Grasshopper is an IP telephony business communication solution that provides companies with a toll-free or local phone number. It has both desktop and mobile applications and includes features such as custom greeting recording, call forwarding, call transfer, call reporting, and voicemail.
$18
per month for a single user
N-able N-central
Score9.2 out of 10
N/A
MSPs
and IT professionals use N-able™ N-central® to monitor and manage devices and complex
networks remotely. N-central provides
visibility and efficiency as the user's needs scale. N-central can help users:
1. Proactively monitor everything on a customer network—not just servers
and workstations—and troubleshoot.
2. Stay on top of threats with features like MFA, antivirus, integrated endpoint
detection and response, data backup, disk encryption, email protection,…
Grasshopper is well suited for basic needs of texting in and out as well as calling out if you would like to avoid using your personal line. It also eliminates the need to have a dedicated land land in your office or business. You can obtain a vanity number and forward calls through grasshopper.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
N-Able is perfect for an MSP environment. It gives all the standard functionality an IT professional needs out of the box and can be configured to show almost anything required. For example, we have configured a dashboard to show when our backups need attention for each customer. This is achieved by running a small script on repeat via N-Central everyday/evening, and the result gives us information on the dashboard to help us identify exactly what is working and what needs looking into.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Remote tasks - entry-level techs can run basic tasks without physically touching a piece of equipment.
Remote support - remote controlling user devices is easy and saves a lot of time with having to initiate a remote session.
Management of devices, particularly patch management and anti-virus management - you can automatically approve and deploy patches and schedule automatic AV scans.
It would be nice to have the ability to transfer some calls to another Grasshopper IVR, for those customers who mistakenly dial the wrong number (we have two incoming numbers, one for corporate and one for sales).
Likewise, it would be nice to have the ability to forward to a toll-free number, which would have allowed us to work around the inability to transfer between IVRs (see above).
Lastly, it would be great to have an 'emergency' switch setting (default off but could be toggled on) that would let us override all IVR settings and transfer all incoming calls elsewhere (either to a direct dial or toll free number) for those rare times when we cannot take any calls (such as a weather emergency OR the one time each year we take all of our staff on a retreat) - that would allow us to send all calls to a backup answering service rather than just voicemail.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Customer support just points to online guides and I feel they aren't helpful.
During the trial they turn on a lot of features. In my experience, if you play around with the features, they charge you for them. Keep this in mind if you move forward with N-Able - they will charge for "trialed" services.
In my experience, some services that you're being charged for can't be disabled or monitored by you or your team. You only see them on the monthly invoice.
In my opinion, the "Scripting Automation" doesn't provide value. You're either going to be writing your own batch or Powershell to make scripting work.
In my opinion, monitoring software deployments is painful.
The default monitoring template can't be duplicated, edited, or referenced. You'll find that the default monitors in an unusual way and will throw needless recurring alerts into your ticketing system. To avoid this, you need to create a template from scratch which takes many hours to set up.
In my opinion, they're more concerned about a quick buck than customer service. "Buyer beware" company.
Overall we have liked our solar winds experience, however, as our company has grown to support larger enterprises, this product does not have the functionality that our teams need in order to fully support them. The lack of granularity with backups and lack of ability to support nutanix environments is slowly drawing us into the use of other tools.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The user interface is fairly straight forward, with logic groupings for objects. I did not deploy this software, but am one of the daily administrators. Once you get the correct agent package (Which can be a challenge) the integration into AD is not bad. The UI could be more customized, but that may have been a design choice.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
When I was setting up my account I contacted support a couple of times. They were also very professional, personable, and helpful. Their response is prompt and thorough. I'm confident I can get any question answered as well as help with any issue I might have. That's pretty important to me.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Every time we have reached out to SolarWinds they are quick to respond, even offering support chat 24/7. Their support team is great and works with you to find solutions to issues. They have taken items we had issues with before and used those to create updates so that the issue is handled better in the future.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I have not used any other phone services like Grasshopper. I know that there is another option out there called Ruby, which is more like a virtual receptionist but since I did not try it out I cannot compare the two. When I started my company I found the services that Grasshopper offers to be perfect. It still works for us and we have no need to change to anything else right now.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Our version of SolarWinds was old and running on old hardware, but it was way easier to setup and do things with. It did not do everything N-able does such as patch management, or at least we didn't have a module to do so if one existed. However it definitely seemed easier to use and possibly more stable.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
