ConnectWise RMM review | TechRadar

ConnectWise was founded in 1982 as an IT solutions provider, making it one of the most experienced players in the industry right now. Over the years, it has continued to introduce and improve its products that have helped IT professionals worldwide. 

It recently won the 2024 Channel Futures MSP 501 Gala Award in the ‘Preferred vendor’ category for its RMM product. Additionally, it has also won 25 other awards in 2024 across various categories. This speaks volumes abouts its reputation, reliability, and effectiveness.

ConnectWise RMM offers excellent value for money for teams of all sizes. From automated patch management to AI scripting, there’s a lot you can do with ConnectWise. Plus, its informative dashboards, coupled with unified UIs, make it an easy-to-navigate tool, even if you use multiple ConnectWise products. In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into ConnectWise, explaining what makes it such a sought-after RMM solution.

ConnectWise: Plans and pricing

ConnectWise offers three plans: Essential, Pro, and Premium. As the name suggests, Essential is the entry-level plan, with features like automated OS and third-party patching, AI scripting, intelligent monitoring, and several third-party integrations. We found this plan sufficient for most small and medium-sized businesses and MSPs.

However, should you decide to upgrade to the Pro plan, you’ll get additional features like advanced intelligent monitoring​, network monitoring, and backup monitoring.

The Premium plan is meant for cloud and SaaS management, as it comes with features like unlimited ScreenConnect Remote, remote camera sharing, and Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 SaaS backup.

However, to find out the exact pricing of each of these plans, you’ll have to contact ConnectWise’s sales team. It’s worth noting, however, that most RMM platforms maintain an on-request pricing structure because they offer customized plans, which isn’t the case with ConnectWise. The plans are all well laid out in advance with pre-determined features. So, keeping an on-request pricing seems a little odd in this case.

ConnectWise: Features

ConnectWise offers a lot of handy features that make remote management a breeze. For instance, it’s one of the few RMM platforms to come with integrated ScreenConnect – its proprietary remote desktop access management software. The best thing is that you get this right from the most basic plan. 

This brings in functions like seamless and quick endpoint connections, a shared toolbox, and universal compatibility. IT teams can solve problems remotely via the user’s camera without any additional downloads. With other RMMs, however, you have to integrate a third-party access software, which doesn’t work as seamlessly as an out-of-the-box solution like ConnectWise.

Speaking of integrations, BrightGauge is another addition we liked. It’s basically a reporting tool that consolidates all your information in one place, giving you access to insightful business intelligence (BI) dashboards. It can capture data to convert it into skimmable charts, which helps you analyze trends and patterns quickly. Just like ScreenConnect, BrightGauge is also available on the Essential plan.

ConnectWise supports both OS (Windows and Mac) and third-party patching. You can even automate the patching function with customizable scripts. What’s more, you don’t have to write a script from scratch, either, thanks to the platform’s AI-generated scripting function that does it for you.

ConnectWise also offers dedicated NOC services, where, essentially, the platform takes the workload off your shoulders. This applies to regular patching activities, day-to-day BDR, routing management, and recovery backup. 

This allows your IT teams to focus on more critical client issues, ensuring a better overall customer experience. However – and it’s not very surprising – that this comes at an extra cost and isn’t included in any of the pre-designed plans mentioned earlier.

ConnectWise: Interface and performance

The main ConnectWise RMM dashboard is clean and neatly showcases various widgets. You can find information in the form of charts and graphs, and a quick glance will be enough to know the status of your endpoints.

However, it is ConnectWise’s Asio dashboard that steals the deal for us. Unlike other RMMs, the Asio dashboard combines all of ConnectWise’a product functions and 20+ UIs in a single place.

You can get live endpoints, patching, and network statuses from the ‘Unified Monitoring & Management’ tab. The ‘Solutions’ tab lets you manage your PSA functions, such as assigning and resolving customer tickets. Next, the ‘Centralized Data’ tab at the bottom combines all your data across various products to avoid repetitive functions and enable hyper-automation across various functions. 

The best part is that the dashboard isn’t limited to ConnectWise products – you can also add third-party vendors to extend your data into Asio, ensuring that all your apps share only a single data portfolio. This eliminates constant back and forth and makes data management seamless and unified.

ConnectWise: Security

ConnectWise has put in a lot of effort to build a robust security architecture. It has adopted the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) and complies with ISO27000 standards that focus on network security, vulnerability and threat management, and incident management, among other things.

The platform employs a formal change control process, which reviews, approves, and tests changes to network devices, information systems, and other system components. ConnectWise also maintains audit logs, with a detailed access history of various systems.

The endpoints are also secured through regular and thorough penetration tests, vulnerability, and phishing assessments. Plus, in case there’s any loss of data during a major catastrophe, ConnectWise has active disaster recovery programs running across their cloud environments.

However, it’s worth mentioning that ConnectWise’s ScreenConnect was hacked in February this year when malicious actors exploited two vulnerabilities in its system. Both issues were patched in time and ConnectWise has, since then, strengthened its security infrastructure. 

Overall, the platform has put in a lot of thought into designing and enforcing its safety measures to ensure users have a safe experience.

ConnectWise: Support

The level of customer support you get from ConnectWise depends on your plan. Here’s a quick look at the support channels available. 

It’s good to see that email and live chat support are available to every single user, irrespective of their plan. However, do note that if you’re on the most basic plan, you’ll only be able to connect to the service team on weekdays between 8am and 5pm. For users of the Standard plan, support is available 24/7, and Premium users can access assistance even on holidays.

Additionally, there’s a dedicated community forum where you can discuss your queries with platform experts. We also found a good deal of product documentation on the website that will help you out with common issues or questions.

ConnectWise: Final verdict

ConnectWise is a fairly robust RMM software offering functions like intelligent monitoring, automated patching, and AI scripting. However, its unified Asio dashboard is the showstopper and easily what impressed us the most. 

Even if you have purchased a number of ConnectWise products, the Asio dashboard combines the data of all the platforms into a single panel. This saves you a lot of data duplication and gives teams a holistic view of the statuses of various endpoints. 

Next, the entry-level Essentials plan, according to our testing, is more than enough for most modern IT teams and MSPs. It comes with integrated features like ScreenConnect, which lets you remotely access and troubleshoot endpoints. Plus, its Business Intelligence reporting tool, BrightGauge, pulls out information-driven reports in no time.

However, you will have to reach out to ConnectWise’s sales team to get a quote, even though the website has well-laid-out pre-configured plans.

ConnectWise: FAQs

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