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ConnectWise Automate is a powerful tool that is actively used by customers to support and monitor their networks and servers. With this …
Starting at $700
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What is ConnectWise Automate?
ConnectWise Automate, formerly LabTech, is a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform. It provides powerful automation to discover and manage devices, monitor for problems, and scripts repetitive action.
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Popular Features
- Remote monitoring (21)7.272%
- Policy-based automation (21)6.969%
- Patch Management (20)6.060%
- Network device monitoring (20)5.151%
Pricing
Agents
$1.00-$6.00
On Premise
per month/per agent
Implementation Fee
$700
On Premise
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://info.connectwise.com/automate/b…
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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What is ConnectWise Automate?
ConnectWise Automate enables users to proactively monitor, manage, and support client networks. Key features of ConnectWise Automate include:
- Discovery – Automatically deploy and detect the status of devices, creating accountability and access to all managed devices.
- Management – Providing access to each endpoint managed makes it easier to resolve issues fast and keep downtime to a minimum.
- Patching – Configures Windows patch management with out-of-the-box policies for Microsoft and third-party software.
- Automation – Automates repeatable tasks to decrease costs and also keeps techs happy by automating the tasks they hate doing.
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ConnectWise Automate Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | No |
| Supported Languages | Automate's Control Center is in English, Agents are compatible with all Windows supported Languages |
Frequently Asked Questions
ConnectWise Automate, formerly LabTech, is a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform. It provides powerful automation to discover and manage devices, monitor for problems, and scripts repetitive action.
Reviewers rate Remote monitoring highest, with a score of 7.2.
The most common users of ConnectWise Automate are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
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ConnectWise Automate is a powerful tool that is actively used by customers to support and monitor their networks and servers. With this platform, users are able to provide fast and efficient service by remotely managing all clients' computer systems and maintaining software. This includes managing endpoints, providing patch management, and remote monitoring/maintenance for clients. Users also leverage ConnectWise Automate as a comprehensive asset inventory, support ticketing, monitoring, and alerting tool. It allows for screen sharing access to assist end-users and manage servers remotely.
LabTech, another name for ConnectWise Automate, plays a crucial role in managing technology assets for multiple clients. The service department of organizations uses it to handle Windows patching, alerting, and remote access for clients' servers and workstations. LabTech ensures that client networks are efficiently managed by independently scanning and deploying agents, installing patches, and monitoring critical machines. Additionally, LabTech serves as an RMM platform for managing, automating, and maintaining customers' networks. It enables remote support, patch management, and remote monitoring while providing flexibility and multitenant architecture.
ConnectWise Automate has gained recognition for its ability to serve as a central point for end-user support and automation management. Its flexibility and multitenant architecture make it a valuable tool for managing, automating, and maintaining customers' networks. By offering features such as remote support, patch management, and remote monitoring, ConnectWise Automate empowers organizations to provide top-notch services to their clients while increasing efficiency in IT operations.
Tight Integration with Connectwise: Users have consistently praised the seamless ticket management and resolution that comes from LabTech's integration with Connectwise. Several reviewers found this aspect to be very tight, allowing for a smooth workflow between the two platforms.
Powerful Scripting Capabilities: Many users have highlighted LabTech's scripting capabilities as a standout feature. They appreciate its versatility and ability to automate mundane tasks. This has made their work more efficient and streamlined.
Effective Alerting System: Reviewers have mentioned that LabTech's alerting system is highly effective in notifying the on-call team of critical events while separating non-critical issues. This feature has been particularly valuable in ensuring timely responses to important incidents.
Confusing and Outdated User Interface: Many users have found Labtech's management system user interface to be confusing, outdated, and in need of updating. Some users have described it as unintuitive and difficult to navigate, making tasks more challenging to perform.
Steep Learning Curve for New Users: A significant amount of configuration is required out of the box for Labtech's software, which has led to a steep learning curve for new users. Some reviewers have mentioned that it can be intimidating and complex, requiring dedicated resources to fully leverage its capabilities.
Issues with Stability and Functionality: Users have experienced issues with the stability and reliability of Labtech's infrastructure when using cloud partners. Several built-in scripts, screens, and modules were reported not to work completely, indicating some problems with functionality.
Users recommend using the self-hosted version of ConnectWise Automate instead of the cloud version, particularly for companies with more than 500 employees. It is suggested to evaluate other products if support is a priority and to dedicate sufficient time to planning before implementing ConnectWise Automate. Users advise familiarizing oneself with all the software's capabilities and taking advantage of online courses to gain a deeper understanding. ConnectWise Automate is regarded as reliable with regular updates and excellent support, although there is room for improvement in its reliability. To ensure long-term success, it is recommended to set up ConnectWise Automate correctly from the start and to establish the appropriate configuration. Additionally, when comparing to other free RMMs, users suggest considering the cost and setup required for ConnectWise Automate.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-13 of 13)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
October 06, 2022
Not For Small MSP
We use ConnectWise Automate for both Microsoft and 3rd party software patching management for our customers. We also utilize its monitoring capabilities in addition to integrated Auvik. Its remote management (Control) is much better than previous RMM we used in the past.
- Remote Control Support (Connectwise Control)
- Customize Report
- Vendors integration
- Dashboard
- Technical support
- Patching is hit and missed
I am the RMM Manager for ConnectWise Automate. We use ConnectWise Automate for: Patch Management, Process Automation, Software Version Control, Monitoring, Remote Remediation, PC inventory/specification checks, Warranty Management, and Security Features.
Every computer that we manage gets ConnectWise Automate installed on it, and it handles installing the rest of our tools stack and gets those machines assigned to the proper client with the proper settings for that client
Every computer that we manage gets ConnectWise Automate installed on it, and it handles installing the rest of our tools stack and gets those machines assigned to the proper client with the proper settings for that client
- Alerting / Monitoring
- Process Automation
- Software Version Control
- Selective Targeting of Automations
- Patch Management - kind of clunky, but works well
- Reporting
- Endpoint user management
October 07, 2019
My viewpoints on ConnectWise
ConnectWise has a CRM, ticketing system, help desk, and tools for project management, billing, and procurement. The business tool also has reporting and dashboards and uses over 300 third-party integrations.
ConnectWise gives businesses a complete business management and process automation platform for technology companies including IT service companies, professional services, software developers, security, and telecom. The workflow rules that are defined in ConnectWise cover various areas of the business, ranging from conducting targeted marketing campaigns to monitoring service delivery using service level agreements.
You can create work plans and project timelines and get detailed reporting on progress of projects. It’s also possible to use the workflow engine to manage deadlines and get notifications of overdue tasks.
- It includes a ticketing system using workflow automation, SLA, as well as performance monitoring and access tickets from mobile devices.
- Dashboards of the tool show overviews and detailed explanations of KPIs. Your business can also use the custom report writer to generate reports on whatever issue you want.
- You can use ConnectWise to automate the range of ITIL process, such as: incident management, availability management, change management, service reporting, service-level management, service asset and configuration management, request management, and knowledge management.
- You can track all your clients information and every single job you do for them. You can do quotes, send them, add providers to compare prices, manage the calendar of the employees, assign tickets to the correct person, there is nothing you can't do with this tool.
- Inside all the greatness, there are some works around that you have to do for specific duties that could be automated.
- Make sure you keep notes on each client profile, you can use the private note section, it is secure and it works as a reminder of everything you need to do about that specific client, only you and your employees will see those.
October 03, 2019
CW Automate automates our business
RealTime, LLC uses ConnectWise Automate in our managed services department. Automate provides rich data, simple endpoint management, and allows RealTime to automate tasks that were out of reach prior to changing to Automate about 7 years ago.
The primary uses are patch management, VMware management, automation, client onboarding, cybersecurity solutions deployment, reporting data, and tight integration with our PSA, ConnectWise Manage. Remote control via ScreenConnect, or Connect I think it's called now, is pretty seamless and we even have one-click access to backstage when using the web version of Automate. Security-wise, we use AD integration and Two-factor authentication to secure our connections to the tool in and out of the office.
The primary uses are patch management, VMware management, automation, client onboarding, cybersecurity solutions deployment, reporting data, and tight integration with our PSA, ConnectWise Manage. Remote control via ScreenConnect, or Connect I think it's called now, is pretty seamless and we even have one-click access to backstage when using the web version of Automate. Security-wise, we use AD integration and Two-factor authentication to secure our connections to the tool in and out of the office.
- It feeds tons of data to our reporting solution.
- A good overview of client endpoints, online status, av status and access to many tools to keep from disturbing end-users while troubleshooting their computers.
- Synchronizes with our PSA to automate billing changes.
- Tightly integrated with the remote control tools so we don't have to jump into a different console to make that connection.
- Alerting on multiple items (got one just a little while ago from the VMware plugin about a failed drive on a VM Host) and automatic ticket creation, and in many cases, automated remediation.
- Patch management is always a little finicky. Gets better every time.
- If you decide to hitch your MSP to ConnectWise Automate, make sure you have a clear plan of what you want to accomplish and please, save your self a ton of hassle and use ConnectWise consulting to get things going initially.
- Conflicting answers from support on more complicated items.
- Not sure if this applies, but you need to have someone at your MSP whose job is the care and feeding of Automate, as well as that script and automation creation. Not really a complaint, more along the lines of "you are buying a business automation platform, you need to dedicate people to get the most out of it."
May 01, 2019
ConnectWise Automate does more than our needs for an RMM - It provides a platform to grow
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
ConnectWise Automate solves our ability to provided scripted resolution to repetitive tasks for all of our clients. Regardless of the client or physical location ConnectWise Automate is the tool that allows us to perform a consistent task, document the work, and send the necessary details of it to billing. Network Services Group deploys it to every client. It is part of our comprehensive support stack.
- Automatically perform and records billable work time.
- Consistently perform representative tasks.
- Schedule tasks for off-hours to minimize disrupting our clients.
- Excellent source for details in developing new sales.
- Having to pay for licensing in advance. If you need additional licenses you need to plan ahead to have them available.
- Some ConnectWise Automate options such as third-party patching could offer patching for more software.
- ConnectWise Automate can be very complex so it can take time to understand all it can do. The more time you invest in ConnectWise Automate the easier and more powerful it becomes.
August 03, 2018
Connectwise Automate - Tons of power, tons of time spent
We used Connectwise Automate for many years. The product handles remotely monitoring PCs & Servers for any problems that match the automation either built-in or created in Automate. The problem solved is monitoring all the endpoints in a way no human could.
- Remote Control via ScreenConnect is wonderful.
- Scripting is the best of all RMM products we have tried.
- The customization capability of Automate beats all other RMM products.
- Because Automate is so configurable it also requires the most time put into it of all RMM products we have used. It requires a dedicated employee to just managing the product and the services provided by it. Without that dedicated resource, many alerts will be missed (due to configuration issues).
- Support is not very good. This is a larger scale Connectwise issue.
- The product is very resource intensive if you host locally. Upgrades are usually pretty buggy and add the need for extra resources.
- We found VMware and Dell Open Manage monitoring to be very weak compared to other RMM products.
September 08, 2017
Pretty good product for small/mid MSPs
We are a managed services provider and use it as one of our RMM tools. We use it to administer patching, reports, integration with antivirus software, integration with backup software and remotely connect to workstations/servers. Our entire service desk and professional services team use LabTech. We do not use it for network monitoring, Office 365 management or AD integration.
- The integration with screenconnect is my favorite. Being able to console in directly to a machine within a matter of a few clicks is great. Performance is better than teamviewer, logmein, Bomgar, join.me and vnc.
- Integration with third party products, such as Webroot or Shadow Protect. It has made deployments much easier to manage.
- Support. The support team at LabTech has always been great. They are always able to locate a knowledge base article or assist with an issue relatively quickly and resolve it just as fast.
- Patching. This used to work well, but since the 10.0 version forward, it has been lacking. Too often we have systems that don't patch and servers that don't reboot and manual intervention is needed.
- Reporting. Could use a lot of work. Even with going to Devexpress, we aren't seeing what we want for larger businesses and have to rely on creating our own reports through other tools.
- Support for third party products. I find a lot that if it isn't integrated to LabTech, the reporting on it lacks. Currently my biggest pet peeve, is how LabTech reports other antivirus statuses. Works great if it is Vipre, ESET or Webroot, but if you are using Trend, Symantec or something else, you don't get accurate data about version status or if it is up to date. Sometimes, it doesn't report an antivirus installed, even though it clearly is.
March 09, 2017
I trust Labtech to automate our support
We use Labtech to care for all of the endpoints under our management. Our techs love it!
- We switched over from Kaseya and immediately found that the scripting engine was far more powerful! We have many architecture, engineering and construction clients that require quite a few applications. We weren't able to script most of them with Kaseya, however we are now able to with Labtech (our biggest scripted application is 50gb in size).
- Labtech monitors everything! I found it far easier to have everything monitored and quiet it down than it is to keep adding in the individual monitors. We used to always miss something, now it's built in for us
- Compared to Kaseya, support at Labtech is VERY good. With Kaseya, I'd only get a call back if the server was hard down. Now I have chat support and someone gets back to me the same day every time.
- Labtech's UI was obviously built by a developer :-) I've seen some of the mock ups of what the product will look like in the future and it's a huge improvement!
September 16, 2016
How LabTech has improved our day to day operations.
We use LabTech primarily in our managed services group within our company. We use it to manage over 4000 client workstations and servers. It lets us consistently monitor, patch and remotely manage our client systems as efficiently as possible. We also use it for other tasks as well like assisting our clients with keeping their hardware and software inventories up to date and using it to deploy software to systems.
- LabTech lets us consistently monitor client systems for basic things like server up/down, low disk space and high CPU and memory usage. It also excels at automatically detecting and monitoring specific systems like e-mail and database servers. Because LabTech automatically applies the proper monitoring, onboarding new clients is very simple.
- We use LabTech for automation for repetitive tasks. For example, when a low disk alert is received, we run a script automatically to clear out temp and other unnecessary files that we've defined. A tech only needs to get involved if the script isn't able to automatically free up enough space. Automation like this greatly increases our efficiency.
- The ScreenConnect remote control is fantastic. Having the ability to instantly connect to a client system directly from LabTech makes our job a lot easier. Previously we had to depend on client specific remote access solutions which varied from client to client. Now we can connect to every client the same way.
- While LabTech does an excellent job at monitoring servers and workstations, it lacks in network device monitoring. We tried for a while to use the built in SNMP device monitoring effectively but eventually went with a different product which fit our needs. However, the nice thing about LabTech is that it is open with integrating with third party products and we are working on integrating the SNMP product
- Support can be slow to respond which is a minus. However, once you are able to get to someone, the techs are very nice and helpful.
August 17, 2016
LabTech is everything you need in a tool to support your Managed IT Services business
We are a Managed Services company and use Labtech to provide IT management services to our customers. We use it to provide the standard RMM tasks of monitoring and maintenance, patching, remote access through ScreenConnect, antivirus, scripting and automation. It allows us to have a small team of technicians that can work either remotely or on-site at our customers to manage a large number of customer machines.
- Scripting and automation is very strong with LabTech - my first visit to the yearly conference someone told me that "LabTech can do anything" and over the years I've learned that is almost entirely true.
- Remote access. LabTech/ConnectWise purchased the company ScreenConnect over a year ago and integrated it fully into the LabTech product at no additional charge. ScreenConnect is truly the best remote access software I've ever used.
- LabTech is at the top of the industry and we see the benefits from that with the 3rd party integrations that come from being a big player in the market. Big and small companies have worked with LabTech to make custom plugins for their products - products like Intel vPro, Microsoft CloudConnect, Veeam Backup, and ConnectWise are among our favorite integrations.
- Product updates are historically an area where I would like to see improvement, though to be fair they are working hard on improving it. Major releases often are delayed for months with no real communication or explanation. They have recently promised monthly bug fix releases, and they have stuck to it which is appreciated.
- There is a module that integrates with Active Directory and imports contacts to be synced with service tickets. The AD module could use a lot of improvements - mainly being smarter and being able to detect removed/disabled contacts.
- Network monitoring with SNMP is something that's been promised an improvement but haven't seen any movement on in a long time. The current functionality is barely usable so we've added additional 3rd party products to our toolbox to fill that need.
August 17, 2016
Labtech an excellent MSP framework
We are currently using Labtech to support our customers IT systems. For our larger customer's we provide Labtech as a service to augment our customers Internal IT operations.
Labtech provides a framework for our automation of windows systems management, using its API we integrate our UNIX systems management as well
Labtech provides a framework for our automation of windows systems management, using its API we integrate our UNIX systems management as well
- Labtech's scripting is some of the best we have used in the RMM market, while not as intuitive as others it is far more powerful
- Labtech's Integration with ScreenConnect makes connecting to many different systems quickly very easy
- Labtech currently can not provide very fine-grained monitoring that is needed for monitoring HA systems
- Labtech's scalability is limited by the hosting platform. a rebuild to use a more robust hosting platform in a scale out vs scale up methodology would be greatly preferred
- Labtechs managment system
August 15, 2016
LabTech is a platform you can build an IT service company on
LabTech is being used to remotely manage and monitor our clients' computers, servers, and networks. We use it to deliver automated services that allow us to increase profits by reducing labor. It is a force multiplier that allows us to deliver services consistently and timely across our entire client base. We have several applications that integrate with LabTech to help keep all our technicians informed and it aids in providing quick support to clients.
- Scripting - Automation is what makes LabTech great. The built-in scripts are a good start, but the real power comes from being able to customize the automation to make it your own.
- Remote Control - Not having to roll a truck for every service ticket is a huge time and money saver. It is fast and reliable. It works every time with no delays.
- Integration - LabTech's framework allows for tight integration with other applications and gives you freedom to select the components that are a best fit for your business. For example: you aren't locked into one baked-in antivirus or disaster recovery application.
- Network Monitoring - Network monitoring isn't the strongest point for LabTech. Mostly this is due to the licensing model. They aren't charging you for monitoring printers, switches, and routers so their isn't much incentive for them to make it a best-in-class network monitoring tool. However, remember integration is a strong suit and what it lacks here can be made up with third party utilities that can "plug-in" if you need something stronger.
- UI in flux - With LabTech 11 the next generation tile based computer management screen has been rolled out. While it updates the Interface to a much more modern look and feel. There are some things that need to be tweaked. Speed is a bit of an issue. On the plus-side, each month's patches have made strides of improvement and the developers are really in-tune with getting it right.
- Not a Microsoft SQL database back-end - I personally don't count this as a "con", but if you are expecting to find a Microsoft back-end it isn't. MySQL is the default database used with this product.
July 22, 2016
Thoughts about LabTech
We use LabTech to manage the computers within our organization, as well as a few thousand computers we manage for our customers.
- Provides good, detailed information about computers' properties - running processes, installed software, hardware, networking, logs, etc...
- Provides simple, fast, and powerful remote access capabilities.
- Can be configured to automatically respond when certain behaviors occur on monitored computers. The possible responses are limited only by imagination.
- Has powerful scripting capabilities.
- The user interface is improving with new versions but is unintuitive and sometimes difficult to figure out.