ConnectWise Automate Reviews

Connectwise Automate

Comments: We are using Connectwise Automate for taking care of customers on a managed service contract.

Pros:

There are many, many features in Connectwise Automate that will help you help your customers with their computer needs.

Cons:

Although the software is very feature rich, it seems very cumbersome and not easy to use from day one. In almost every step, we have had to take classes to figure out how to do things.

If you have the money to spend, spend it.. if not.. there is other options`

Comments: Overall, I am very happy with Connectwise Automate and would continue to use the product. If you work in a critical industry, I wouldn't recommend this as being your only source of remote access since support is very slow and very unhelpful in most situations.

Pros:

The best part of this software is how robust the software is. When you purchase this software, you receive control and "WSUS" as part of your package. The software contains reports, pulls data on each computer, provides some integration and overall is a great automation and remote access tool.

Cons:

Support is very slow to respond. Getting credits for downtime on their hosted web server is like pulling teeth. When you get into the chat queue, you may be waiting an hour or more for someone overseas who doesn't know how to fix the issue anyway. Then you have to wait until someone gets back with you when they "open a ticket." Honestly.... the only reason I WOULDN'T buy this software is their support system lacks ability for true support!

ConnectWise Automate is great for remote monitoring and management of IT systems.

Pros:

I love how easy it is to automate tasks and manage devices remotely.

Cons:

However, the interface can be overwhelming and takes time to get used to.

Powerful but inexpensive IT service and control platform.

Comments: It's been positive. It is essential for supporting remote workes and in the times that are in it it's gotten more important. There is good functionality around software installs and we actually use it to build up our SOE when we have new machines. Ot deosnlt do anything other similar systems can;t do but it is very fit for purpose for a small IT team.

Pros:

There is a lot that it can do for a quite reasonable cost. IT is more suited for small or medium businesses as I don;t think it;s quite enterprise level but for control, scripting, monitoring and the like it is very good at what it does. It is also cloud based so can be accessed on any device with a browser.

Cons:

It is not very good at monitoring. I can easily find out if computers have issues by selecting them but not really being notified that there may be a probelm. Scripting works well when it works but it's difficult to figure out if it's not worked and why.

Great tool for an MSP

Comments: We have been able to become much more efficient and organize our work much better.

Pros:

Allows for management of a wide view of devices across a variety of ecosystems. Easy to use and get up and running. Partner community is great.

Cons:

Support leaves a lot to be desired. When can get in touch, takes several attempts to resolve issue.

Manage multiple environments with ease

Comments: Companies I have been working for have been leveraging this application for machine management for years.

Pros:

This software provides multiple connectivity options. It can show a lot of information (see least favorite list below) Great organization! Easy integration with Connectwise Control and Manage Lots of option for Scripting and API connectivity to outside applications

Cons:

The interface was changed to a much less intuitive environment about a year ago. I use it and have started to get used to it somewhat, but it still is not what I would call good. There's problems if you don't run the Control Center as an Admin, but it doesn't want to run as admin by default The uninstaller for the client can sometimes not uninstall.

Automate ( formerly Labtech) is a great RMM tool for MSP customers.

Pros:

The ease of setup and installation for customers is substantial when considering this tool for MSP. New customers can be setup with ease, configured and once agents are installed Automate can significantly reduce information gathering for system resources, and discovery of behind the scenes issues. Scripting and Automating are easy to do with the built in examples and wizards, which makes customizing alerts and monitors a breeze.

Cons:

The monitoring will come with lots of defaults right out of the box, so there will be a lot of "noise" to sort through and remove/adjust after initial installation.

The most advanced MSP RMM to grow your business off of.

Comments: Exceptional insight into thousands of machines in an aggregate fashion. It would be impossible to offer some of the services that we do, without this product.

Pros:

This product has a uniquely limitless capacity for growing the operational process of managing computer systems. Great out of the box monitors and functionality. Unparalleled remote control. Large user community and expansive plugin ecosystem.

Cons:

QA is is lacking on new releases. Support takes a long time, with the exception of down situations. Slow release cycles. Lots of legacy functionality that is deprecated litters the product. Exceptionally slow at times.

So far so good

Pros:

It's a strong suite for Remote Management and helping end users. I can easily assist quickly for them.

Cons:

I haven't ran into issues yet. I'm still going through the trial and testing.

ConnectWise Automate helps me keep all my IT systems in check, saving time and hassle.

Pros:

Automated tasks, easy remote monitoring, and powerful scripting capabilities make my job easier.

Cons:

The user interface can be a bit overwhelming at first, and some features are not very intuitive.

I utilize this software daily to perform my job duties, managing all aspects of over 6,000 endpoints

Pros:

Clients and Locations are organized in an easy-to-view tree, which allows easy access to a customer's inventory. Several dataviews are available from a Client or Location to quickly gather information of an environment. For example, a list of 'scheduled tasks' configured on every system can be gathered from all systems to determine why a particular event occurs every Saturday at 4am. Remote Control of a system can be envoked with standard tools such as VNC or RDP, as well as ConnectWise Control (formerly Screen Connect). Reports of client environments are just a click away, whether a question regarding system health is of issue, or if all systems have the latest patches and Anti-Virus updated.

Cons:

Software runs on a MySQL backend, but only on Windows. Keeping MySQL tuned properly for environment size can be chore, whereas DB Engines such as MSSQL are a bit more automated and forgiving. As you bring more agents into the system, it's a good idea to run performance metrics on the MySQL server to see if any adjustments are necessary to maintain best performance of the system. Telephone Support for the MySQL backend tends to yield different answers from each representative you talk to, and in my experience it was best to use general MySQL tuning documents that are available from Oracle.

Automate - IT automation software for IT Service Providers

Comments: I work for an MSP, and we have the luxury of having a full time guy that is our Automate administrator. He's amazing, and has made this software do some really incredible stuff for us. It had good functionality out of the box, but we've been adding scripts and automation to it for 5 years at this point. The sky is the limit on what you can do, but you will need to invest the time and energy into doing it.

Pros:

We love Automate. We use it to manage patches and updates across thousands of computers. We also use it for customized monitoring and alerting on workstations and servers. Monitoring is really robust and granular. It does a great job of gathering a TON of data about the network, and that data is searchable. There are a bunch of different reports built in. Integrates with Manage, Control, and other applications. It does a ton of stuff out of the box, and has endless customization options.

Cons:

It may not do quite as much as you want right out of the box, and it will take some work to set it up. You'll need someone on your team willing to invest the time and energy into making this software do everything you want.

When it works, I think it's fine

Comments: It's like being a cook, but you're only allowed to use tin foil to hastily create all your cooking equipment, such as pans, spatulas, etc...

Pros:

I like that when it works, some of its features like remote connectivity, accessing cmd without controlling the user's screen, and scripts make my job easier.

Cons:

Once every other week I have to uninstall and reinstall the control center app to get it to load on my screen. I can log in, it will hang on "Building Searches" and disappear. The only fix I've been able to find is uninstall and reinstall, and I have to do that at least twice a month. The rest happen often despite multiple uninstall and reinstalls: Locks up in the middle of a job. Crashes in the middle of a job. Sometimes hitting control does nothing and I have to reboot to get it to work. Scripts also will work when they feel like working. 75% of my time, I have to use the online version because the desktop version is just way too buggy.

The BEST tool for an IT Army of One

Comments: Its a love/hate relationship, but mostly love. I fought to have this at my company and I can not do my job without it.

Pros:

You can access it anywhere. If I am on vacation in Mexico and the office back in the states needs support, I just open up chrome and go to my custom made website that CW gave me and I am in. I can see everything about a persons computer by just scrolling side to side or double clicking. Their customer service is also 24/7 AND they assign you technicians to help with implementation along with connectwise university to ensure you are ready to use their product to the fullest extent!

Cons:

Its sort of difficult to learn. They have the university that helps with that, but some of their classes are outdated and some just sprint through the lesson in the hopes that you might have caught a thing or two that they just taught you. Also, their scripting language is their own(proprietary) and you have to learn it. So if you already know Java, C++, Python, etc, it doesn't matter.

The IDEA of this software is awesome, the delivery of that promise is lacking though

Pros:

This software's scripting engine is hands down the best. I recently saw the new interface that is coming to align the product more with Connectwise's main product is really nice looking.

Cons:

Many of the terms do not make sense (blacklist software, means you want to know if it gets installed, meanwhile blacklisted services mean you want to be alerted if it's not working). The old interface was dated but it had the functionality and details all in one place. The current version 11 interface is horrible. Getting support on the product is awful; slow response and frequently being told that whatever you ask about is out-of-scope.

Best Thing Ever

Comments: We've been using Labtech to manage our 70+ computers across multiple clients for a couple years now and it's been very worth the price to have a remote management software to take care of windows updates and be alerted on hardware issues from the event logs. The integration to other software is pretty flawless as well, such as webroot AV and ScreenConnect. It's cut down management time by 80%!

Pros:

I like that the management of a lot of computers

Cons:

Not really much to not like about it, but sometimes the windows updates aren't always working correctly, and sometimes it reports disk space critically low when there's is 50+GBs left on the system

"LabTech" is a great tool which allows you do anything you want. "Anything custom" is not supported

Comments: Its a powerful tool, in the hands of someone who has spent years building and tweaking the software, generally without supports help, it can do anything you want unless a bug gets in your way that won't be fixed for a few weeks/months.

Pros:

Community (LabTechGeek) assistance, The ability to do anything you want with powershell, internal scripting and plugin access

Cons:

Horrible support. Bad UI Design, Bad Releases, horrible support staff willing to assist with issues, constant support problems as they always send a KB article that has nothing to do with your issue

The most powerful automation tool.

Comments: I really enjoy using the tool and the vast amount of solutions it allows us to assist our clients in solving. The automation genuinely saves time for all of our team with the functionality it offers.

Pros:

I really like the remote control portion of the program. The ability to remotely patch servers and client devices is excellent.

Cons:

The customer support for connectwise is their largest downfall. The software is excellent but the support is not always what it should be.

Very powerful remote monitoring software

Comments: Remote monitoring and alerting as well as some automated remediation. More efficient usage of engineering time.

Pros:

Once setup and configured properly does a great job of monitoring devices and alerting of potential or real-time issues. Tons of options that can be configured.

Cons:

Very difficult to set up and tweak all of the settings to meet your needs. Sometimes common things that should be setup out of the box are not and need to be manually configured

For managing your IT components no matter where

Pros:

After using a lot management tooling, I'm now using ConnectWise Automate (former Labtech). Monitoring, manage, implement manually or thru scripts, almost everything is possible with this software.

Cons:

Setup is easy with their support, but getting completely up and running is a differnt story. Especially in small IT companies where maintaining this software is just very small part of your job it sometimes getting complicated. Adjusting reports can be improved. A simple report where you select the begin and end date in the past is not possible.

Great in some places, lets you down in others

Pros:

Connecting to users workstations is a quick and painless experience, with the ability to search workstation names or ID's making it a breeze to reach who you need to.

Cons:

Software takes anywhere from 1 to 4 minutes to load up, and often times that's just the login screen. At worst, it's taken me 15 minutes to get to the Control Center after restarting my workstation

Extremely Powerful MSP Software

Comments: Automate is feature rich and I find it very easy to use. There's just so much that you can do to improve workflows and "automate" tasks. I highly recommend this for mature MSPs.

Pros:

The automation that can be performed is amazing. This was deployed primarily on Windows machines. It does an incredible job at managing updates. The recent integration of Third Wall, though rough in the beginning, has made this the most powerful MSP software.

Cons:

The desktop software can be sluggish. Rolling out Third Wall was very rough. After working out all of the kinks it's makes some fantastic improvements and adds some much needed solutions. Physical machines need a display connected. This can be annoying.

An IT professional's trusty sidekick!!

Comments: I use this software on a daily basis extensively. Even with the cons, I would not use any other software!

Pros:

This software is robust. Management of assets within this software seems endless. Company locations can be organized as groups ("locations") and further broken down into subgroups. Hardware and software on each machine the agent is installed can be closely monitored. Alerts can be configured for just about anything, then delivered in a preferred method of logs or emails. Can also be integrated with Chocolatey to provide IT professionals with the ease of installing and updating software remotely. It can also be configured to handle Windows updates!

Cons:

Slow to load. I recommend loading this software at the beginning of the day, because you never know when you have to immediately ScreenConnect to a machine and resolve an issue. There is also a huge learning curve. My company contracted someone to come out and train us and help us configure it.

The solution for any size MSP

Comments: Awesome piece of software that allows to take your MSP to the next level

Pros:

Provides you the tools that you need in order to streamline your systems and automate a lot of your processes as a MSP

Cons:

Overwhelming for new users, need to introduce them slowly to all the features that it includes

Full featured program that allows technicians to complete full system administration remotely

Pros:

Feature set is large and allows a lot of system administration tasks to be done without needing to remotely control the computer.

Cons:

Inferface can be clunky Updates often break more things than they fix Support can take days to resolve issues when the issue is a work stopage