ConnectWise PSA vs. UpKeep Maintenance Management

MSPs wanting to find a single system to fill all their needs. Businesses wanting to increase their ability to deal with tickets, with advanced management and KPI monitoring. Small IT business who need more than just a ticketing system and are looking to make the leap to a full PSA with integration options, client portal and advanced configuration.

For companies that have larger facilities or multiple properties - this software is superb. You can track every maintenance plan - daily/weekly/monthly/annually - so nothing ever goes undone. I'm talking daily cleaning to refreshing the paint in the parking lot each year - you can easily schedule all of this maintenance within the app. Asset tracking - everything from machinery to tools to doors - you can tag and track all. Break/fix over time is huge - you can use the reporting function to see how many times something has broken over time - so now you can assess if it's more cost effective to replace rather than repair.

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.

• Tracking service issues - There's really no more excuses for not knowing when the machine was last serviced. Upkeep allows us to track that.
• Scheduling - Knowing in advance which machines will need maintenance in the future allows us to actively prepare for shut-down periods.
• General knowledge - Users can add their knowledge to the archives of each machine we have, helping to improve the trouble-shooting process.
• Easy to update, easy to make - It's almost too easy to create and update files for locations, assets, parts, and issues.

Incentivized

• I will say the calendar option needs a little bit of work.
• A calendar that looks more like lets say a Google Calendar would a nice feature.
• Better Knowledge base section.
• We attempted to get very good use out of the Knowledge however due to not really being able to organize it and it being very hard to navigate we had to go a different route for our documentation.
• Possibly adding a cleaner user interface and adding more customization for the organization of companies would help.
• A better layout for reporting would also be something good to have.
• The layouts available are so difficult to put together to get what you want out of a report. Virtually makes it impossible to get what you want out of them.

Incentivized

• Periodic maintenance needs are still a little tricky keeping in the system without flooding the user with too many work orders.
• It does not immediately update all the time. For example, closing out work orders and the number of total work orders stays the same until it’s rebooted.
• Search functions need improving.

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

We love how organized it has made our processes.

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

I think the platform is user-friendly but there have been some issues that colleagues have been complaining about. For example, the program tends to run slow from time to time. Reporting could be better. We could use more fields for categories under parts and assets.

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

I cannot say enough great things about their customer service. From the start of the purchase, Upkeep was extremely helpful and informative. They have been ongoingly keeping us informed and available to answer any of our questions as they arise. They ongoing learning portal is also helpful when new features and changes happen with the interface.

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

Everything went as planned.

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.

Previously had MEX, though had not implemented it throughout the business. It was way too difficult for the techs to use on the fly and was just a nightmare to implement. UpKeep, on the other hand, is a walk in the park.

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

• Compared to other task managers, the user cost for Upkeep is very high. But to the degree the staff are willing to work with you, it is completely justified.
• The concern with an organization my size are items slipping through the cracks whether that is internally or by our renter base. Upkeep minimizes this to a great degree.
• You need to get everyone within your organization to buy into upkeep. It can only be as good to the degree that it is utilized.