ScreenConnect vs. ignio AIOps 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

It's good for issue resolution, user access request automation, standard report generation, health checks, executing self-healing as configured in the attributes. Currently not good at real-time monitoring to trigger an action. Health checks have to be on a scheduled basis.

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

• ignio handles 100+ use cases covering the entire organization including applications and infrastructure.
• Centralize the dashboard to view and executed the health of systems in our environment.
• It handles CA services desk Incidents and requests. Using automated tools with power shell scripts.
• ignio event management helps the organization to manage the alerts well and make an informed decision.

• 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

• There is a lot more the desktop tool can do. For example, we need to apply an upgrade to get the tool to talk to our infrastructure while employees are working from home. The tool was initially installed with the assumption that the desktops would be in UserLand. Instead after COVID-19 the desktop/laptops have been used for over a year on people's home networks. As of right now, we have to sync when the devices are connected to VPN. Moving forward with the upgrade, we will be getting this data over TLS when they are connected to the untrusted networks.
• The concept of ignio AlOps requires OCM efforts within most operational teams. This isn't necessarily the fault of the tool itself, but when implementing ignio, or any AIOps tool, the team will get a lot of pushback as an outside team is centralizing the operational improvements. The tool should have a centralized intake process that will allow the collection, ranking, and management of automation opportunities. ignio AlOps should then simulate the proposed efficiencies from implementing something within the backlog. Right now a lot of local teams are having a hard time getting on the same page as the enterprise teams, and a common methodology for prioritizing (even if overly simplistic) would go a long way to enterprise planning.
• These tools are very new and things get added to them all the time. There should be a way for the product's stakeholders and process owners to understand the additional value ignio AlOps is gaining over time.

• 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

It is a very good product and it helps our organization.

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

ignio AIOps version upgrades were a heavy lift. Having to learn a new language versus an industry standard language took time. More consideration on overall internal long-term support needs to be determined.

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 was up than Dynatrace

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

We had performance issues in older version butterfly. But the new version cheetah is simply amazing

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

We have built a healthy relationship with the vendor support team throughout the implementation phase, all incidents raised were resolved within the SLA without a fail

Implementation team has provided necessary training & enablement.

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

Online training materials are shared by the implementation team and it was good.

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 am happy with the way team has implemented and shared the product for our organization. However, would like to see it get extended to the other line of business too.

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

Self HEAL OOB Capabilites

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

Quite Scalable!

• 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

• ignio has had a positive impact on our organization by saving 7,000+ hours within Operations and automatically resolving 84% of our service requests.
• ignio has increased our alert coverage by over 60%.

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

Incentivized