Item: ConnectWise Automate
Rating: 9
Author: Eric Milles

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As an MSP, our RMM is one of our most used tools in our toolbox. ConnectWise Automate has been our best resource for remote support of our clients. We use it for our day-to-day monitoring, management, and script engine resources. It's integration with other ConnectWise products we use give us seamless management and analysis of our managed environments.

Pros and Cons

Silent tools and command access that works behind the scenes so clients aren't disturbed.
Easily assembled scripts from a robust scripting engine.
Event monitoring and alerting.

Integration with some SIEM products is lacking.
True event monitoring to support NOC activities isn't as robust as some competitor's.
UI is a little clunky and has not been updated in years.

Most Important Features

Scripting Engine
Integration with ConnectWise family of products.
Data analysis.

Return on Investment

Minimizes research time to pull information manually.
Allows work to be completed in Backstage that does disturb the end user.
Once setup and integrated, management is not a significant time suck.

Alternatives Considered

SupportNinja and Enable

Enable has a clunky interface more suited for management reporting versus technician toolbox and Ninja is very basic and lacks any significant bells and whistles behind basic remote command interface. Very poor in features to the point if being quite disappointing during a recent trial we had.

Key Insights

Do you think ConnectWise Automate delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with ConnectWise Automate's feature set?

Yes

Did ConnectWise Automate live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of ConnectWise Automate go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy ConnectWise Automate again?

Yes

Other Software Used

ConnectWise Manage, SentinelOne Singularity, BrightGauge

Likelihood to Recommend

For remote management, reporting, and alerting across multiple environments, Automate handles these tasks like a champ. Clients and sites are neatly arranged and easily accessible in a drill down tree. Dataviews can be ran to glean reports on various data relating to devices. One often used is Software Listing. You can pull a complete, searchable list of software on devices by company, site, and individual machines. This is great for planning and completing software deployments. Many other dataviews are available, including complete chassis details of devices.

ConnectWise Automate: The Robust RMM of Choice

Overall Satisfaction with ConnectWise Automate