A Fantastic RMM That Stands Apart from the Competition
February 13, 2020
A Fantastic RMM That Stands Apart from the Competition
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech)
Automate is being used by the support services department of the company. We are a managed services provider, so we manage all of our clients from within ConnectWise Automate. It allows us to easily connect to client machines and servers, run scripts against the machines to install applications, and assist with installing patches without manual intervention. It definitely helped cut back a lot on manual tasks, which saves the team a lot of time on more menial tasks. It allows us to devote more time to other issues instead of the various management tasks for machines we support.
- Automated patching. The patch management is very robust and doesn't let us down. We can rely on it to do its job.
- Scripting. The scripting engine and layout is excellent. It's very easy to work with and adapt Powershell scripts and other script to the native format with its functions. It also gives detailed logs to help determine why something went wrong if there's issues.
- They have conflicting scheduling paradigms. When scheduling patching for clients, the 1st Friday is interpreted as the very first Friday of the month, even if this is the 1st of the month. For scripting, the 1st Friday of the month is interpreted as the 1st Friday of the 1st FULL WEEK of the month. This makes no sense to have two different interpretations, and makes it unreliable to schedule recurring scripts to fall when recurring maintenance does. The scripts need to be done manually because of this.
- There is no way to dictate reboot orders for patch policies. This tied directly in with my first point. We have some clients that require reboot orders. This is not possible without having different patch policies for each server and specifying a time this way. But, there aren't small enough increments of time to make this reliable, plus patching duration might vary. Excluding reboots with patching and scheduling reboot scripts fixes this. However, this can't be done once on a recurring schedule due to the different scheduling paradigms already discussed. We have to schedule these manually each month.
- I do not work in a position where I know the exact numbers of what ConnectWise Automate costs versus how much we make from the clients we support. But, I know for a fact we spend a lot less time hassling with issues of Automate as compared to Kaseya, which we used before Automate. That was the main reason we ditched Kaseya.
- Management of antivirus deployments is much cleaner than with Kaseya. Kaseya used a customized version of Kaspersky, and it never quite worked. There was a large amount of time wasted on tackling the problems and getting the antivirus to work. We never have to do that with Webroot being deployed through ConnectWise Automate.
- Kaseya Virtual System Administrator (VSA)
I touched on this in the previous section some. Kaseya's choice of managed antivirus was very poor (KAV, a tweaked version of Kaspersky) when it first started. It took them a long time to fix anything, and the fixes usually produced new and different issues. Kaseya kept pointing at Kaspersky and claiming they needed to fix it, and Kaspersky pointed at Kaseya. They never owned up to it being THEIR problem since THEY chose to partner with them. It was Kaseya's responsibility to make sure their tweaked version was up-to-date and working. They never fully followed through, and that was a major reason we ditched them.
Prior to switching, Kaseya was also going to jack up their prices by nearly double what we were paying. They also had noticeable turnover with the sales rep assigned to our company. It was also difficult to get timely attention from them when we had questions or issues. The bottom line is DO NOT use Kaseya. Our experience might not reflect everyone else's, but I can definitely say ConnectWise Automate has been much better, and their support has been fantastic the entire time.
Prior to switching, Kaseya was also going to jack up their prices by nearly double what we were paying. They also had noticeable turnover with the sales rep assigned to our company. It was also difficult to get timely attention from them when we had questions or issues. The bottom line is DO NOT use Kaseya. Our experience might not reflect everyone else's, but I can definitely say ConnectWise Automate has been much better, and their support has been fantastic the entire time.
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?
Yes
Did implementation of ConnectWise Automate go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy ConnectWise Automate again?
Yes