ConnectWise Control provides all the major features needed to remotely support your users at a cost you can afford.
August 04, 2017
ConnectWise Control provides all the major features needed to remotely support your users at a cost you can afford.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ConnectWise Control
We use ConnectWise Control across our franchise group as a means to remotely support our franchisees, operating shops across Texas and Louisiana. While Control primarily provides remote access for our IT department to render technical support, franchise shop general managers and accounting departments also receive support from our production and accounting specialists at the franchise company using the remote control software.
- ConnectWise Control boasts an easy to use UI, so even members of my accounting department can use it to support remote locations, yet there are enough advanced tools that our IT department perform remote maintenance tasks using features like the toolbox, stored credentials, blank monitor/lock keyboard/wake lock/suspend input, screen capture, and file transfer. There if you need them, yet out of the way if you don't.
- ConnectWise Control's featureset is robust and complete, yet the pricing is the most affordable we've found. It's typically quite difficult to get enterprise-grade software and features a price scaled for small business, but ConnectWise have made it happen. We couldn't be happier about the cost for such a complete product.
- ConnectWise Control's robust theme capabilities allow us to present exactly the website and client software we want for our franchisees. With our name and branding, our franchisees feel more confident that the right people are in control of their computers, able at a moment's notice to give them the support they require.
- The screenconnect mobile app is nothing more than a glorified web browser, providing a less than optimal experience on mobile, especially in those instances where you must render support from your phone. It is passable, but clunky, with the app retaining the split-column design from the desktop browser but without the real estate to make it effective. Features like touchID and password manager integration for logging in, and access to "mobile share" features to send files from the phone or other phone apps would go a long way to improving the mobile experience.
- There are some features to turn a support session into a meeting, but these features are difficult to find and understand, and things like annotation are hit and miss in these situations. Not the most crucial feature, but there are times when a remote support session turns into a training session, and the flexibility to adhoc add additional users to the conference and have all the meetings features work properly would go a long way to closing the loop on the product's featureset.
- Customization and configuration of the client and admin web interface, while fairly complete, is confusing and arduous. I wish they would take another stab at improving the setup for greater ease at customizing and making changes when required.
- Managing automatic client screenshots through groups and other policy is still absent and is still one of the most desperately needed features. There are many situations where having a screenshot of a client before taking control is vital, but not having discrete control over when these are taken and for which clients is a privacy nightmare.
- It's easy to get ROI on the product for us when it allows us to quickly and remotely assist our franchisees with issues that directly affect their productivity and bottom line. Helping push 4 or 5 repairs through the shop through IT or accounting assistance gives us all the return we need. Helping the CEO with a computer issue from his Hotel room at a conference across the country is just icing on the cake.
Dameware, while the most affordable of the solutions I researched, simply doesn't have some of the remote access features we were looking for. As a long time user of Dameware, I had always been pleased with its performance on the local network, but never had the features I wanted to support users outside of the Corporate WAN. LogMeIn and GoToAssist, while wonderful products, were simply too expensive for our small business and their pricing model didn't align with our computing environment and business needs. ConnectWise Control was the only product I found to have the features we wanted at a price we could afford. While the product lacks polish in some areas provided by the bigger remote support products, the overall package provides the features we need at a better value for our company.