How to choose an AWS Managed Service Provider: 10 questions to ask

An AWS Managed Service Provider runs part of your business. Choosing one is less about price per hour and more about how they will behave at 3 a.m. when something breaks. These ten questions help you tell a real operations partner from a reseller with a support inbox.

1. Are you validated by AWS? The AWS MSP program involves an independent third-party audit of the provider’s technical capability, security controls and business health. Ask to see it, and check the AWS Partner Solutions Finder.
2. What exactly do your SLAs cover? Look for response and resolution targets by severity, and SLAs tied to business impact, not just “ticket acknowledged within X hours”.
3. Do you work from documented runbooks? Mature MSPs run monitoring, incident response, patching and backups from written runbooks with clear escalation paths, so outcomes don’t depend on who is on shift.
4. How do you handle security and access? Ask about least-privilege access, MFA, how engineers access your accounts, and whether each customer has a dedicated, isolated setup.
5. Who owns the AWS accounts? You should keep ownership of your accounts, data and infrastructure code, with a clear exit plan if you ever change provider.
6. What will you report, and how often? Expect monthly service reviews covering incidents, SLA performance, security posture and cost, with recommendations, not just a usage report.
7. How do you manage cost? A good MSP actively reduces your bill through rightsizing, commitments and FinOps reporting, and shares those savings with you openly.
8. Which time zones do you cover? Check that someone is awake and accountable during your business hours, and that 24x7 monitoring really means people, not only alerts.
9. How do you test backups and disaster recovery? Ask for agreed RPO and RTO targets and evidence of recovery tests, not just “backups are enabled”.
10. How will you improve my environment over time? Regular Well-Architected reviews, automation and modernization recommendations show a partner invested in your long-term success.

How Graaho answers these questions

Graaho is a validated AWS Managed Service Provider and AWS Advanced Tier Partner. We run 24x7 operations from documented runbooks, give each customer a dedicated AWS account and least-privilege access, report in monthly service reviews, and can keep data in EU AWS regions under a DPA. If you’d like, we’ll walk through all ten questions with you on a free call.