Acronis Cyber Protect helps you safeguard your data from various threats while natively integrating your data protection and cybersecurity.
$85
per year
ConnectWise Automate
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
ConnectWise Automate, formerly LabTech, is a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform. It provides powerful automation to discover and manage devices, monitor for problems, and scripts repetitive action.
Automate is by far the best of all RMM solutions we have tried. The overall ease of use and support is much better than we have experienced with other RMM vendors.
If you don't have to manage your client's email and their email archiver Acronis works very well. If you're looking for just a backup service for what's on a particular computer then Acronis is perfect. It is easy to use, so newcomers are not overwhelmed with features.It does not include as robust features as Barracuda and Cloudberry, but it does work well as just a backup.
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.
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.
We have renewed our subscription over the course of a few years now. We used to use Backup Exec and it was tedious and difficult to obtain our backups when needed. Acronis just fits our environment style and the way we prefer to do business and use our third party software.
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.
I give it a rating of 9 do to its ease of usability. It's ease of understanding how to setup - form - fit - and function. I have no sorrows when having to login to the console in order to setup a new backup schedule or retrieve and recover lost data.
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.
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.
I only got one issue resolved for more than 20 cases open. The escalation is ineffective. Most of the time, I have the feeling that I know the solution better than the support technician. Overall, case management is time-consuming, as our resolution rate is really low
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.
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.
I don't have any real key 'insights' per say except that it wasn't difficult at all, and do not be afraid to dabble in its tools and settings. It is quite intuitive with built in common sense. I cannot say enough good things about our companies experience when using this backup software.
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.
We've looked at SolarWinds, Veritas, etc. but none of them had the right combination of features, price and ease of use when compared against Acronis and its ease of implementation, setup and recovery options. We didn't like the wait time for recovery with some of the others and being able to quickly get a machine back entirely was important to us.
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.
The ability to back up multiple servers from one source is a great tool to have for businesses that have equipment in different locations on the same network with a variety of software data to back up such as SQL, Exchange or a Files Server. You can decide to purchase individual server licenses as well if you would like to keep the process separate or have multiple sites where your data is housed.
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.
