ConnectWise ScreenConnect Reviews

The ability to access our servers behind the firewall with granular security. A new project required a third party consultant to access a pair of our systems and the consultant didn’t have a remote control solution (most have their own). We took a crack at ScreenConnect and we really liked what we saw and how it worked properly. While we still use MS Remote Desktop for the majority of our in-house remote control, the hosted solution fit the bill in this instance. We’re keeping it for future third party access in the future.

We were able to provide access to our consultant without granting him access to the entire network with a VPN connection, and we could limit their access to just the systems needed.

While I found the documentation to be adequate, others in our IT department did not. My immediate supervisor said it was lacking in documentation and had “too many words” to describe how to use the product when crafting instructions to send to our third party consultant who was going to connect to our system behind our firewall.

We've used it for two to three months. We trialled this product about a year ago before they offered the cloud hosted solution, and it was OK, but a little cumbersome to setup your own host. It was only for in-house IT use, so VPN and Remote Desktop filled our needs just fine.

Being public internet based, the usual connectivity issues are present, but it seemed to be fine.

We only use it on a handful of systems, so I couldn’t answer this. I would assume it should scale fine.

Technical Support wasn’t and hasn’t been needed.

We still utilize MS Remote Desktop for normal in-house remote support, but for outside access it fits the bill for us.

I found it very straight forward and easy to setup. Getting that initial access working properly for the consultant was a bit of a challenge, but it was a matter of following all the directions fully that ultimately allowed his to access the system properly.

Reasonable. It wasn’t too high that I wanted to look for alternatives, and not too cheap to make we wonder about it’s stability.

Last year I looked at several offerings for other providers. Bomgar, LogMeIn, Google Chrome Remote Desktop, UltraVNC, etc. Bomgar and LogMeIn were too expensive. Google Chrome RD seemed too cumbersome to get setup so a third party could access systems. UltraVNC was considered but I had security concerns.

SaaS Cloud Hosted was dead simple. Make sure the access rules on your firewall(s) have the right allowances in place. It does require internet access for both the host and remote machines, which can be a challenge for some setups.

We mostly use the unattended access. We only use the on-demand, remote support solution on occasion but it's good to have on the off chance that we're dealing with a customer who is not under contract with our service. We have just three people that use ConnectWise. We're not using any extensions.

Ease of use is good, it's very easy to use, very easy to understand. It gives us remote access to the PC without any issues. That's the most important thing.

The complaints I have are more regarding my side - not on the users' side - regarding setting up. For my company, just installing the software and using it is very easy. But if I need to give one of my customers access to their machines, the process that you have to go through is some 15 to 20 steps. You have to create a group, and then you have to assign a policy. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to set up someone for remote access to their own machine. When I was using LogMeIn Central, that process was just as simple as sending an email and having the person create an account. It's much more of a pain in that respect. If they could fix that, make that more automated, that would greatly help improve the quality of the product.

Also, here's the biggest thing. What we need this product to do is to be able to control Windows Updates. LogMeIn Central allowed us remote access but also allowed us to push and install Windows Updates, and third-party updates. LogMeIn Central raised their price extremely high, so we ended up finding this solution and going with it. But there is a new product on the market called the Atera. It does everything ConectWise does, but it also does all the patching and Windows Updates. Eventually, we're going to be moving to them and shutting off ConnectWise. Not only does Atera do Windows Updates and patching, it has a ticketing system built in, remote control, unattended access, file transfer, printer sharing, etc.

When we made the switch to ConnectWise we lost the ability to do patching. That forced us, for our larger clients, to move to WSUS. We had to set up a VM on those larger clients to push Windows Updates and patches into the network until we found Atera. We have both ConnectWise and another product installed because ConnectWise won't do patches for people that are not on a domain. If I have 15 or 18 computers in a workgroup, I can't use the WSUS to push updates. I have to use a third-party tool to do patch management. If ConnectWise wants to keep people on their product, they need to integrate patch management.

The reason we still have ConnectWise is because we just haven't had the time to learn Atera yet, because it's an entirely new system and with a new UI. It does so much more than what ConnectWise does that it's taking us time to learn how to use it. Eventually though, once the guys feel comfortable enough, we will probably discontinue using ConnectWise. That is, we will discontinue the unattended access product but keep the on-demand product.

Another issue is that the ConnectWise installation software is not recognized by Microsoft as a legit piece of software. So any time we go to install it, it will pop up a screen saying that the software is unrecognized and that it could be malware. If we're in front of a client when this happens, we have to explain to the client, "Oh, this is just a Microsoft thing." But we never had that problem with other solutions. We don't have the problem with Atera, and we never had that problem with LogMeIn Central's installer. But this solution actually comes up in Smart Screen as if it's malware, when it shouldn't.

The other problem we have is using this product on Apple devices; it's the same thing. During the Apple installation, it comes up as blocked in Apple, because Apple doesn't recognize it as a certified install. What happens is, I can't install the software remotely because there are eight steps you have to go through on an Apple machine to actually make the software work because Apple blocks it. Again, it thinks it's malware. 

So this issue is happening and is even worse on Apple products than Windows products. With Windows, you have to tell it to install it anyway and it will install; it's just an extra step. And with the way people are really wary these days about malware, we have to say to clients, "No, really, it's okay, it's just Microsoft, it's not malware, we promise."

That needs to be fixed. They need to get their signed certificate updated into Microsoft's database at the least. We don't have a whole lot of Apple computers that we support. It's not a huge issue for us and it certainly wouldn't be something we'd leave ConnectWise because of, but the issue with Microsoft is a big issue. Some 400 to 500 of our endpoints are Microsoft operating systems.

We have had issues. We have had circumstances, for reasons we don't know, where the service will stop running, and when the service stops running that computer no longer becomes reachable. We haven't really seen that so much on desktops, but we have seen that happen quite frequently on server operating systems, Server 2008, Server 2012. You can install the product and then a week down the road it will just stop. 

I have a client where we just manage their 12 servers, and it will shut off on six of them. So we'll remote into one of the servers that is working, and then we have to do remote-desktop to the other servers and rerun the ConnectWise service, and it will come back up. So we have issues with ConnectWise running on servers, and here I am talking about the unattended access software.

Scalability is fine.

Tech support is very poor. We have asked for help on the issues we've encountered in the past and the support people they have just answer questions with more questions, or they don't actually help. Fortunately the software is pretty stable on its own.

We've never been able to resolve any issue using the support. We end up giving up and just dealing with it until we find something better. 

We used several pieces of software. We used LabTech, we used GFI which is now owned by another company. We used Kaseya, and we've used LogMeIn Central. LogMeIn Central was the one we started off with seven years ago. When LogMeIn Central raised their prices we moved to a couple of others, but then LogMeIn Central came back and offered us the price that we had before, so we switched back. Then LogMeIn Central raised their prices again, and so we left and went to ConnectWise. The reason we switched was price. LogMeIn Central literally raised their prices almost four times what we were paying before. We were paying about $285 a month, and they wanted us to pay $1,025 a month. 

Other than the issues I've pointed out in this review, ConnectWise works really well. We are pleased with the product, it does work.

For the price we pay, we definitely feel it's worth it, but there are some contenders in the market that are coming out now, whose products are as good; they are offering more features and the price is actually less than ConnectWise. All things considered, the biggest thing is the lack of patching in ConnectWise. If they could integrate that into the product, that would be a game changer, if offered at the same price point.

For the actual remote control portion, we've never found a better solution than LogMeIn. As far as consistency goes, once it's installed it works. I would say that ConnectWise is a very close second to LogMeIn, with the exception being on the server side software. But we've never had a problem with it on the desktop side with any operating system, Windows 7, Windows 8, 8.1, 10. Once the software is installed it works flawlessly and works great.

Other products we evaluated were Kaseya, a product by GFI but it was bought out and I don't know its name now. And we did evaluate the LabTech Software as well.

It's very easy to use. I created a YouTube video to show people how to use it and it was relatively quick.

In terms of advice, something that helps us is that we build agents by client and we have a secret web page that people can download them from.

Remote access to end-points. We don't use the unattended access functionality. We've had two people using it. We did not enable extensions.

It's much easier to use ProtectWise Control than to use, for instance, TightVNC or VNC Viewer. It's faster to connect to end-points. 

It's very easy to use. Provides connections that are always on. It was nice to be able to see a list of end-points and see whether or not they were connected so I could troubleshoot any network issues I had.

I don't really have any suggestions for improvement. I didn't even use the full ConnectWise suite. I'm sure if I did, there would be other good stuff, too.

There were no issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

Tech support was very good. I got through in one or two pass-throughs, and that was it.

Setup was very straightforward. All I had to do was write a GPO on my domain controller and it automatically installed the agent that I downloaded from the software. I literally had to do nothing.

I think the product's pricing is a good value. I paid $600 a year and that was fine for me. It was about $50 a month. Licensing is all very straightforward.

I had other options, but I had a colleague who used this one so I tried it out and it seemed good, so I bought it.

Honestly, the only reason that I'm not continuing with this solution is that I'm going to be using a software called ManageEngine which has its functionality built into it. So I don't want to have two things that I'm paying for.

Try it first before you buy it. It's really all just based on your personal preference. I think that the interface looks good, but someone else might not like the interface. It really just depends on how you like to set up your workflows and whether or not you like the way that they've set it up.

The following features of this product are the most valuable to me:

• Persistent access
• Remote access
• Ease of end-user installation session

We use it for help desk and server monitoring.

I would like to see a full-blown fat client/desktop application. LogMeIn has a desktop client which makes it much more convenient to access my computer list and create ad-hoc sessions rather than navigate to a web page and login.

I would like to see more user-friendly configuration. Setting up permissions are possible but not easy to do. Setting up permissions and groups in the portal is NOT simple or intuitive by any stretch. It’s actually convoluted and took me a while to figure out how to accomplish it. It’s done with Roles and you need to assign users to roles, (not roles to users) and then associate the groups with roles. Here is a quick screenshot to illustrate:

I have used this solution for three months.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability. The product supports about 30 networks covering about 250 users.

I rate technical support as moderate: no phone support, only chat and email. I would also like to state they now offer phone support. They don’t advertise it but it’s possible to get a human on the phone and get help with this stuff. I did. I also had an issue one day and opened a ticket but it took all day for someone to call me back.

I used them all. LogMeIn Central had good persistent access but ad-hoc wasn’t good.

Initial setup was simple and straightforward. Just had a tough time with permissions and alerts.

This is a premium price but is worth it given the responsiveness of the app.

MSP Anywhere. This one is more responsive and easier for end users to install.

The product works very well and is easy for end users to install. I really like it.

Our primary use for the solution is remote support, as it is simple and pretty easy to use. I have enabled the command prompt extension for Windows.

I use both the unattended access functionality and the remote support, but mainly primarily just the unattended access.

It gives me the ability to remotely connect to machines that I manage without user intervention. 

The unattended access, because it allows me to remotely support my clients with ease.

There is an issue which is pretty rare, but I find it at least when connecting from my mobile device. I am forced to refresh the screen by changing the screen quality to get screen updates. This only happens sometimes.

The lagging can be attributed not necessarily ScreenConnect, but the internet connection on the other end. Therefore, I have not had any stability issues with being kicked out or anything. I have had some stability issues with the app on my phone. Though when working from the PC, I really do not have any issues.

No scalability issues.

I have not had to deal with their tech support very much. When I have, I was not thrilled with their support. I do not have a lot of time to deal with the attention which is needed to fix issues.

I switched to ScreenConnect ConnectWise because of the pricing increases with LogMeIn. I originally switched to TeamViewer, then with TeamViewer, it was just cumbersome with all the various versions that you have to deal with. ConnectWise was priced fairly, so I switched to it.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. I am using the hosted version, so there was no setup for me as the vendor does that.

It is priced fairly.

Make sure you have enough licensing for all the techs that you have. I am just a one-man show. It is pretty simple for me, as I just need one.

I have already used other options over the years. 

ScreenConnect was recommended by various friends in the industry.

I am overall satisfied with the product. It is a pretty straightforward product, which is easy to use and deploy. I do not have any qualms with it.

The primary use case for this solution is remote support. The product is extremely easy to use. I am the only person in my office using it.

I have enable all the possible extensions available through ScreenConnect. I use both the unattended access functionality and the remote support functionality.

We have received customer feedback on the quickness of our responsiveness and the solution deployment.

The unattended access functionality is a valuable feature, because I can go in at any time that I want, deploy fixes, or do maintenance.

It is super easy to use and relatively inexpensive.

Other product have the ability to merge both monitors into one space when logging in if a customer has more than one monitor set up on their station. Essentially, you are just seeing one big blob of screens that you can move your mouse through versus having to switch between the different monitors which are on the workstation with ScreenConnect.

There is one back-end issue that I am running into at some of locations where I login to provide support, and sometimes port 443 is blocked. That is what it uses to connect. So, I am having to do workarounds to get a session started.

It works great. I have never had an issue. I have never had it kick me out for no reason. I have never had any downtime.

No scalability issues.

I would rate their technical support as 10 out of 10.

I used LogMeIn and TeamViewer. I switched because ScreenConnect came to be more cost-effective based on the amount of features that they offered.

The initial setup is straightforward. Once the portal for you is generated, then you just download the Clients onto the machine that you want to run on unattended support and that is it. It is fairly easy. Then one of their extensions allows a builder for the Control Client through your portal. This way any user that you are trying to support can just go to your site, click that link, and it will download the executable. They just install it, then that machine pops up within your portal. It is super convenient.

It is priced well and it is still a great value. Although I have been reading a lot about Splashtop. They are getting pretty competitive on their pricing, including a fairly easy to use remote support for mobile applications, like iOS and Android.

We looked into Splashtop. Back then, I was just looking into some VNC client that I could install and manage myself.

Just do it. Especially people who are subscribing to LogMeIn or TeamViewer, they are not going to miss anything.

We use it for remote support for ad-hoc clients. We have contract clients as well but we use SolarWinds for those, as an RMM dashboard. We have ConnectWise as a type of backup option and for clients on whose systems we don't have our monitoring agent installed. We only have one license which we share, as a backup, there are just three of us. It's not the primary software that we use.

We do use two ConnectWise extensions, one called Remove Thumbnail Preview and another one called Report Manager.

We switched over from LogMeIn Rescue, which was okay but became very expensive. ConnectWise is our backup method. We don't use it as much as we do our RMM software and remote support, but it has definitely really helped in terms of speed and ease.

We like the fact that on our website we can have the ConnectWise bit embedded, and it has instructions for the end-user about what they need to do. Previously, on LogMeIn, we used to have to almost talk them through everything: "Click here, and if you're using Chrome look here, if you're using Firefox look there." But ConnectWise has step-by-step instructions, depending on the browser.

The ease of use is really good. In addition, obviously, uptime - making sure it's online and working for when we need it. The interface is very good and, overall, it is a really pleasant experience.

Reporting could definitely use improvement. With LogMeIn Rescue, I used to be able to, for instance, at the end of the month, pull off a report of every session. It was very simple, very easy, I could see the name that was typed in, the IP address of the computer that it was connected to, if it was running Windows, how long the session was, when it started, when it finished, how long the person was active for, etc. I could also go back over any period of time, so I could say, "Okay, in February last year, how many support sessions did we do?" And I could break it down for a client.

It just doesn't seem - there might be but I haven't found it - to be a way of pulling that information out of this product. ConnectWise doesn't seem to be anywhere near any of that functionality, that I'm aware of.

No stability issues at all.

No scalability issues at all. We're only a small team. 

We used LogMeIn Rescue but it got expensive. As I say, it was our backup software, and we only used it for ad-hoc clients who would call out of the blue. And we were paying almost 100 pounds a month for one license. Some months we'd only get a few calls and we would already have to try and make up a 100 pounds worth of fees. Whereas with ConnectWise, we're paying about 30 or 40, so it's a big saving.

I found the initial setup fairly straightforward.

I feel the product's pricing is a good value for ScreenConnect.

We looked at the standalone version of SolarWinds, MSP Anyware, and we looked at another but I don't remember which one. I did evaluate a few. We trialed MSP Anyware but we preferred ConnectWise.

Go with the cloud version, rather than the on-premise. You don't have to have your own equipment. It is nice that it is looked after, it's in the cloud. We've had no problems with it.

I would rate ConnectWise at eight out of 10, just because it is lacking in the reporting functionality, being able to find out, for instance, what remote connections were made two weeks ago or last month, for auditing purposes. I don't seem to be able to do that at the moment. I haven't investigated it too much but I just don't seem to be able to have the same reporting functionalities we had in LogMeIn Rescue.

Some valuable features of this product are file transfer, the ability to blank out the users' screens, and the ability to transfer support easily to another admin/technician on the fly, while also being able keep control and/or view of what is happening.

The best feature so far is the ability for it to reconnect even after a computer restarts or the way it changes networks, although there is usually a 30-second to one-minute time lapse between this.

It made work and support much easier than our previous Microsoft Lync/WebEx solutions. It allowed us to still manage UAC while working in the user's computer. It has also improved the server's ability to add and run tools and scripts from the web console and adding notes to the session (sessions can be kept up for as long as you want).

The tool seems fairly reliant of bandwidth. If the connection is not strong, it can lag behind quite a bit. It can also be time consuming to walk everyone through the plugin that installs for it.

However, the main issue I have seen with it is that, if they are having issues with their web browsers or network, there is really no way to connect with it.

I have used this solution for around six months to a year.

So far, the only stability issues that were found have been due to the bandwith issues on the other end. There have been a few instances where the screen will not display unless we blank out the user's screen but that may have just been due to a bad connection.

There were no scaling issues. However, when using the tool and connecting to multiple monitor setups, you usually need to adjust the connect screen to compensate, as it keeps their native resolution.

I would give the technical support a 8/10. It has some great functions but coming from my past experience of using DameWare and LogMeIn Rescue, it falls slightly short. However, considering the vast difference in the tools and how they are setup, this is a great, quick and easy remote tool that does not need infrastructure support.

My current company has only used our already in-house share desktop clients, Microsoft Lync and WebEx, or just walked through issues over the phone.

It was very easy to set up and also we were able to figure it out without even having any prior training or instructions. This tool is, literally, open and start working, with almost no learning curve.

Previously, in my current company, we were using Microsoft Lync and WebEx for our remote sessions. This was thrown in the mix and turned out to be very useful for us. Our company does support multiple remote users; however, it is not a primary focus and for the most part, remote desktop administration is not needed.

If you are looking for a quick and easy web-based connection session without the need to be on intranet, then this is the solution for you.