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I own an MSP in San Diego. Our nine year anniversary is in March. We've gone through a lot of ups and downs. We use Kaseya. I estimate we paid them ~$70k before ending our subscription. We looked at renewing but they are so scummy I decided to pass. Powerful product, horrible customer relationship management. On the bright side the agents we have we actually own so we still use Kaseya but when Windows8 becomes popular we'll likely need to update our RMM. We used ConnectWise but no longer. They do a great job but the Server/Client got so bulky and slow that we moved to Zendesk, Freshbooks and Solve360. If you have ConnectWise go to the summit and do their educational stuff. I found it valuable but maybe less so now that EVERYONE is following the same game plan and delivering the same services via the same tools. Leads to commoditization and lower margins if your customer presentation is almost word for word match with your competitors. We looked at GFI. It had a lot of promise but wasn't quite ready for primetime for us. Simple things like scheduling a reboot were a big deal. Hopefully it's changed.
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Oct 31, 2012 00:58
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Do yourself a favor and try Freshbooks. You'll never want to touch Quickbooks again. Here's my referral code if you want to thank me use it when setting up your demo. http://goo.gl/aT36B We use Zendesk. Sucks for anything proactive but for reactive ticketing it's good. Also look at helpscout if you want to avoid ticket #'s etc. For CRM we used solve360 and insight.ly. CRM is tricky as it's only as good as the people who use it. Both of those products have strengths and weaknesses. We chose Solve because it has a few extra features altho I think insight.ly is easier to use and learn. Neither is a bad choice. Look at it this way. The future is web based apps. You can cobble together QB, ConnectWise and K into a mashup of fat clients that will take hours to manage, patch and debug or go the easy route and use existing web APIs from these slick and fast moving companies to build a cheap and scalable infrastructure for your company that all runs on top of a browser. And once you're done you'll realize all your clients should do the same and that you just put yourself out of a job. Welcome to IT!
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Oct 31, 2012 23:58
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We're back in the market for a RMM. Time to ditch Kaseya. So far it's between Labtech and GFI. We did a demo of GFI a year ago and it felt really basic. Labtech has a good reputation. Plus there's this review which I agree with from the limited exposure I have with each product. http://www.bradkendall.ca/gfi-max-vs-labtech-product-comparison Labtech is part of ConnectWise. I think Labtech is complicated but my concern is that GFI is too basic. Labtech may REQUIRE Connectwise to truly be useful. I am the goldilocks of RMM. Maniaman and others, how has your experience been the past few months with your respective decisions?
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Feb 8, 2013 00:03
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We started demoing GFI again. My concerns with GFI: -Lack of real time capabilities -Lack of scripting: it will run any script/batch you write but it's not graceful like competitors -I've found TakeControl to be hit or miss. Works wonderfully or complete fail. I'd take average reliable performance above all else. Really the only deal breaker is TakeControl. That has to work 100% or we can't go GFI. I heard on the street that Labtech is $400/month for 500 agents but that's a commitment to buy and running it on your own server. Anyone have hosted pricing from Labtech? I am not interested in hosting our own. ---- On the PSA side we have come full circle. We ditched ConnectWise to go with a group of shiny Web 2.0 apps that all talk to each other. Web 2.0 has worked, sorta. MSP is a round hole while the mashup of Web 2.0 apps is a square peg. The setup works, but you gotta shave off the corners. It's like any app built for a business, a PSA is going to work out of the box better than a bunch of general purpose apps that sorta talk to each other. The discussion around RMM has us also looking at going back to a PSA. Since RMM and PSA go hand in hand, what are you using for PSA?
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Feb 10, 2013 00:34
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We merged with another company that has ConnectWise. Being back on that platform is a blessing and curse. On the good side, I appreciate having an app that is custom designed for our business. On the bad side CW hasn't evolved a single bit in 5 loving years it's embarrassing. The helpdesk, which is arguably the most frequently used feature, is poo poo. Granted, the company did a horrible job of onboarding CW so the problems are made much worse through lack of training but drat CW doesn't make anything easy. I am the most knowledgeable person on CW and I haven't used it in five years. I am torn on switching us from CW to Autotask. Long term I feel it's the right play but it's a big undertaking. Is Autotask better or just *different*? We are also looking at Labtech again which is difficult to evaluate separate from CW. They are sister products in my mind. This sucks. It's a big decision and I am the only one who has the full view of the challenges. I'd prefer to go web based with Autotask and maybe Continuum or Kaseya but CW and Labtech seem to be the price leader and have more traction internally.
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May 22, 2013 05:21
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Bimmian, thanks for the info! When you made the switch what was the migration like? Was there a lot of manual input? Does AT have good tools for sucking company info out of CW? How was it received by your staff? Everyone happier now or about the same? If CW only evolved a tiny bit I'd probably be happy. The fact it's the same drat product with the same glaring issues means I don't want to lock myself into it any longer or deepen our relationship via labtech. AT's API and integration into things like Freshbooks shows they are moving forward. I like that.
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May 22, 2013 17:00
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AVG buys LevelPlatforms: http://mspmentor.net/acquisitions/avg-buys-level-platforms-rob-raes-key-role As mentioned, Solarwinds bought N-Able a few weeks ago. Who's next? Kaseya? Continuum, might be as they were brought back from the dead by an investment group who likely wants a return on their investment. I think this makes Labtech look better because they are part of ConnectWise. They are 100% committed to MSP.
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Jun 15, 2013 00:37
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I'd love to hear from anyone who went from CW to Autotask or vice versa. I would love to get off CW but I just can't get enough info on Autotask to pull that trigger. We didn't choose Labtech because they are a part of CW and CW is so disappointing.
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Jul 17, 2013 22:37
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Give us the 20 word summary. I'm dying to know what you think. EDIT: We also use Quotewerks and were due for a renewal. QW told us the new version would fix a sync issue we had with CW. We upgraded. Now QW doesnt' work at all. We were told it's because of our version of CW. We are on the hosted version. Called CW who told us we are a few versions behind (WTF). We are now in queue to upgrade. We bitched up a storm, so much so that it was escalated to the owner Arnie. One of their people accidentally forwarded the email back to us where Arnie was quoted as saying something along the lines of "if they leave, so be it". gently caress CW. Stugazi fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Jul 18, 2013 |
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Jul 18, 2013 06:22
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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. We have some clients on https://dattobackup.com It's OK but not great. Does anyone have experience with https://asigra.com or https://axcient.com ? Asigra has a "recovery billing" method where they bill for recoveries versus backups. That sounds great on paper. Looking for some peer feedback before I start talking to these companies.
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Sep 17, 2013 18:56
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bimmian posted:Are you looking to store data in the cloud or utilize your own (or both)? Asigra recently changed their model to a restore based scheme. I have not talked dollars with them yet. Was their pricing obscene? Are their backups imaged based? I am concerned about using such a proprietary backup engine. Ideally we can offer disaster recovery off site plus the backup option
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Sep 17, 2013 23:19
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mindphlux posted:my setup is : You gotta dump quickbooks. Freshbooks is ideal for MSP work. Recurring invoices FTW. What do you think of Continuum? I am starting to think it sucks rear end. Would love to hear opinions on N-Able. We almost went that route then solarwinds bought them so we backed off. They were a complete clusterfuck when Solarwinds bought them. No one there had a clue what was going on and couldn't tell us poo poo. Unfortunately that was also the time we were looking at RMM. Regarding backsup/router/AP always have a recommendation for every basic technical need. If you don't and let the client choose they will choose the cheapest poo poo possible and you will end up supporting it for free (as an MSP). If they ignore your recommendation note that is not in scope and you will bill for time worked. Seriously, you need to control the environment in a flat rate business model or your life will be hell. At a moment's notice you need to be able to explain what the client won't get when they don't choose your preferred solution. (your preferred solution should be solid and not suck) That said, what are people using for traveling laptop backups? Backblaze? Need a centrally managed and billed console.
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Dec 2, 2013 07:36
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Labtech is off the table for us. ConnectWise is a mess and antiquated. No meaninful development on that platform in years. I think the Labtech acquisition is sucking up their resources. I know a lot of our local competition is on Continuum now. It amazes me that Continuum is lacking in so many areas yet seem to be killing it in the RMM space. That's a good indication of the missed opportunities by NAble, Kaseya et al. If the competition had decent packaging and communication they could kill Continuum head to head. Instead they are mismanaged and/or priced like they poo poo gold so Continuum wins by being the least insane choice. We gave Kaseya every opporutnity to play ball. They'd rather suck their partners dry through high fees than be reasonable and win a new client (actually, a returning client, we'd already paid Kaseya ~50k in fees years ago).
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Dec 8, 2013 08:08
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Whenever Kaseya did it's big upgrade a few years back it kinda went to poo poo but holy gently caress do I miss it's power and real time scripting.
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Dec 9, 2013 01:47
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NAble used to offer free basic agents. I would start there.
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Dec 11, 2013 02:49
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Don't post your prices. Your website is not going to close deals for you. There are reasons multiple posts say don't do it so don't do it.
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Dec 17, 2013 07:45
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Anyone find an SMB friendly SAN? We've done a few here and there but for SMB budgets it's hard to make it all pencil yet it's so important. Not interested in Netgear, Synology or QNAP as business class solutions. Curious what others have done.
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Jan 31, 2014 22:58
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We are looking at the MD3200 from Dell. Problem is once I configure it the way it *should* be it's over budget. We won a new client that already has an MD3200 so we're getting some experience on it. Seems OK but it's impossible to get our Dell team to call us back to ask important questions, like can we have two drive pools for fast and slow storage etc? Any ideas?
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Feb 1, 2014 08:07
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50-75 user companies are a sweet spot for us. At that size it's important to have shared storage and proper VMware. However, budgets. I am pretty good at laying out the story of how employees are their biggest cost and they spend most of their time at a computer and how data is the lifeblood of the org etc. Still, there's a breaking point for cost for most SMB owners. That magic number is around $25k for a full project. One of our guys mentioned OpenFiler for iSCSI. They have a commercial version and can even do two nodes for redundancy. Once it's fully costed out it's not much savings though, especially if you do two boxes to match a dual controller scenario but I think we could get away with storage on the actual hosts in most cases. I may need to rework that scenario. There's no magic bullet. I just wanted to ask so I'd know I wasn't missing something obvious for our smaller storage dependent clients.
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Feb 1, 2014 08:55
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mindphlux posted:whitelabel-able system state/sql/exchange server compatible "cloud backup" solutions : go! Like herding cats. Unless you want to get a SPLA agreement with msft and rent hardware and cals will be difficult. Or get into a vertical where you can provide a boxable solution to support a narrow set of apps. A friend pushes a lot clients to effortless office.com but that just makes him their 100% commission salesman. Mostly just go vmware no matter how small the client and get a decent backup like veeam or Datto and charge appropriately for your services. Most MSPs don't charge enough.
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Mar 8, 2014 15:37
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Dell's affordable MD3xxx series iSCSI SAN can now mix and match storage pools (SSD and 10k) so we are looking at that as an option. It's half the price of an EMC VNXE. For SMB I think it's acceptable. I hope so, as we have a PO for one now. 
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Mar 11, 2014 06:47
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:Nice those are good boxes, just make sure you load the latest firmware on those things before you start loading data on it. Dilbert, how do you spec your storage? Not completely practical for us to run iometer on a dozen servers to get iops info. Slightly concerned about this dell box serving storage to that many VMs. Box will have 9 900gb 10k drives.
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Mar 12, 2014 02:13
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:
Thanks for the info! I'll have the guys run Dell DPACK. I didn't know that existed. It's free right? The Servers are a mix of lightly loaded Windows Servers, a couple of Cisco Unified Communications boxes for Business Edition 6000 voice and 2 Linux boxes. No Exchange or SQL today but they are planning a SQL and ERP box soon. We'll go iSCSI. I like the flexibility of NFS but since it's not a NetApp iSCSI seems like the best choice. My knowledge is a bit dated on SANs so maybe that's no longer relevant? mindphlux, I tell clients we can give them fort knox data security but it will come with a fort knox pricetag. Pick a standard with an optional offsite component and make sure they understand the risk / tradeoff of not automating that nightly transfer. If they are so cheap they want it for free they don't respect their own data or technology. That's a red flag. Most good business people will understand this important business function and will look for you to provide 1-2 options that are sized right for their finances/risk. Financial/medical/legal clients definitely get this need.
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Mar 14, 2014 04:59
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The answer is different depending on your size, needs, typical client etc. Also, the RMM shouldn't be chosen without a plan for a PSA. I'd argue PSA first and RMM second. Autotask has some advantages over CW but CW is finally getting modern-ish. Never used Autotask so I may have a "grass is greener" perspective. For RMM I think the big question is would you use someone else's NOC? If so, IMHO Continuum is your only choice. If not, GFI is your price / ease of use leader.
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Apr 15, 2014 23:47
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We sold a VNXE and an MD3XXX in the past six months. Both configured with headroom available. Dell was ~$13k and EMC was ~$25k. They weren't apples to apples but pretty close. The Dell had a drive fail on day one. Learned about the Intel NUC computer from the HTPC thread. We definitely don't want to get into box building but for <$500 client cost we can deliver a SSD, i3, 8GB box with low energy and footprint to clients. We are stress testing a box right now with the goal that a fast and inexpensive machine is better than what we get from Dell. Same config from Dell is 1.5-2x the price. Stugazi fucked around with this message at 00:03 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 00:00
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NUC chat: How are you handling licensing? Did you go SPLA or they buying retail, vlk etc? The test client we have in mind is a non profit so they can buy windows and office for $20.
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May 2, 2014 02:44
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Any client under 10 employees (ideally 20) is a waste of your time. Also, for any client, if you are constantly looking to cut costs to match unrealistic expectations step back and evaluate the quality of that revenue. Dump them and get better clients. Might be painful to lose the revenue but focusing on more profitable gigs will make you more money and cause less stress long term. A 5-10 seat client is just as much work as a 20 seat client but a 20 seat client will pay 2-4x more.
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May 15, 2014 07:24
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We use lastpass enterprise. I was a roboform fan but their group package pricing was LOL. Lastpass is pretty good. I liked roboform's interface a bit better.
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Jun 7, 2014 15:43
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Any recommendations for monitoring network devices? Continuums built in capabilities are not enough for some of the bigger networks we need manage. Solarwinds bought n-able. Has any of that sweet network monitoring made it to n-able? We have called ZenOSS.com several times but no response. 
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Jul 11, 2014 06:55
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Sounds like two things to me: a wiki and password mgmt. For passwords we use lastpass. Good group features. Considering confluence for a wiki. What do others use for their knowledgebase? The KB inside Connectwise is terrible.
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Jul 20, 2014 19:13
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Was a gfi max client for a while. Changed platforms and canceled service. They botched the request and follow up. Now a collections lawyer is harassing me over $200. Two hundred loving dollars. Flawless credit score and then these dicks come along. gently caress GFIMax. Edit: I dug up the email that showed they botched cancelation. Lawyer sent me a gfi response acknowledging it. They still harrass me for the wrong amount. For the record I would close out correct balance if they got their poo poo straight. Email direct to GFI has been ignored. Stugazi fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 03:26
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More detail is better. Long invoices are a good thing as long as they are never printed. Makes clients feel like they got their moneys worth and is good practice to be detailed in your documentation.
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Sep 7, 2014 00:13
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AutoTask bought an RMM company called CentraStage. Never heard of them but find it interesting. CentraStage could offer new MSPs or those lookign to switch an RMM that isn't saddled with legacy crap (looking at you ConnectWise). Anyone have experience with CentraStage?
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Sep 12, 2014 18:46
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ConnectWise is outdated and bloated. Its like me in the dating world. :-) I don't trust CW anymore. Updates can't fix the problems It needs a complete overhaul and that will never happen. Got worse when they bought labtech and quosal. Too few modern developers working on too much product. AT is tempting. At least they are 100% browser and their API works with web2.0 stuff. Now AT has an RMM to complement the PSA? I would love to see a review.
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Sep 14, 2014 02:57
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Anyone ever use continuum's Helpdesk service to handle tier 1 calls? How was it?
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Oct 3, 2014 15:46
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Continuums tier 1 is based in Pittsburgh. It is geared towards US based Helpdesk and if you think about it they can likely handle the majority of incoming calls. Not every call requires a personal relationship or specialized knowledge to complete. We have not used it. If we do I will report back.
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Oct 6, 2014 19:17
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Mindphlux, no worries. I was not offended or put off by any responses.
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Oct 7, 2014 12:21
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Anyone rocking Quosal or ConnectWise ChatAssist? We just signed on for Quosal so we basically put a ring on ConnectWise. No going back now. ChatAssist features look great too. Would love to hear firsthand experience.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:11
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Three things we want out of Quosal. Better CRM. The built in CW stuff sucks. Hopping Quosal makes that livable. Process flows. The CW workflows we have paired for QuoteWerks suck. Proposals. It's in their name but seriously, we do a lot of proposals. Quosal needs to help us do this better. Are we completely hosed?
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Nov 4, 2014 03:35
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