel and move them over time.
- Custom reporting works from the standard report set. Standard reports plus filterable list views cover most small-MSP use cases. If you run bespoke QBR analytics or custom contract dashboards, you will be working from the standard reports.
- Client communication is on you. No vendor solves the fifty-emails-to-fifty-clients problem. Build the template before you start.
The migration plan, week by week
This is the working version most small MSPs, five to twenty-five technicians, can run on their own. Adjust cohort sizes for your shop.
| Print or save this section. It is the part you will come back to during the migration itself. |
| Week | Action |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Pilot. Sign up, provision the account, set up one or two internal users, and migrate a pilot client (your own MSP, or a low-stakes account) so your techs can work tickets in the new platform without touching live client work. |
| Week 2 | Internal load. Import the rest of your client list via CSV. Set up contracts and basic billing rules. Start running your own internal IT tickets inside Gorelo. By the end of the week it is the daily driver for at least one or two clients. |
| Week 3 | First client cohort. Roll the first cohort of real client tickets through the new platform. Send the client comms about the new portal or email address. A few clients will keep using the old one for a while. That is normal. |
| Week 4 | Scripts and automation. Move scripts across. PowerShell ports natively, proprietary scripts get rewritten once. Set up recurring tickets and automation rules for the contracts you have already imported. |
| Weeks 5 to 8 | Cohort migration. Move client tickets across one cohort at a time, running old and new in parallel for anything not yet moved. This part is slow because it is supposed to be. |
| Weeks 9 to 12 | Billing and sunset. Finalise billing workflows. Run a contract profitability review on the migrated clients. Begin sunsetting the old platform contract on its renewal date. |
| Month 4 | Off the legacy platform. Old contract not renewed. RMM and ticketing both run through Gorelo. |
Why this works
Every month on a platform you have outgrown is a month of slower workflows, billing leakage and technician frustration. Migration is real work, but it is finite. The disruption lasts weeks. The platform you land on lasts years.
The founder of that 10-technician MSP framed the decision as short-term pain for long-term gain: you either accept a platform that works badly because everyone already knows it, or you take the hit once and move.
If you have been comparing alternatives for more than six months without getting closer to a decision, the comparison is not where the problem lives. It is worth checking what your current contract actually says about leaving before you assume the delay is about the software.
Start your 30-day free Gorelo trial. No credit card, no mandatory onboarding, no implementation gate. Pricing is per technician and published on the pricing page.
FAQ’s Frequently asked questions about PSA migration
- How long does PSA migration take for a 10-person MSP?
You will be operational in the new platform within the first week, with most clients migrated by month three and full cutover by month four. The 10-technician US MSP referenced above handled well over 1,000 tickets in Gorelo during the first four months while still finishing the import of older client data. See the full case study. - Can I run my old PSA and my new one in parallel?
Yes, and most MSPs do. Running both side by side is how you protect productivity during the move. Cohort the client migration, keep the old platform live for clients you have not moved yet, and shut it down on its renewal date once the new platform is your daily driver. Your existing remote access tools can stay in place too: ScreenConnect has a native integration, and anything that supports URL launching can be wired to an asset shortcut. - Do I need a consultant to migrate my PSA?
Not with Gorelo. Some vendors require a paid consultant as part of mandatory onboarding. Gorelo’s onboarding is included in the standard trial with no implementation fee and no lock-in contract, and CSV imports run through chat support. Everything is documented in the Help Center. - What’s the hardest part of PSA migration?
Client communication, by some distance. The technical migration finishes weeks before clients stop emailing the old address. Plan the comms template before you start, send it twice, and accept that a handful of clients will need a personal reminder. - What MSP tools can I consolidate when I migrate PSA?
A typical migration to a unified platform consolidates three to five separate tools. The 10-technician US MSP moved off ScreenConnect, Teamwork.com and external estimating tools. Hall Computer Services eliminated $5,500 a month in standalone endpoint monitoring on top of consolidating PSA and RMM. The categories most commonly consolidated are remote access, project management, billing reconciliation, documentation and standalone monitoring. More on reducing tool sprawl.
