Atera vs Forecast

For me, Atera has been a great tool that I added to my arsenal. I wanted something where I could manage my clients' Windows updates. As I used the software, I began to realize all of the various things Atera could do. Now it is a critical component of my business and I would not be able to properly function without it.

Forecast is well suited for tracking schedules, especially if it is only being controlled by a single department. When it comes to using Forecast in a larger ecosystem with more "cooks in the kitchen" it would be helpful to have the software more easily integrated with other software.

• Easy to deploy, both in general or to a specific customer.
• Remote management tools that are in line with every other major solution out there.
• Real-time alerts that allow for easy monitoring of vital systems.
• Configurable threshholds on alerts so the system can be tuned to only notify when there is a problem according to certain metrics.

• Assign and allocate resources.
• Identify lean departments and identify areas to increase headcount.
• Manage agile teams.
• Identify bottlenecks in departments or resourcing.

• Ticket automation, more options to specific cases or conditions, and change client assigned to ticket, or be able to assign a ticket for the client without hassle of emailing them back or having to create a fake contact.
• Include notes for client that are not file attachments, maybe integration with a cloud service like Google Docs or OneDrive.
• Integration with other remote access tools would be helpful.

• Not as intuitive as its companion software, Harvest. This software takes longer to learn when on-boarding new staff. It is also difficult to view time notes without needing to physically open them up. This could be improved by expanding the "on hover" functionality. Personally, having spent as little time in workflow software is really important, as it gives me more time to code.
• Because we use this software to plan schedules, items often fall through the cracks. I would like to see some more sophisticated syncing with not only Harvest but also with Asana.
• Lack of integration with Asana. It would be nice to pull data from forecast and display it in Asana. This would be helpful for understanding how much time I have to spend on a project rather than bounce back and forth between web apps.

As of right now, we have found nothing that can offer as many features as Atera does along with the affordability. They are doing monthly releases each month and not just making small changes (shared scripting library, chocolatey support, Install packages, Splashtop SOS support, Scheduled tickets to name a few). The uptimes are great and accessibility to the dashboard has yet to be limited. We are a happy customer and bordering on fanboy status now

Atera support provides answers to my questions lightning fast. They have never left me feeling like I'm out there on my own. I can ask questions by email, or by chat, or by opening a ticket with them and they are always on it quickly. They also have a forum where other Atera users can help you if you need it, and you can also add feature requests via the forum.

I have not needed support for Forecast.

We had tried Syncro, Naverisk, Pulseway - dollar for dollar stack for stack, Atera blew them out of the water. Atera is easy to use, easy to manage, has flourishing facebook and reddit groups for support and they update their knowledge bases daily. Their communication and support has been bar none.

I have not used any other scheduling software other than Forecast. The company selected Forecast because it is used in conjunction with Harvest. The pair of web apps can be used to pull detailed data. This is very important to our agency, and making data-driven decisions is exceptionally important to our agency mission.

• The lack of cost per unit is a great asset. Our team consists of two members who really use the product, and the cost being per member means we can have hundreds of machines and still only pay for two users.

• Allow departments to run efficiently.
• Quickly identify whether departments need to hire.
• Easily visualize project gaps in resources.