ScreenConnect vs. DeskRoll Remote Desktop vs. ManageEngine Remote Access Plus

We often need to create an ad-hoc session with a device that is not under our management. We find ourselves doing this more than ever in the COVID world. Many people are working from home on personal machines with their employer, our client's permission and we are facilitating more support for these personal machines. Connectwise Control [(formerly ScreenConnect)] gives us a robust resource to control the device, navigate anywhere we need, execute various commands, and engage in an on-screen chat with the client. The session is very simple to create and very user-friendly to initiate. We do not recommend it for Android, Apple, or Chromebook applications. There is little to no support for these platforms.

Incentivized

During the pandemic, our company worked remotely. Various staff in our company had technical difficulties or needed assistance installing software in order to work. DeskRoll Remote Desktop helped us to make this process seamless. Rather than deal with the aggravation of trying to walk someone through something over the phone, we were able to get things established in a simple, easy way.

Incentivized

Remote Access Plus works well within the LAN, but it's a bit slower outside of it. Its ease of connection is a plus. It is not very suitable for connection through the APP, and consumes too much RAM during the connection, sometimes even causing the endpoint to freeze.You can access the CMD and perform tests without disturbing the user, or review the underlying services.

Incentivized

• The interface is easy to use and makes sense. It's easy to understand how to organize a large number of machines involving multiple clients. But, it's also applicable for smaller set of machines too.
• The connection speed is very quick. I've used solutions in the past that take a variable amount of time to connect, or they just take a long time every time. Control is quick every time. It doesn't get in the way of being able to support the machines on the other end.
• The connections are reliable. I haven't experienced random disconnects throughout hundreds of instances. It was a breath of fresh air coming from the previous solution we used. I consider Control a gold standard for what a great remote connection solution can be.

Incentivized

• Ability to remote in at any time
• Can support unlimited clients with hardware and software issues
• Multiple remote client logins
• Cost!

Incentivized

• It is embedded with great features like voice support, video assistance, and even text support, which provides a great user experience.
• It provides features like remotely shut down the end system, renaming the endpoints, full list of applications running, process use, memory consumption, disk usage which are very beneficial.
• We can even uninstall unwanted applications, delete malicious files, kill heavily used process, modify registry values.
• It helps in to keep track of windows event that occurs in the system, it also provides report in desired format.

Incentivized

• I'd like to see the ability to selectively log off the remote machine via a button on the toolbar. Currently it's a setting to always lock on disconnect, or never lock on disconnect, requiring the tech to manually lock the machine if called for at the end of a session. Its a small time save that would add up!
• The chat feature could be expanded to be a lot more useful. Allowing clients to start conversations, and have conversations ping an email address if no one is monitoring the dashboard would be extremely valuable.
• Some clarity on licensing when providing host-passes to guest technicians would be a boon, especially for one-off support sessions with vendors.

Incentivized

• It could be more cost-effective.
• It could include better "help" or "how-to" sections for people who are not as tech savvy.

Incentivized

• The mobile app is not very functional and causes a lot of problems.
• The bandwidth it consumes on each connection is a lot.
• It consumes too much RAM during connection.
• The keyboard, and basic functions like pasting or transferring files are more complicated.

Incentivized

I would recommend this product for both internal remote control of end user workstations and remote access to other clients over the internet. It provides a secure and feature rich product that allows me to complete any necessary tasks without ever leaving the office. I will continue to renew as I'm eager to see what they do next. I would however wish the cloud service had a better API to work in conjunction with team collaboration or chat services to make it easier to connect with end users who use multiple workstations. (Slack or Stride provide this functionality)

Incentivized

On the whole SC is a very powerful tool that is a vital part of the IT service arsenal. On-site visits are an "emergency" only type of scenario. Just "showing your face" is not winning any browny points for me. If my client sees my face, it's usually just to upgrade hardware or to deal other aspects of business. SC provides me and my client the bulk of the info I need to get projects done.

Incentivized

My rating is due to the fact that there are still many things to improve, and things that could be opened up a little more to allow the administrator to have greater control, such as being able to have one more endpoint in a custom group, which is essential and cannot be done.

Incentivized

In my 5 years of using the product, I am only aware of one time when the service was down and is was due to a backbone outage upstream.

Incentivized

It performs well. It also has full control over windows security and does not get hung up like GoToMeeting when trying to install remote software at the prompt to install as admin / override. I have used TeamViewer, WebEx, LogMeIn and GoToMeeting. This is by far the best at spontaneous, remote control. It is also very easy to get a novice user connected to the session.

Incentivized

There have been two times when something has went wrong and I needed immediate assistance in order to be able to use Screenconnect to be able to help clients and response has not been immediate. The response time has been within 24 hours. Both times if there had been easier to navigate self help I would have been able to help myself. With better self help and a speedier response it would definitely be a 10 as they always respond and help. Just a little more difficult or slow than it should be at times

Incentivized

I find ScreenConnect to be very simple and effective overall, with the main problem being that a number of my clients can't download the app due to existing firewalls and so on. Otherwise it does its job well, and I'm happy with it.

Incentivized

ConnectWise has done everything they could to help us in any situation. Great support team and their new updates are always providing features that we need. Its a simple solution that works the way we need it to. Their legacy pricing model is still much better than their subscription based model however it is still fair pricing

Incentivized

I have worked with Citrix, AnyDesk, LogMeIn, VNC Connect, and many others. I ultimately installed ConnectWise as a self-hosted solution, based on the incredible list of features and capabilities, and the pricing at the time. I continue to use the product as it is still one of the best solutions out there and is certainly capable of growing and expanding to meet the needs of my business.

Incentivized

Cost, ease of use, file transfer and chat capabilities.

Incentivized

Remote Access Plus is a lot more user friendly and can easily be used by junior IT staff efficiently.

It is also a lot more powerful with a range of additional features and functions

Incentivized

I have used multiple remote desktop support software in the past (Bomgar, Team Viewer, Logmein and Join.me) and this is far the easiest of the bunch to use. It is very easy to create a session and easy to maintain remote desktops from their access view (where you install the software and can get in at any time) I highly recommend this product from ConnectWise!

Incentivized

• Instead of waiting 30+ seconds to initiate sessions, they initiate and display a desktop in two or three seconds. The amount of frustration this avoids is immeasurable.
• Once installed it doesn't need more handholding, i.e., having the remote enter a username/password. It is always just there.

Incentivized

• It saved time, which always saves money!
• It allowed us to save money on additional software licensing - we now use Quickbooks through the use of DeskRoll Remote Desktop.
• DeskRoll Remote Desktop allowed us to transition to work-from-home easily, which saved us valuable time during the pandemic.

Incentivized

• Faster recovery of issues from screen sharing
• managing patches without manual intervention
• deploying software to multiple workstations at the same time

Incentivized