ScreenConnect - An awesome way to Connect to a Screen!!
May 19, 2017
ScreenConnect - An awesome way to Connect to a Screen!!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ScreenConnect
As web designers there are some things that it is easier to show rather than explain. Having the ability to share screens and actually walk our clients through some of the systems they need to use in order to manage their website on their own computer is invaluable. Because we also provide email and other cloud based software services to our business clients we also need to be able to directly assist them on their own devices (for example to help with setting up an email account with their preferred email client). With so many variables (different operating systems, types of software etc.) there is simply no substitute to being able to actually see what the client is seeing and (with their permission!) take control of the computer where required. It is essential that is is easy for clients to be able to initiate a report support session especially as the level of their IT expertise can vary widely. ScreenConnect excels in this department. We're a small team and we're all hands on within the business - as such, everyone has access to ScreenConnect so they can use this to assist clients where appropriate.
- Ease of setup for our clients - if you're providing remote IT assistance to someone then it is often the case that they're not particularly IT savvy. As such, connecting remotely can be challenging from the get-go with some systems. Not with ScreenConnect. It seems uncannily good at working out the best way of launching a support session depending on the browser and operating system the client is using and as such we rarely have any issues initiating a support session.
- Branding - it's great to be able to completely white label our support software to include our logo, colour scheme and more. Trust is an important factor when you're asking to connect to a clients computer remotely and they are often reassured to see familiar branding from launch to the end of the support session.
- Price - compared to the competition, ScreenConnect is very affordable. The fact that we can subscribe to a licence that is paid for monthly was a big factor when choosing which remote support software to use. If we'd have had to sign up for an annual plan we probably wouldn't be a client!
- Branding - although we love the ability to re-brand the software it did take some fairly serious effort to do this. I suspect we spent about 3 to 4 hours getting this right and certain aspects were not at all intuitive. However, this is a one-time job so whilst it took some effort at the outset it's not a big deal (and support were very helpful).
- Overall setup - you definitely need to be a confident IT user to get to grips with the system. It's incredibly customisable (both branding and functionality) but this does come at the price of ease of use (at least initially). Once you have things configured and a workflow in place then moving forward all is good.
- Support response time - all support tickets opened took at least 18hrs for a response to arrive and sometimes longer (e.g. over the weekend). The responses were excellent and follow up questions were quickly answered but I would have appreciated faster initial response times.
- A definite time saver!! Trying to explain how to configure an IMAP email account in Outlook to someone over the phone is tricky!! Much easier to connect and assist remotely.
- Professional image - hard to directly quantify in terms of ROI but I believe using a high quality system like ScreenConnect to assist clients is great for our business image. We want to be able to help our clients and being able to resolve problems quickly and efficiently is good for us and our clients.
We evaluated Teamview, Zoho Assist and Bomgar.
TeamViewer works well however you cannot re-brand and is very expensive. A single tech licence is about 40% more than the equivalent ScreenConnect licence but the real killer is that this has to be paid annually. Zoho Assist worked well but is not as feature rich or brandable. Approx the same cost but why would you use this when ScreenConnect beats it hands down for the same money? Bomgar worked well but like TeamViewer is expensive and only available on an annual licence.
TeamViewer works well however you cannot re-brand and is very expensive. A single tech licence is about 40% more than the equivalent ScreenConnect licence but the real killer is that this has to be paid annually. Zoho Assist worked well but is not as feature rich or brandable. Approx the same cost but why would you use this when ScreenConnect beats it hands down for the same money? Bomgar worked well but like TeamViewer is expensive and only available on an annual licence.