N-able™ Take Control (formerly Solarwinds Take Control) and
Take Control Plus are cloud-based remote control solutions built for MSPs and
IT service businesses that need to securely access and troubleshoot end devices. With support for Windows®,
Mac®, and Linux® machines, MSPs can work from those
platforms or their iOS® or Android® devices with the N-able native app.
With N-able Take Control, users can assign techs or whole departments to specific
customers or individuals so that…
$19
per month
Parallels Desktop
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Parallels Desktop is a virtual user session solution built to run Windows on Macintosh computers without rebooting. It is designed for OS X Yosemite with one-click tuning.
$49.99
per license
Pricing
N-able Take Control
Parallels Desktop
Editions & Modules
Take Control
$19
per month
Take Control Plus
$45
per month
Parallels Desktop 16
$49.99
per license
Parallels Desktop Pro Edition
$49.99
per license/per year
Parallels Desktop
$79.99
per license
Parallels Desktop Pro Edition
$99
per license/per year
Parallels Desktop Business Edition
$99.99
per license/per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
N-able Take Control
Parallels Desktop
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
No credit card required. Login info sent directly to your email. Access technical support during your trial.
I have used a number of remote access systems over my IT/MSP career, and Take Control stands out as the best I have ever used. If you are using the N-Able RMM I highly recommend, Take Control over the other options that can be integrated into the platform
I often get asked, why not the "free" stuff (VirtualBox), and/or why not VMWare. VirtualBox, etc. are not as performant for interactive usage. I think they are fine for small applications, perhaps some enterprise app usage, but for developers, it's not good enough. VMWare has become too enterprisey and lacks some of the user-friendly stuff that Parallels focuses on. Ultimately, for developer types running OSes for deep tasks, Parallels is unrivaled.
Take Control is really good at accessing a device with no end-user involvement. The user doesn't have to click on permissions or visit a particular site. We simply can take control of their device from the RMM dashboard.
If Microsoft issues a patch/update, I can schedule a release of a mass install to all client sites at the click of a mouse from within my office.
File Transfer - You can easily transfer files between Parallels virtualized desktops and the host desktop either through Copy and Paste functionality, or Drag and Drop. You can also configure shared folders.
Switch Between Virtual and Host Desktop - You can configure swipe gestures on a MacBook Pro to be able to switch between the virtualized and host desktop. You can also launch apps from the OS X Taskbar.
Performance - Apps in Parallels run quite smoothly on my 2015 MacBook Pro, as of 2020. Considering they are running on a 5-year-old computer, I give Parallels top marks for performance.
The ability to do snapshots, backups, and other types of branching for VMs is a little confusing and takes a bit to get used to
The Parallels tools frequently pop up windows advertising functionality, while this is helpful at times it can also happen when you are doing a presentation or typing in a password.
Careful using the VMs on a shared cloud drive such as Dropbox or OneDrive, there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of files which are updated when running a VM and this can clog up your Dropbox or OneDrive sync for minutes to hours even on a 2gb connection.
Users are familiar with the application which will keep us going for a little while. However since we are seeing a decline for a need for the software, I wouldn't be surprised to find that this answer changes dramatically in the near future. We would probably keep it to some extent, but we would probably reduce our licensing count.
It has a good integration, including the connection of peripherals. Taking files back and forth works well and I can attach my Home drive as a network drive in Windows. There is even integration with iCloud and other macOS services. There are also a few different display modes which are useful and fleixible (coherence, windowed, full-screen with multiple screens)
So, this rating is a little skewed toward older behavior from Parallels, as I haven't had to contact them recently. However, in an older version of Parallels, an "update" included pop-ups urging users to upgrade to the latest version, implying that their current version wouldn't work for the latest MacOS. I found it very frustrating to be getting ads for a new version of the software in a version I had already paid for. I contacted support about this and got a generic, uncaring response. It was pretty disappointing.
We were primarily a team-viewer customer before this point but the continued increases on cost, feature issues as well as core functionality and load issues we were beginning to see on the host machines we started looking for other options. As we were already a solar-winds customer utilizing the SAAS and Take Control for our Managed customers it was a no-brainer to look into Take Control. After a short review and the fact that we are already very familiar with the system via our management dashboard, it was an easy yes
Main two features that made the balance decission go to the Parallels Desktop were the possibility to pause the Windows partition easily (allowing to consume less resources in Mac and save battery) and the other one is the user interface feature called "Coherence" with allows you to show the Windows application windows as if they were native to the macOS, allowing for a better user experience.
Avoid extra costs: majority of users have a Mac, so if they needed to dod something that is Windows related, it will require to users have an extra computer to do that tasks, and this have a lot of costs
Developers have more concerns how websites behaves on Windows only browsers, which increased the satisfaction of users
