ConnectWise PSA vs. Integrify

BrightGauge lets us know when we have critical issues that need solving. A massive influx of tickets all at the same time triggers an investigation. Usually, it is tied to a server going down, which we can address. It would not be helpful for a small MSP or IT department with just a few daily tickets. The stats are better used to track a large amount of clients.

Incentivized

If you know workflow programs, and if you are tech-savvy, then this program will help you with nearly everything. If you need a workflow made better or just need one period, then this will help. You can use it for nearly anything where there is a process. Unfortunately, in any of these scenarios, if you are not tech-savvy, then you do not want to use this program. It will be frustrating. Same can be said if you are handing the program off to someone. It can be too complex for some people. That said, if they are willing to learn the program, then you may be OK. But ultimately, you will lose time and effort. For us, Integrify was used in Admissions - the workflow had to be very specific, and was very complex when it came to the re-enrollment process; however, I would not have suggested it to HR. While it could have helped them, it would have resulted in many hours lost because of the complexity of the program if I were to have left. I'm not saying I was the be-all, end-all for it in HR! I am saying that they had never worked with a workflow program before, and it was going to cost her more time than she could spare.

Incentivized

• Tickets- Customers can email and a ticket is generated and falls under their profile for historical records. You can save documents and select if they are customer facing or only internal facing. The option as well to have communication in tickets whether its internal facing or customer facing is nice to have when you're trying to keep a record or important details for just internal means and the customer doesn't have to see all the jargon.
• Procurement - It's great to have this integrate with Quosal Sell. Quotes being processed into opportunities and then into a sales order which connects to a ticket or project is pretty easy to use. It does have a learning curve but once you get the hang of it, it's straightforward. Everything is pretty connected, whether keeping track of products customers have purchased historically through us, to knowing what ticket is associated to an RMA.

• Easy to develop an intake form.
• Workflow diagram is simple to follow and make adjustments to.
• Dashboard is helpful in identifying bottlenecks in the process.

Incentivized

• Annual or more than annualized data is desperately needed for MSPs to show trends, current limitation is previous 240 days for ConnectWise tickets
• Alerts when datasets do not sync properly, I have to rely on my team to notice vs get an automated alert from BrightGauge
• Small thing, but it would be nice to have more options on the report scheduler to enable a start date. If you wish to do it quarterly, you have to start the schedule exactly 3 months from the next run.

Incentivized

• It's complicated. No, really. When you log in, you won't know much about what you're doing and you may only get about 10% of what the program is capable of. This is not a good thing as some will just give up before delving further into the program. If it is too complicated at the outset for someone who doesn't understand forms or how these kinds of programs work, you will not gain new clients unless you are there the moment they create an account. You can have someone reach out, but - in my experience - the decision to continue with a program or write it off is in the first ten minutes.
• When I first looked at it, printing larger flows was an issue. They have since addressed this, so the point of mentioning this is that (while they eventually looked back at the bigger picture) looking at large and small views would have been helpful.
• The people I consulted had issues with Javascript. There were ways to get around it, but these people did not have the time to spend on that and asked me to find another solution.

Incentivized

ConnectWise has uniquely positioned themselves with the Modern Office Suite to have direct integration with a nearly full suite of tools for MSPs. Although each tool may not necessarily be the absolute best tool on the market, the efficiencies leveraged through direct integration make the entire suite an obvious choice for most companies.

Incentivized

I have been using ConnectWise since 2004 and I am impressed with the progress they have made. However, there are still bugs that don't work quite like they should. If I were to run reports and get consistent answers along with a couple other annoyances, then I would score CW as a 10

Incentivized

We use the cloud version of ConnectWise and in the last 5 years it has never been down for us during business hours. I can only recall 1 time when it was not available during off hours when we wanted to use it.

Incentivized

Some tab for certain areas load speeds could be better. Dashboards can load slowly when they reference multiple reports. Some reports can load slowly based on the tables and views they are accessing. At times the SQL queries being performed in the background can actually timeout and a tab or screen will fail to load.

Incentivized

The front line support techs are wildly inconsistent when it comes to the level of support. Sometimes you get someone who just wants to throw links to University documentation at you, sometimes you get someone who truly tries to understand your issue and confers with peers and managers to find an answer, and sometimes you get someone who just wants to create a ticket and escalate immediately. If you ask three different techs the same question you will probably get three different answers, one of them being, "That's not possible."

Incentivized

We are a telecoms company. Whilst CW were very happy to sell us their product and tell us how good it is for telecoms. All the training material is geared towards IT MSP's. The on-line training material was virtually useless. We found the implementation a bit of a joke. They tried telling us 12 hours of implementation time would be sufficient to launch the product. We erred on the side of caution and paid for 24 hours. This was quickly eaten away and we were nowhere near ready to go-live. I find the on-line chat facility is of much more use for us.

Incentivized

Rather than letting them sell you a block of time for implementation, create a list of things that must be completed do declare the implementation complete. The implementer will have the discretion on what they set up and in what order. They will be trying to end their services in as little time as possible and may not get things set up right. You are best advised to hire a third-party wizard that has done many of these setups. Record the audio and video of all of your implementation sessions.

Incentivized

Everyone but dynamics had holes in it. Dynamics is good, but it requires more development time. I spoke with some people that have CW and liked it. But when I inquired after our frustrations, I discovered they had a full time scheduling & logistics CW manager and the field people were using it purely like any other more simplistic ticket system. They said it would be impossible otherwise. The one big difference is the transparency of the sales effort. The other sales people were honest on the limitations or potential challenges and worked with us. They also worked with our agenda. At CW they don't have that option. The consulting time is eaten through a pre-formatted agenda which they communicate too you, not with you.

I think Integrify was a good product for its cost. The only thing it really lacked was project management capabilities. It was difficult for our manager to go into the dashboard and see what work his employees were working on, who has what, and how long they have had certain tasks. It is doable, but just not very quick and simple.

Incentivized

ConnectWise seems to have a good understanding of the IT service industry. During the required onboarding training, they even preach configuring only features that you need right now, as you can always scale up later. The feature set for the most part takes into considerations all aspects of an IT business, whether small or enterprise, or growing from one to the next.

Incentivized

• The positive impact is no one has to return to the office to look at notes - they can look up the support ticket on their laptop, tablet, or phone.
• The positive impact on ROI is keeping all of your support tickets organized in one spot and multiple techs can update them.
• The positive impact on ROI is that you have happier customers as you can update the support tickets no matter where you are at

Incentivized

• For the people I consulted - it helped them put more into the personal aspects of the business. While certain processes ran, they could keep an eye on the data, but were otherwise free to focus on the important aspects of the business. They were a marketing group. Their copywriter was able to be a copywriter instead of just filling out forms all day!
• It's adaptable. You can cross-pollinate any department with it, provided you know what you are doing. So, you are not getting a program for HR, and another for Marketing. Integrify can span the whole business. You can cut costs in focusing on one workflow product rather than a handful.
• It did have one negative impact on the place I consulted. Their tech-savvy person left in early 2019, and nobody else was able to use the program. Nor did they want to try when opening it up and trying to understand it. I was able to help out, but ultimately they were discouraged. I would recommend training multiple people if you use this product, and emphasize their support team!

Incentivized