|
I'm currently demoing N-able and Labtech, we don't use anything but logmein free here at the moment. I just started here and took over managing the tech/MSP side of the business, so there are lots of areas to improve. My thoughts... N-able is pretty, quite polished compared to labtech. That being said, it is made for an MSP that is way past any break/fix model imo. It is 100% about scripting, automation, and self-healing - which admittedly can be extremely powerful and seems to work quite well. The automation manager is very very cool (think powershell in a drag and drop format, see screenshot). AD, exchange, SQL, PC performance data, conditional logic, more. You can script some really powerful and complicated things in minutes, with zero powershell knowledge.  With labtech you can see all the computer data very quickly, way more info than you need really. N-able isn't really like that, assuming that all your environments are stable and on auto-pilot. Screen showing all your devices, very good filtering capabilities.  But, when you go into a device, you pretty much just see performance metrics and standard hardware details.  To get the info that you would quicly get in labtech, you need to run multiple scripts. And even then, I don't think you can dig in as deep. As I said, comparatively Labtech seems quite unpolished(read: ugly) and convoluted. Remote access with labtech seems to suck, which I'm not too excited about. It may be better on-premise though, since it looks like those "direct tunnels" are not routed directly but go through the hosted platform first. Skipping that step would improve that a lot, especially for us since we have point to point fiber to the majority of our clients. N-able is much better in that regard out of the box. The licensing for N-able is based on two licenses - Professional and Essential. Pro is for your pcs, servers etc, Essential for snmp devices. You can use essential licenses for PCs as well, you just get much more limited data and more infrequent check-ins. The pricing I got based on 500 Professional Licenses (comes with like 5000 essential licenses) - $2.40/agent/month with lots of freebies for the first year, on-premise. That is on a 3-year term. That pricing was without any negotiation though, so I'm sure I can get it lower. MDM slated to be introduced at the end of the month. Labtech, for on-premise 500 agents was ~$1.20/agent/month on a 4 year term. You can cancel at any time with no penalty though. MDM is an additional $1/d. I haven't started looking at any others yet, but I sold my boss on n-able at $5/agent so looking at ones that are more expensive could be an option. On the PSA side, I'm also debating CW vs Autotask at the moment. The CEO isn't a fan of connectwise though because their sales process has been filled with gotchas and incomplete pricing. Working with the reps from AutoTask has been really pleasant though, they seem much more professional. That being said, I used connectwise for the past 3 years in my last job. Some of the main annoyances I had with it (thick-client, poo poo web interface, $10/user/month mobile license) aren't an issue with AutoTask. To me, at this point, not having it web-based is a major drawback.
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2013 15:08
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 06:02 |
|
|
I used CW from 2009 through mid-2012. Even though I had that experience, I ended up going with Autotask. We've only been live on it since May 1st, but that is primarily service desk and basic CRM. I'm still working on configuring and defining processes for the other modules, but I'm mostly waiting on sales at the moment to get me the info I need. So, incoming wall of text  Autotask is hands down the better product. There a few things CW does better, and AT does have its issues, some that are kinda surprising. For me, one of the biggest factors was the platform. Not being web-based is a huge drawback for CW. Maybe if the client was lightweight and quick then it wouldn't be as big of a deal, but it's not. Autotask is fully web-based and recently finished up implementing cross-browser support. Even being web-based and fully cloud-based, it is way faster than CW. -Autotask is much easier to configure than CW. 75% of my time was spent defining policies and processes because they simply weren't in place prior to me coming into this position. From initial research through today, I've done 95% of the work. Keeping in mind that I essentially re-built how we operate from a helpdesk and workflow point of view, I had it live in a month and a half or so after purchase. That was with plenty of other duties at the same time, including installing and configuring n-able (not my choice to do them at the same time, boss likes to pull the trigger hard when it's the end of a company's fiscal year). -Autotasks licensing model is also so much better. CW still charges misc fees for add-on modules, and their mobile app is still $10/user/month, which is insane. Autotask is all-inclusive. Their mobile app is limited in functionality, but a rewrite is on their roadmap. CW seems cheaper, but after all the add-ons and modules, it is actually very close. We're pretty good at negotiating for software though, so our per seat cost is a fair bit under their norm. The annoyances I have with it are relatively minor, except for one -permissions. There are only 8 or 9 pre-defined security levels, with extremely limited ability to customize (literally just a few options). I don't see how larger companies with a greater need for security handle it. For instance, if you want your helpdesk guys to have access to the CRM module to look up accounts/contacts, they will have access to the entire CRM module, including quotes, opportunities, previous sales, etc. The options are literally "Full or None", with one setting to restrict which sales orders they can see. The release coming early June and as well as the Fall release will be addressing this though, so hopefully it won't be an issue much longer. -Recurring tickets. If you make a recurring ticket for a weekly activity for 1 year, it creates all 52 tickets at once. Quite annoying, I've advised my techs not to use them at all for the time being. It's cluttered and requires making too many workflow rules to be useful. -The ticket creation and ticket window could use a refresh. Like CW, there are just too many fields available/required when creating a ticket, it needs to be made easier. They need to look at something like zendesk and make it that usable. Overall, just a handful of minor annoyances and lack of customization options in some areas. Autotask sales/support are also 100x better to work with. The differences in infrastructure are quite drastic as well. Here is an overview I got from my AT rep: • There is a reason CW are the low guys on the block. For their “pseudo cloud solution” (which requires a fat client on each PC) they do not OWN their Data Center or equipment. This is a key differentiator. See attached SaaS platform pdf. Ask Connectwise for a similar document. We guarantee 99.99% uptime in our contract, Connectwise contract states they will use their “best effort” for uptime and reliability • Autotask was purposely built for the cloud and has been a SaaS solution since 2001. It’s what we do, all we do. • Autotask is the only multi-tenant SaaS package on the market. Multi-tenancy means that all of our customers are on the same version and data schema. This allows AT to rollout out maintenance and major releases without downtime or to have regularly scheduled downtime. • UPTIME/AVAILABILITY: Autotask has a 99.9% uptime stated in our contract. CW does not. Autotask had 11 minutes of un-planned downtime in 2011 and Autotask planned maintenance downtime has been less than 4 hours per year the past two years. CW on the other hand has 4 hours of planned downtime each week as they are not multi-tenant and must perform maintenance on customer databases. If you are running a 24/7 business and rely on a mission critical application can you afford to have 200+ hours of planned downtime per year? That is what you will receive from CW • Autotask has multiple SAS70 Type II data centers around the word and we own/maintain all of our own equipment. CW on the other hand uses Rackspace and must rely on that team to maintain their infrastructure. • There are no fat client downloads required to use Autotask remotely, with Connectwise there is. • Autotask offers a mutual out clause in our contract while Connectwise is an adhesion contract that is one sided to them. • Autotask 24x5 and 24x7 Support is available to all users (phone, email, web) and we also provided contracted response rates (1 day, 4 hour, 2 hour..based on bundle purchased) • Autotask is OPEN. We offer a full web-services API to our customers. Autotask allows our customers to select the vendors/products they wish to run their business and to integrate with Autotask. On the subject of RMM, I evaluated labtech and n-able and went with n-able. Like CW, labtech is in major need of a UI refresh. It has an incredible amount of information, but they basically just throw it at you. N-able is much nicer to use. The price does reflect that, but depending on how many licenses you'd plan on getting, you can get pretty aggressive rates. N-able also got acquired by solarwinds yesterday, which may be a pretty good thing. Their(n-able) development seems slow, and if there is one thing solarwinds is good at, it's pumping out products at a good pace. Biggest issue with N-able is quite an important one- remote connectivity. They use a third party solution called Direct Connect. Along with the Remote Support Manager, it is fantastic when it works, but its success rate is pretty bad. Bad enough that some of my techs have all but given up using it in favor of vnc or just plain rdp. Those options are also built-in though, and it uses ssh tunnels to allow you to rdp to a pc in another environment without having to vpn or go to a server first. I suppose I need to get back to work, but let me know if you have any specific questions.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2013 15:02
|
|
|
I'm not sure either. I didn't notice it as a regular thing, but then again we weren't a 24/7 shop. I assume it is for maintenance and is an "up to" 4 hours type thing.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2013 15:18
|
|
|
To clarify, I used CW at my previous job, so I didn't do a migration, just a fresh AT install. That being said, AT does handle importing accounts/contacts really well using a custom spreadsheet you download from the import page. It includes all the fields, as well as user defined fields, so it updates the spreadsheet whenever you make changes to those. My install engineer basically said "If you can put it to csv, we can import it". Some more advanced importing features can only be done as a service from autotask though. The only real manual input was products and services, since we didn't have a properly defined, standardized list. There hasn't been much change around here in quite some time, most were content with the status quo. I faced a lot of resistance at first, but people are warming up to it now that it is in use, as would be expected. I've no doubt that within a couple months, once I get all the features going and dig farther into the automation aspects, everyone will love it. Autotask does seem more open and willing to accommodate unique situations. Obviously the API is a big thing, especially for us. Prior to this, every system in the company was custom built, the platform having evolved over the past decade and not quite suited for the services we offer today. Being able to integrate with some of those on some level was a necessity for us. They have lots of third-party partners that will help with custom integrations as well. I'm really wondering what CW has planned, because they're falling pretty far behind. Making CW web-based would be a huge undertaking and would basically require a full re-design. Luckily for them I suppose, there aren't any real competitors (that I'm aware of) that could really steal any significant market share from them. Tigerpaw isn't there quite yet, but it is gaining ground.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2013 17:24
|
|
|
Nerdface Killah posted:In other news N-Able just got bought out by Star Winds. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. N-Able is on the way other spectrum, price wise, for RMM offerings. I think they quoted me something like $10k to start out. I've heard nothing but good things though. You can negotiate those down quite a bit, though now that they're ditching the perpetual model, I'm not sure. I talked with my rep a few times about it last night when I heard about it, and while I was a bit nervous before, I think it has huge potential and I'm looking forward to solar winds dump resources into them.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2013 03:13
|
|
|
The past 4 months I've been on Autotask, CW for 3 years prior at my previous job. I've been wanting to write something up comparing/contrasting, more so now that I've used it a bit. Too busy at the moment, but I'll write it up later tonight or tomorrow.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2013 01:31
|
|
|
Background- I used connectwise for ~3 years, ending July of 2012. I had a minor role in setup and configuration. With Autotask, I handled it top to bottom. All the research, testing, working with AT reps/support, purchase, design and ~ 95% of the configuration. We purchased it the last day of February. I did entertain CW as well, but that didn't last too long when I saw that they hadn't really changed at all. ** I tried to be brief but that didn’t go so well, I did leave out a lot though. Feel free to ask more pointed questions, I can also post screenshots of certain parts if you'd like. It should be noted that we are not a typical MSP and our needs are most likely way more specific than most. We're primarily a data center, but are also an ISP, provide managed networking/servers/desktops, provide colo / dedicated servers, hosted VMs... and more, several of which have completely custom built systems to support them. If I could summarize my thoughts, I'd say that while the grass is greener on the AT side, it isn't without its faults, not by a long shot. Personally, because of my dislike of CW, both as a PSA solution and with the company as a whole, I put AT on a pedestal and had really high expectations for it. Though the majority of points I make below are negative, it is still a good product overall relative to the other PSA solutions out there. CWs faults are pretty obvious. Slow and clunky desktop application, the joke that is the web portal, cumbersome setup, mostly terrible customer service / tech support, too much downtime... etc. They're behind the times and need to completely re-invent the product. The sales process is awful, as is the pricing. I mean, they still charge $10/user/month for the mobile client... The Autotask sales process was fantastic. I had a wonderful rep who did everything she could to help evaluate the product and answer questions. The tech support is also quite good, though I did get my first canned response the other day. I contacted my dedicated support contact and he took care of the issue in a few minutes, as he normally does. They're very responsive, I'll usually get a call or email response to any tickets I open within an hour or two. Overall, I can't say anything bad about the company and customer service overall. Setup/configuration is much more intuitive than CW, but they have some odd terminology that throws things off a bit. That being said, the software itself has issues, some glaring. Honestly, I think it is in a very similar state as CW- the platform is showing its age. It’s primary advantage over CW is that it is web-based and just feels better to use in most areas. The web interface is nice overall. Usability-wise, it can be confusing and cluttered at points, downright awkward at others, with enough inconsistency at be frustrating at times. It is now (98%) browser independent, which is nice. The interface is downright snappy compared to CW, but does have some noticeable lag loading some types of pages. The browser settings are very specific and very important as it relies heavily on popups, which can cause issues with people working from home. Our browser settings GPO is now centered around AT. There are some critical areas that really need attention, the service desk being one of them. Compared to newer service desk / ticketing products, it isn’t quick or easy. Creating a new ticket suffers from the same issues as does CW – too many drat fields to fill out. It does at least have “favorites”, which are essentially templates that auto-fill ticket fields, but the base problem remains. It really needs to be streamlined, but right now they are going in the opposite direction. There are a lot of things that require too many clicks or have unnecessary popups to select data. This problem exists in every part of the program. The workflow functionality is (mostly) great, but only for certain modules. The variables that you can use are limited and somewhat inconsistent, and it could use more logic. I’ve had more than a few workflows that I couldn’t implement, others that ended up as a half-solution. The service desk part is the most capable and recently got a bit of an upgrade. The projects module is a little disappointing depending on what types of projects you do. The latest release included a major update to the interface, making it incredibly easier to actually use, but still a bit slow. One of the primary purposes I was going to use the project feature for is our sales workflow. The idea being that sales creates “Opportunities” for sales, then create quotes inside those opportunities, and when they win that opportunity, it kicks off a project template to go through the entire sales -> build/implementation -> billing process. Most of these are not projects in the traditional sense. It is more of a task list with specific steps laid out to ensure that when a task is ready for x to start, y and z have already done their part and provided the information required for x to do his job. It is not designed to do that, at least not cleanly. To give you an idea, one annoying thing is that the minimum duration for any task is 1 day. If I have 5 tasks that may only take 15 minutes each, but each is dependent on the one before it, then the project duration is at minimum 5 days. Considering the implementation is a 1-2 day task in most cases, I can't apply any workflow rules based on dates. That brings us to the sales/CRM. Again, cumbersome. You can’t create a quote without an opportunity. An opportunity can only have one quote. Creating either isn’t the most fluid of processes. To have a project kick off automatically after a sale, you need to first create a proposal project that is attached to the quote (not the opportunity). That is a lot of effort for a sales person when they are trying to get a quote out asap. Security is a complete joke. I honestly don’t know how any company that actually requires specific, defined permissions uses it. There are a handful of pre-configured security levels with a few granular options within. To give you an idea, to give my billing people the ability to add products and services, setup invoicing and billing options- ie, to do their job – they need to be made full-blown system administrators. I could probably write all day about the annoyances, most of which are just general usability. There are often just too many options, too many ways to do the same thing, too many steps to do simple things, options/settings that should be there but aren’t (in some cases they are present here, but not there). Knowing what I know now, and considering the lack of internal cooperation I ran into (gogo status quo), I would have gone another direction. Perhaps dedicated apps that play well together and have a full open API. Is it better than CW? Yes. If your needs are right in line with a standard MSP, it is likely better than mashing a bunch of disparate apps together to try to attain the same functionality (unless you have a full-time developer). To me, as an educated guess, the majority of the problems appear to come from an aging back-end that is getting more and more difficult to update and integrate new features. You’ll see the same sentiment expressed in the user forums. That worries me because it normally results in a steady decline in quality and performance. There is a big opportunity for a well-designed, easy to use, attractive PSA solution to disrupt the market, but I’m not sure if there is anything out there just yet. e: you also can't send attachments from within a ticket
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2013 16:40
|
|
|
That's surprising, I thought Zendesk was supposed to be the UI / usability king.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2013 17:45
|
|
|
Stugazi posted:Hate to necromance this thread but I don't see a backup thread and we're evaluating cloud backup providers which target the MSP environment. Are you looking to store data in the cloud or utilize your own (or both)? Asigra is a great product, it fits several MSP models very well. My company was > < that close to buying it, but they would not honor the pricing they offered us in the sales process. Twice. Even still, if the CEO would be open to buying the product now(he isn't), I'd buy it in a heartbeat. After demoing a bunch of other options, we ended up with AppAssure and it is a nightmare in an MSP environment. Asigra was the only product we found that could fit into every situation we needed it to. I get a call/email from a datto rep a couple times a month, never tried it or axcient though.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2013 19:52
|
|
|
Stugazi posted:You gotta dump quickbooks. Freshbooks is ideal for MSP work. Recurring invoices FTW. We've been using n-able since March or so. Overall it is quite good, but I haven't used many of the other big name RMMs. I still don't know what is going on with the acquisition, not a single word from my rep or elsewhere. It has the potential to be a good mix (dameware please) so long as none of solarwinds ridiculous licensing structures/costs come into play. Apparently solarwinds is committed to staying "hands off" the n-able product, but yea, it is still very uncertain. Tickets: Autotask RMM: N-able (+ small nagios implementation) Accounting: QB AV: Trend or Bit Defender(N-able) Backups: AppAssure, Crashplan
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2013 14:13
|
|
|
Stugazi posted:... . FWIW I have a dozen or so of these deployed and haven't had a single issue, I really like them.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2014 00:42
|
|
|
Maneki Neko posted:Hooray, so I managed to get a parallel discussion going on about looking at PSA to accompany our RMM search. Look back earlier in the thread for my comments on autotask. We use autotask and n-able, so ask any questions you'd like about those.
|
|
#
¿
May 3, 2014 00:08
|
|
|
Maneki Neko posted:SO out of curiosity, what ended up making you go with n-able? Either we got some real bad sales guys or something, but so far the group consensus has basically been "meh" for n-able, and everyone seems to like Labtech and Kaseya a lot more so far based on what we've seen. N-able uses the opposite approach of labtech, showing relatively little, but highly relevant detail, focusing heavily on automation. The Automation Manager basically sold it for me, it is a really really powerful tool. While the lack of directly visible data can make some of the little things a bit more cumbersome as you need to run a script or dig in a bit deeper to get some data, I find that pretty rare. Once you get a customer setup and automation policies in place then the vast majority of the time spent in n-able for that customer is either for a) remote connectivity, or b) patch management. With automation manager and self-healing policies, you can be pretty hands-off. One thing to consider with n-able is its' remote connectivity options. It uses NTR Global DirectConnect. It's a 3rd party cloud-based solution, and while it enables some great functionality, it can be problematic at times, though it has gotten much more stable in the last year and I have no complaints at this point. Essentially it creates a private tunnel between your computer and the endpoint, whether that be a pc, server, printer, network device etc. It uses their servers for that relay though, so if they have issues, you have issues. Clicking one button and getting to the web config for a printer, or putty to a network device without external ssh access, directconnect or rdp(also with private tunnel) to a pc/server... it's nice. Recently implemented integration for teamviewer as well. If you haven't had a good demo of automation manager, I would advise you to do so before you make a decision. If you have people on your team that would take advantage of it, it can extremely powerful and do wonders for your efficiency. Also, we got pricing so ridiculous we had to sign an NDA. You can push them pretty hard if you are buying a decent quantity of licenses. To note, we haven't had any pcs or servers - literally zero - have issues with the n-able agent. Considering it is .net, that is pretty good imo. We also host it ourselves. (These are my thoughts on labtech as of over a year ago, I don't know what has changed) Labtech was very unpolished compared to other products, especially n-able. It gives you so much information, way more than you'll ever need or really care to see. OTOH that can also make it look pretty awesome while evaluating, but as you get into the management and automation aspects it becomes quite underwhelming in functionality and frustrating in usability. It looks like it is 10 years old or more, and some of the usability feels that way too. . I can't really speak to keseya, I didn't spend much time on it and I was pretty sold on n-able at that point. It is expensive though.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2014 13:40
|
|
|
My 2 cents from a business perspective, I've seen this (along with scope creep) happen to two msps and it really doesn't end well. Breaking from your mold to accommodate clients that aren't a good fit is a slippery slope and is something to avoid if at all possible, unless that is your business model I suppose. Taking into account the relatively small amount of revenue you do generally get from them, the added time and effort to maintain one-off environments adds up and snowballs as you add more. You lose organization and efficiency. That being said, if you can standardize on, for example, the azure + VPN setup Caged outlined above and is a good solution, you could make it into an actual service offering for small clients like that and support it as such. Two standard environments are much more manageable than 1 standard and 10 unique ones. E: As little pricey compared to other options, but worth it imo- get a synology NAS in that type of setup. It has apps that handle all the LAN services you'd need and they are very easy to manage. bimmian fucked around with this message at 03:39 on May 15, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 15, 2014 03:34
|
|
|
What does everyone use for password management? Ours are a bit scattered so I'm looking into solutions, I've used Keepass prior and use lastpass personally. Anyone use lastpass enterprise?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 6, 2014 14:49
|
|
|
Looks nice, rather pricey though considering there are a lot of features I doubt we'd use. We could make use of the API, but I don't want to know what Enterprise Plus costs. 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 6, 2014 16:48
|
|
|
sanchez posted:For a deal that size I'd try to hustle their sales a bit, I'm sure you can get a discount. They were willing to work with us. Yea I'm sure, we don't buy anything retail. I'll test it next week and see.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 6, 2014 22:04
|
|
|
Trouser Mouse Bear posted:Part of our MSP business uses Secret Server. When it came time for the entire business to use Secret Server we evaluated our options and decided on going to AuthAnvil instead. Thanks, I'll take a closer look at that. We use autotask and n-able and it has integrations with both, so that certainly makes it more attractive.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2014 22:01
|
|
|
Biggz posted:I'm currently looking at GFI to replace N-Able. We pretty much only use N-Able for it's DirectConnect remote desktop and monitoring ~200 endpoints via ping only. Directconnect has improved drastically for us over the past few months, I rarely hear complaints from our techs anymore. Obviously it doesn't look like you utilize much of the functionality, but I'm interested in why else you're moving away from it. Most of my complaints revolve around patch management at the moment.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2014 22:05
|
|
|
Biggz posted:The new managed AV client (based on BitDefender I think) causes some of our customers on WinXP (yeah I know) to have performance problems, even with the Low Resource AV profile. Wouldn't let other customers load Sage Accounts, a very popular UK accounting software. And the very best one, copying anything to the clipboard on 2003 based servers, by both control+v and right click->copy, would cause the server to crash and restart. We've really lost confidence in the AV. poo poo, hadn't heard of that 2003 bug, luckily we've moved all our managed customers to 2008/2012 at this point. I can't say I'm terribly impressed with bitdefender either tbh, but it does a decent enough job for $12/endpoint/year. We have a new customer onboarding now with sage, I'll keep that in mind, thanks. Stugazi posted:Any recommendations for monitoring network devices? Continuums built in capabilities are not enough for some of the bigger networks we need manage. Unfortunately no solarwinds goodness has made it's way into n-able. That acquisition has been a bit frustrating, just absolutely zero word still on how/if any functionality will come over. I started using zenoss core for my side business, jury is still out on it, but it works pretty well out of the box so far. There are some hosted services that are decent too, I'll have to look through my notes to see which ones I was considering.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2014 14:57
|
|
|
I used it for a year or two at a previous job and currently use it for my on-the-side business. I'm on the run atm, but I can write up an overview tonight or tomorrow morning, let me know if you have any specific questions.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2014 20:37
|
|
|
We build minimum standards into all of our contracts. PC / Server hardware/software specs, no home-class network stuff, active support contracts on servers and software, etc. Works very well and I've never had anyone complain about it except for prospects who haven't spent a dime on IT in 5 years. Be very up front about it and set a timeline for upgrading/fixing when you sign them. Sounds like you want to retroactively apply this policy with existing customers though, that might be a bit more sensitive.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2014 21:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 06:02 |
|
|
Thanks Ants posted:Back on the topic of remote assistance tools, does anyone have any experience with ScreenConnect? The website looks like poo poo, the product features are pretty extensive, and the pricing is incredibly keen. Just started a trial for this today. My techs seem pretty impressed with the toolset already.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2014 01:01
|
|