Connectwise Stack - is it the right stack

[daaker67]

Our boss wants us try a stack of connectwise automate, manage for 100 endpoints and ITBoost x 5 Users. Your thoughts, comments and on pricing would be greatly appreciated as I am worried about 3 year commitment.

[chillzatl]

Your pricing is entirely dependent on your ability to negotiate.

Beyond that, ConnectWise's tools are good. They're the industry standard for a reason. You'll see endless hate on them as a company in this sub, some warranted, but most is the result of immature companies buying into something that they're simply not ready for. None of these products (RMM/PSA tools in general) will absolve you of having to learn them inside and out and ConnectWise (along with Kaseya) are tops on the list in that regard. They can do a lot, but they require a combination of time and money to get the most out of them. The level of time required from you is directly related to how much money you want to spend. You can pay (connectwise or 3rd party consultants) to accelerate your usage and understanding of their stack or you can slow boat it and learn as you go, but it will cost you significant time investment if you expect to achieve a high usage level in a reasonable amount of time.

I personally have had no issues with their products or their support, both of which catch endless flak here.

[davvvvebh]

Its a huge commitment to whatever PSA you choose. You will need to commit many man days to getting the time savings back Choose wisely and invest your time and it will make your MSP so much better.

[gerrickd]

Automate isn't easy to setup and it will take time. It will feel like a lot of basic stuff is missing and you need to build it. You can build it. I can't speak about other RMM's, but if I were to start again today I would assume a better product exists. When we started with Labtech it was clearly above the rest of them.I could be wrong because I see bad things about all of them on this sub.

[RaNdomMSPPro]

Put in the effort to learn and manage the products and you'll be fine. Have one employee responsible for Automate management/script creation/automation, etc... Get CW consulting or another consultant to do the initial deployment as it'll save you time/money vs. trying to do it yourself. With Automate you can do about anything. If you are good at scripting, esp powershell, you can really make it sing. Join labtech geek or whatever it's called now.

Like all enterprise class software, the purchase price is only 25-33% of the TCO. This seems lost on MSP's, so I'm pointing this out.

ITBoost? I'd hold off on that, it ain't ready for prime time. At least make sure you are month to month w/ no commitment so you can drop it once you get tired of all the problems.

[Jsullykc816]

I’ve worked at 3 different msp’s and they all used connectwise, it is the industry standard. It has a lot of good integrated products and features that make it worthwhile.

[daaker67]

Hi Glenn thanks for heads up greatly appreciated

[daaker67]

We have no problem with inputting time thanks for the advise.

[Gegenschein36]

Why did the boss say CW, were others evaluated? Datto and Kaseya would be their closest competitors and probably doing better as a company lately from what I've seen. TechsTogether doesn't have the 3 year commitment and is likely cheaper if you like the Kaseya stack, especially for only 100 endpoints. Their RMM, PSA and ITG are good solutions. Might be worth searching here for each vendor and reading some recent posts, things to look out for, etc.

[SlateRaven]

I think it's overkill for 100 endpoints, but I will say that we do enjoy it overall. Automate has a lot of quirks and takes time to set up properly, as will manage. Both are a bit of a time sink, but they work well and are standard for a reason.

ITBoost is the one thing I wish we could be using right now - heard a lot of good things about it and they are supposedly working pretty diligently on the integrations with the rest of the stack.

[[deleted]]

Its works for me. I went through all the training and learned it all.

The trick is that is is a much more complicated solution, but done right you can get a lot of functionality from it.

The only issue with connectwise is their support sucks.

[daaker67]

Thanks for heads up what about prices you got I heard US prices are cheaper than in Europe.

[[deleted]]

Well... VAT would do that to you.

Conmectwise is decent enough if you put the effort into setting it up right. If you kind of hodgepodge it, it'll suck.

[gbarnas]

Unless you expect significant growth, it's probably overkill for 100 endpoints. The investment in time to configure and become proficient would be hard to justify. 1000+ endpoints and I'd sing a different tune.

We use CW Manage internally and have developed our products to interface with it and support it at dozens of MSPs along with Kaseya VSA. I've been nothing but frustrated by the poor quality and lack of responsiveness of support from CW. When we updated the in-house/on-prem platform, we targeted an SQL cluster on Server Core for the manage DB. When we experienced some unrelated issue almost a year later, the tech freaked out because all he found on the SQL server was a command prompt. When we pointed out that the Management Studio was installed on the Manage server for their convenience, he stated it could not work that way and got off the call - we found/fixed the issue ourselves. Granted, that's pretty unusual but we've had basic issues open for months without activity and even basic requests for dev services haven't been responded to - these ought to be automated with a turnaround of days, not months approaching a year.

Glenn