1

With the news of LogMeIn, we are looking for alternatives with the uncertainty of our Central subscription. We use VNC for internal remote access and LogMeIn for external. My manager has asked me to look into an all-in-one product with these main features in mind - remote sessions without the user having to start it and a notification that a remote session has been started. His primary desire is a remote software that notifies a user that a remote session has been started that the user must close; kinda like the balloons in the notification area of the taskbar.

I’ve been seeing all the different software recommendations on the goodbye LogMeIn pages but would like a little help narrowing the field.

@GoTo

18 Spice ups
2

Look into Teamviewer. I’ve used it personally and professionally for a long time.

4 Spice ups
3

Take a look at Remote Utilities

It should be able to do everything you described.

3 Spice ups
4

Remember that Teamviewer isn’t Free for Professional Use.

2 Spice ups
5

That is true. Though, can’t always get everything for free.

6

We don’t mind paying but really don’t like the reports of dramatic price increases of LogMeIn Central subscriptions and the unknown with LogMeIn right now.

7

Right, also it seems it only allows 1-3 simultaneous remote control sessions were Remote Utilities allows unlimited concurrent sessions.

2 Spice ups
8

How many people in your company need to be able to remote access computers?

9

We made a switch into tiers to better support our customers.

10

Ben, if this was about your customers you would have given us more than zero notice with a 7 day grace period and given us options that were somewhere between free and exorbitant for remote support. We have been using Central for close to as long as it has been available and our costs are going up 6x. Please don’t try to BS the community.

9 Spice ups
11

Sean, we’re in the same boat as you. We’re going to be evaluating other options when we get time. Thankfully we should have some time since our Central subscription isn’t up until late this year. Our fall back is VPN with RDP, but that doesn’t allow for an interactive session. Unfortunately Central is still one of the cheapest options out there.

12

Sean,

As Aaron mentioned, Remote Utilities does have the features you are looking for. Here’s the notification window/balloon Features | Remote Utilities . You can enable/disable it in the Host (remote module) settings.

Additionally, If you want to have the remote users to accept or reject the incoming remote connection request, just enable the “Ask user permission” option in the Host settings.

Remote Utilities is now available for free for business use on up to 10 remote PCs.

5 Spice ups
13

…right. Read that again from a customer’s perspective after LMI just hiked the rates to astronomical proportions. LMI must have an awesome drone army for social media ‘experts’.

For what it’s worth Ben, I just moved another business I support off of LMI Pro, they weren’t happy either and I happily recommended the competition.

2 Spice ups
14

Make sure you cancel at least 3 months ahead of your renewal date.

2 Spice ups
15

I’ve been comparing several options and so far have found Simple-Help.com to probably win out over the rest for the following reasons:

  1. Ease of implementation - it runs on pretty much anything from a Linux VM to Raspberry Pi to Windows.

  2. Can put the support client right on your own corporate/public support website

  3. Persistent client can be installed on remote servers for unattended mode

  4. Remote diagnostics mode allows access to Windows registry, port redirects, apps installed, stats, etc.

  5. PRICE! It’s like a cheaper Bomgar alternative. Starts at $295 for a single session with unlimited remote PCs, remote unattendeds, etc. $295 gets you a single remote connection, if you want more 2 or more simultaneous connections the pricing is really competitive with other solutions.

We’ve been testing it and so far it’s been “Go to this website, click this button, run this app” to our customers and we’re in to their PC. Nothing to install on the client end, no need for the client to type anything in, no need for the client to sign up to any website (looking at you, join.me!), less hassle for the client and that’s what really matters.

It’s going to save our bacon for those clients running on the horrid ATT U-Verse Business service.

1 Spice up
16

We only have 3 people on our IT staff so we would probably need no more than 5 needing remote access but we probably have upwards to 300 devices on our network if not more.

17

I was looking at your website before I asked the question and it looks interesting. It seems to have most if not all the options my manager wants. I haven’t had time to take an in depth look though.

18

Most of that sounds great, but we are looking at a program that when “Lucy” calls, I can remote into her machine without her having to do anything.

19

How about having the remote module pre-configured and installed on Lucy’s machine beforehand, by the time she calls? In this case you would already know where to connect to (Lucy would be on your connection list) and her phone call would trigger your support session.

If Lucy doesn’t want to you access her PC without her knowing, you can use a feature like “Ask user permission” (we have that in Remote Utilities). So the Lucy calls, you connect to her, she can see an Accept/Reject prompt on her screen, clicks Accept - and you are on her desktop.

1 Spice up
20

Yup, same here. It’ll be interesting to see how many seats will move off LMI.

1 Spice up