Absolute Visibility vs. ConnectWise Automate

I do think it is well worth the cost and consideration, especially if you are using it on devices containing electronic medical records, personal health information or personal privacy information or devices that contain proprietary information, critical business information or other information that needs to be securely protected. It can also be used to track a device (individual) as well if that is your goal. We use it as an extra precaution to track our mental health clinicians that do home visits. It allows us to keep track of their whereabouts, in case an issue arises at a client's home. We are able to send someone out to check or assist, alert emergency services or send law enforcement if a situation should arise.

Incentivized

I recommend it to all IT colleagues; regardless of the size of the PCs with which you work most of the time, the application allows connection stability between computers that make it possible to continue working or taking care of the infrastructure from afar.

Incentivized

• I tracked a stolen computer all the way to Africa from USA and disabled it.
• I set up geofences with alerts. As soon as a computer got a wifi connection outside of our fences it would email me its current location.
• Absolute's persistent technology was helpful. -Even when a pawn shop would attempt to "wipe" a device before getting it online, as soon as it got online it notified me of the OS re-installation and current location. We could call authorities and they could recover the device for us. And they were happy it made their job easier and deterred the pawn shop from reselling stolen devices.

Incentivized

• Desktop sharing / view with chat to the operator, file sharing and pass-through for keyboard strokes
• Computer/server monitoring with thresholds and warning
• Search - tracking down computers when you have many by name, logged in user, IP
• End user ticket raising is built into the tray icon which make access really easy

Incentivized

• I do not know where I would consider this product to be deficient in functionality, difficult to use or any major changes that needed to be addressed.
• I wish the pricing of this product was a little lower, but I do think it is well worth the cost and consideration, especially if you are using it on devices containing electronic medical records, personal health information or personal privacy information.

Incentivized

• They have conflicting scheduling paradigms. When scheduling patching for clients, the 1st Friday is interpreted as the very first Friday of the month, even if this is the 1st of the month. For scripting, the 1st Friday of the month is interpreted as the 1st Friday of the 1st FULL WEEK of the month. This makes no sense to have two different interpretations, and makes it unreliable to schedule recurring scripts to fall when recurring maintenance does. The scripts need to be done manually because of this.
• There is no way to dictate reboot orders for patch policies. This tied directly in with my first point. We have some clients that require reboot orders. This is not possible without having different patch policies for each server and specifying a time this way. But, there aren't small enough increments of time to make this reliable, plus patching duration might vary. Excluding reboots with patching and scheduling reboot scripts fixes this. However, this can't be done once on a recurring schedule due to the different scheduling paradigms already discussed. We have to schedule these manually each month.

Incentivized

The primary reason for this rating is that ConnectWise Automate is currently so integral to our operations that moving away would involve more man hours than we would realistically have to invest. However, ConnectWise Automate is also completely capable of meeting all of our business needs and customizable to the point where if something is not meeting those needs out of the box, it can be modified to do what we want. From only installing software on machines if a different software package exists, to push a new version of that software is available, to check if credentials for user/machine have been updated to our new standards and then updating them if they have not, ConnectWise Automate is capable of doing everything we ask of it.

Incentivized

Basic use of the product is fairly easy. Information about the machines you manage can be found in customizable dashboards, which can be unique for each user, and, therefore, properly suited to the users' needs/job function. This is not a 10 because some of the interfaces are very clunky (Patch Management), and some features are not intuitive and not well documented (reporting). Scripting and Patch Management have a fairly steep learning curve (For structure in patch management and syntax in scripting), but once learned, they work well.

Incentivized

It used to be great, but then they broke reporting, speed and responsiveness with version 11 and the new Patch Manager. It's really bad and their support people are way behind on fixing so many bugs. They have really gone downhill. If they don't get it together soon, we'll start looking around.

Incentivized

ConnectWise Automate lets you manage more endpoints, with enhanced productivity and improved service, all without increasing expenses. It can manage patches and updates across thousands of computers. We also use it for customized monitoring and alerting on workstations and servers. Monitoring is really robust and granular. It does a great job of gathering a TON of data about the network, and that data is searchable. There are a bunch of different reports built in. Integrates with Manage, Control, and other applications. It does a ton of stuff out of the box, and has endless customization options.

Incentivized

The Online training has been re-done and needs a lot more work. When you look at training in different roles, it shows a lot of the same topics but no explanation to what is different about them. Several times that topics are the exact same, but they make you re-take the same information for a different topic, instead of marking that you have already completed that portion of training.

Incentivized

Start small and learn the in's and out's before making policies and rolling things out company wide. Ask the questions of why if you don't agree with something or your company does things a different way. Usually they are done a certain way for a reason. Start simple with roll out and slowly enable or add on the functionality that is needed.

Incentivized

I have only used Absolute Data and Device Security (DDS). It was recommended by my Dell sales rep. After reviewing the product info, and loading a demo, it became clear that this is what was needed to add to our existing security to protect us from information loss due to a data breach on our portable devices. I presented this solution to the appropriate departments, and they agreed that this was something well worth the investment.

Incentivized

I believe the monitoring and alerts in Continuum command is better, but [ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech)] does have stronger scripting, and perhaps a better interface. N-Central is inferior on all fronts to both. I did not make the purchasing decision. I would myself likely pick Continuum if I had to make a on the spot choice.

Incentivized

• Recovery of stolen assets.
• After recovering a few devices and students becoming aware of Absolute being deployed, it had a prevention effect deterring additional theft.
• It deterred pawn shops from accepting our stolen machines.

Incentivized

• We found we were able to provide good monitoring of our customers sites which was an objective. However, that came at a significant time investment that never seemed to be finished.
• We were able to negotiate a price that worked for us for an up-front purchase which was nice.
• We found the pricing to be very competitive.
• Bottom line for us was despite the pros of the product, we found other RMM solutions to be a better overall "value" due to not having to dedicate technicians to maintaining the product.

Incentivized