ScreenConnect vs. ManageEngine Remote Access Plus vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)

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

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

Optimal for SolarWinds Security Event Manager needs for smaller companies - it is a very cool product but has some limitations around EPS (which gets chewed up quickly if you're doing it the right way & adding servers/storage/FW & other network devices)... Also pricing model is GREAT (not consumption-based, which is the greatest grift the SIEM industry has created).

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

• 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

• It does a great job of notifying us when accounts have been locked out. We can then find out the device on the network where the login attempt occurred.
• Searching for incidents is now a lot faster with the implementation of the HTML 5 interface.

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

• 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

• All SolarWinds product suffer from slow response times in management portals. SolarWinds SEM is no exception. While it is much preferred over a "thick client" there is much room for improvement in speed.
• If you use the email alert features with SolarWinds make sure to prepare you staff and team for the large amount of emails they could receive. Make sure to reduce the number of alerts so your team does not ignore the alerts.

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 pretty likely that we will renew SEM when the time comes up. It is easy to use and maintain so there isn't much of a need to replace this product. It is also a pretty fair price for the capabilities provided by the SEM

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

If you are familiar with SolarWinds then you can use this product it's as easy as that. If you have never used a SolarWinds product then it will take a minute to get how they do reports and make dashboards but that being said the tool is great and can make things very easy once you get a feel for how it works and get everything setup how you like it.

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

The quality of support can vary depending on whom you end up speaking with. I was fortunate enough to work with a support representative who was very familiar with the product. He had even authored some of the support documentation on the website. On the flip side, I had two other experiences where I was simply directed to online training material.

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

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

Fortianalzyer can only do logs from FortiGate so usefulness is limited. Elasticsearch was a lot slower than Solarwinds and the filters were a lot harder to set up and use. The connectors for SEM were far more stable.

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

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

Incentivized

• For the price, it produced a decent value. It did a lot of the easy stuff well. I can't give any specific data given the objective of the product was to monitor very basic events in the environment.
• There are free options that can do a better job.

Incentivized