IT and Managed-Service Provider Client Gifts: Thank the Office Manager, Not Just the CEO

We sell a $35 logo mug gift box, printed, packed and shipped to each person's address. This guide covers the other options too.

Key facts

• IRS Publication 463: "You can deduct no more than $25 for business gifts you give directly or indirectly to each person during your tax year" (Pub. 463).
• The same publication: a gift to a company meant for a particular person or a limited group "will be considered an indirect gift" to the people who receive it.
• One MSP on r/msp delivered "Custom Engraved Yeti Tumblers with the POC's name engraved under our logo" to "Anyone who paid 10,000$ or more this year," with hot cocoa and chocolates inside (r/msp, Dec 2021).
• Branded mugs split MSPs: "cheap/cheesy" to one MSP, while another wrote "I always see our mugs in rotation at the client's offices" (same thread).
• 87% of end-users would keep a branded drinkware item because it is useful (ASI 2026 Ad Impressions Study; a promotional-products industry survey).

This page is part of our client gifts by profession guide. Agencies and consultants have their own page: agency client gifts.

What do MSPs send clients for the holidays?

Two r/msp threads, "Do any other MSPs send Holiday gifts to clients?" (Dec 2021) and "Christmas gifts for your clients?" (Dec 2023), drew dozens of answers. A sample:

Not every gift landed. One MSP stopped sending bakery cookies: "Hardly ever got a thank you. So I stopped. I figured that clients were so overwhelmed with gifts during the season they probably didn't even realize who was from what."

Who gets the gift: the CEO, the office manager or everyone?

The person who calls you about the printer is not the person who signs the contract. The owner signs; the office manager or point of contact (PoC) deals with you every week; the staff are the users you support. The MSPs above handle it in layers:

A shared box can disappear before its contact sees it. One r/Dentistry commenter, on the gifts specialists send to their office: "The gifts are almost always consumed by staff before I even know they have arrived" (r/Dentistry). So address each box to a person.

Which clients? A common pattern in both threads: only the top tier, by contract value. "Mine is done by volume of sales each year. And it's usually the top 25% get gifts with a floor limit," one MSP wrote. Others named "the top 20 clients" or customers who paid "10,000$ or more." Including every named contact is plain arithmetic: with no minimum, at $35 delivered each, 30 contacts come to $1,050. More on drawing the line: which clients get a gift.

Is a branded mug cheesy, or does it get used?

MSPs disagree, in the same thread. "Company Branded marketing material (mugs, flash drives, etc. ) just seems cheap/cheesy since it's stuff that's given away for free anyway," one MSP wrote. The reply: "I always see our mugs in rotation at the client's offices." A third: "Get them a personalized yeti tumbler, with a small company logo on the other side."

The middle path from that exchange: a gift, not swag. That means a small logo, something to enjoy now (the treat), and a card addressed to the person. ASI's 2026 Ad Impressions Study, a promotional-products industry survey, found 87% of end-users would keep branded drinkware because it is useful; a mug in rotation at the client's office is that finding at work, with your logo on it.

When should an MSP send client gifts?

December is the crowded slot. Two MSPs moved:

• Thanksgiving: "We do a drop off around thanksgiving of really stuffed gift baskets to all our clients. We do it around thanksgiving specifically to beat all other vendors and be more memorable for them" (r/msp, Dec 2023).
• July: "We do ours in July. My thoughts are, they get SO much stuff in December from their other vendors/etc, it's hard to stand out" (r/msp, Nov 2020).

Our box is a holiday gift: the tissue's gold seal reads "Happy Holidays", and each order-by date above covers printing, packing and shipping for that holiday.

Does a gift to a client company count per person for the IRS?

This section quotes the rule. It doesn't apply it to your business.

"You can deduct no more than $25 for business gifts you give directly or indirectly to each person during your tax year. A gift to a company that is intended for the eventual personal use or benefit of a particular person or a limited class of people will be considered an indirect gift to that particular person or to the individuals within that class of people who receive the gift."

"Incidental costs, such as engraving on jewelry, or packaging, insuring, and mailing, are generally not included in determining the cost of a gift for purposes of the $25 limit. A cost is incidental only if it doesn't add substantial value to the gift. For example, the cost of gift wrapping is an incidental cost. However, the purchase of an ornamental basket for packaging fruit isn't an incidental cost if the value of the basket is substantial compared to the value of the fruit."

IRS Publication 463 (for use in preparing 2025 returns; page last reviewed April 30, 2026; read October 29, 2026)

More in are client gifts tax deductible? and, for clients with their own gift caps, client gift limits by industry.

This is information, not legal or tax advice. Check the current rule (or ask your tax professional) before you send.

What should the card say?

Thank the person for the work they did with you, not for the contract. On a Personalized Gifts Delivered order, the card is printed (not handwritten), with no logo or brand: one message and one sign-off for the whole order, up to 300 characters. The message can include {first name}, filled in from the address list, and you preview every person's card before you pay. The order page tells you if a message is too long to print.

• "Hi {first name}, thank you for every ticket, every heads-up and every password reset you handled with patience this year. You make our job easy. Happy holidays."
• "{first name}, thank you for a smooth year together. Here's to a quiet holiday, no outages and a great 2027."

More lines: holiday card messages for clients.

How do I send a box to each named contact?

List people, not offices. For each client, write down the owner, the office manager or PoC, and anyone else who works with you every week, with the address where each one actually works. Remote staff need their home addresses: how to ask clients for their address. Start from our client address spreadsheet template.

Can an MSP pack and ship the boxes itself?

Yes: an MSP can build and ship client gift boxes itself, and by our estimate 25 logo mug gift boxes take about 9 hours of hands-on work, plus a week or more waiting for supplies. That's a mug printer's proof, about 8 supply orders, 25 labels, 25 cards and about 3½ hours of packing (about 8 minutes a box). Per box, it comes out about even with our $35: about $38 with USPS counter postage, about $34 with commercial postage, with $1,192.84 paid up front for the mugs, the retail supply packs and 25 postage labels (our DIY cost comparison, prices as of Oct 29, 2026). One mug packed without a collar can break at the handle and must be bought, packed and shipped again; a stale address sends a box away and back.

With Personalized Gifts Delivered, it's one order. Add your logo (or type your website and we'll find it), or a photo or a few words for a personal gift; check the preview of your mug and card; add your address list; and pay $35 per box. We print, pack and ship each box to its own address. We ship from New York, to the lower 48 states and Washington, DC, except Texas for now. Ships within 2 business days of a complete order (your design, your address list and payment). Ships by USPS Ground Advantage or UPS Ground, with tracking, and usually arrives 2–5 business days after it ships. Delivery dates are carrier estimates, not guarantees, and run slower in mid-December.

What to know before you order

• One box is one person's gift. One mug, one card, one first name. The break-room treat the MSPs above describe is a separate gift; the named contacts' boxes ship from one list.
• One logo and one message per order. Every card in an order carries the same message and sign-off, with each contact's first name filled in. A different signer for some clients makes an order of its own; one box is a complete order.
• Gift limits. Each box is $35, delivered. Some employers and industries cap the gifts their people may accept; the limits, quoted from their sources: client gift limits by industry.
• The treats. LINDOR truffles contain milk, soy and barley malt (gluten); read the labels. The allergy and diet checklist covers what to ask first.
• Where we ship. The lower 48 states and Washington, DC, except Texas for now; no Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, other US territories, APO/FPO or international. The order page flags any row we can't ship to, so you can fix it or take it out.

Where Personalized Gifts Delivered fits for an MSP's named contacts

Each box ships to its own contact, addressed by name, at the desk or home address on your list. One order covers each named contact:

• Your logo, small, on a mug to keep: an 11 oz white ceramic mug with your logo printed small, the kind of mug one MSP sees "in rotation at the client's offices."
• Something to enjoy now: a 1.5 oz packet of Ghirardelli premium hot cocoa and 4 Lindt LINDOR milk chocolate truffles packed inside the mug, black tissue closed with a gold "Happy Holidays" seal sticker, in a matte-black gift box with a magnetic lid.
• A card addressed to the person: printed with your message, greeting each contact by first name, in an envelope closed with a gold wax-seal sticker. You see every contact's card before you pay.
• To each contact's own desk or home: packed by hand in foam, inside a plain white shipping carton; the label's return address shows PersonalizedGiftsDelivered.com.
• A record of who got what, per person: when your boxes ship, you get one email with a spreadsheet of recipient, ship date, carrier, tracking number and $35 per box. If a box arrives broken, send us a photo within 7 days of delivery and we'll reship it free. If a box goes astray because of an address on your list, we'll reship it to the corrected address for what the reship costs us, with no markup, and tell you the amount before we send it.

That's $35 per box, delivered, whether you send 1 or 50. Send each client contact a box with a card that greets them by name: a custom logo mug gift box, shipped to each client, no minimum.