Hands on: GoTo Resolve Standard review

GoTo Resolve has a laser-sharp focus on remote support access security, and it now augments this with endpoint protection services. These include antivirus and patch management, while the Resolve “GoPilot” streamlines support sessions with AI-powered assistance.

This cloud-hosted service is available in four plans, with the Remote Access edition providing unattended support and starting at £18 for unlimited users and 25 devices. The Remote Support plan enables attended access for on-demand support and is priced per agent.

The Standard plan we review combines unattended and attended access, adds remote execution services and enables endpoint protection, GoPilot and custom script alerts. The Premium edition adds Windows and application update management.

The basic plans interact with existing anti-malware solutions such as Windows Defender and provide status and threat updates. The endpoint protection add-on has a yearly cost of £17 per device and uses the BitDefender engine for enhanced threat detection and self-healing scripts to clean up detected malware.

To access unattended systems technicians create a personal signature key of at least eight characters and, for added security, GoTo doesn’t store them in the cloud. You can set Resolve to ask for this every time a technician accesses a sensitive task such as deploying the unattended agent, but if this becomes tedious you can set it to request it once a day or week.

Resolve’s unattended access differs from others as it loads a background service linked to the technician’s key. During deployment from the technician portal, you can download the Windows and macOS file or share a web link that is also used to retrieve the Android app.

Once authorized by the technician, each one appears in the portal’s Devices view and for our Windows 10/11 hosts, it confirmed the Firewall and Defender services were operational. The portal’s dashboard provides status charts for endpoint protection along with tables of the top alerts and an overview of all support tickets.

Selecting a device provides details of the CPU, memory, and OS and BIOS versions. The performance monitor tab displays real-time graphs of CPU, memory, network interface and disk utilization. A menu puts all support tools at the technician’s fingertips, with options to run unattended remote control, terminal sessions, a file manager, Registry editor and more.

Unattended remote control presents the device’s screen in a central window, and you can have active sessions to multiple devices and swap between them on the sidebar. Each interface provides a ribbon menu for chat, file transfer, note taking, screen sharing or blanking and rebooting.

Starting an on-demand session generates a unique nine-digit access code along with options to copy the web link and send the invitation via email. End users are presented with personal details of the technician for authenticity and asked to download the Resolve runtime app, after which the session starts and the technician is presented with the same screen and toolbar as for unattended access.

AI comes into play when you use GoPilot as it can assist diagnosis with lists of suggestions based on your queries, help with session notes and provide guidance when creating remote execution scripts using PowerShell and JavaScript. Enable Helpline on your Resolve customer portal and GoPilot can walk users through troubleshooting steps without involving a technician.

GoTo Resolve Standard takes remote support to the next level, combining tough access security measures with endpoint protection services. Add-ons such as camera sharing plus Android and iOS mobile support cost extra, but it provides a wealth of valuable support tools and Resolve’s slick AI-based services can help accelerate problem resolution.

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