ConnectWise Automate vs. Kaseya VSA

I recommend it to all IT colleagues; regardless of the size of the PCs with which you work most of the time, the application allows connection stability between computers that make it possible to continue working or taking care of the infrastructure from afar.

Incentivized

This package is well suited for businesses of any size that needs a method of connecting to systems on or off the network. This is one of the few packages that doesn't require the end user to provide permission before allowing the techs to connect which is what my agency needed as we have a majority of our systems are used by "general public" that walk in our doors and if they are doing something that they are not supposed to it would be unlikely that they would grant permission for us to access the systems.

Incentivized

• Automated patching. The patch management is very robust and doesn't let us down. We can rely on it to do its job.
• Scripting. The scripting engine and layout is excellent. It's very easy to work with and adapt Powershell scripts and other script to the native format with its functions. It also gives detailed logs to help determine why something went wrong if there's issues.

Incentivized

• Scripting - Very powerful scripting engine that allows us to update/install applications and maintain PC's and Servers.
• Policy Management - Globally configured policies allowing us to make changes to thousands of PC's quickly.
• Monitoring - Monitoring engine allows us to Proactively respond to alerts quickly minimizing downtime significantly.
• Patch Management - This module requires minimal effort to manage and maintain.

Incentivized

• You can track all your clients information and every single job you do for them. You can do quotes, send them, add providers to compare prices, manage the calendar of the employees, assign tickets to the correct person, there is nothing you can't do with this tool.
• Inside all the greatness, there are some works around that you have to do for specific duties that could be automated.
• Make sure you keep notes on each client profile, you can use the private note section, it is secure and it works as a reminder of everything you need to do about that specific client, only you and your employees will see those.

Incentivized

• The only area I can see where a lot of room for improvement can be made is in scripting of Agent procedures. Making operations more modular and able to be assembled by technicians who might not be strong in a scripting environment would be helpful. In the mean time, Kaseya has an entire site and a whole team of developers who write Agent procedures for common tasks and make them available for free to all Kaseya VSA customers.

Incentivized

Support and the Speed of supporting the latest technology is the main reason for not giving this a 10. But the product is powerful and flexible. The best way that I can sum it up is "You can get out of it what you put in to it"

Incentivized

Excellent product with easy learning curve

Incentivized

Basic use of the product is fairly easy. Information about the machines you manage can be found in customizable dashboards, which can be unique for each user, and, therefore, properly suited to the users' needs/job function. This is not a 10 because some of the interfaces are very clunky (Patch Management), and some features are not intuitive and not well documented (reporting). Scripting and Patch Management have a fairly steep learning curve (For structure in patch management and syntax in scripting), but once learned, they work well.

Incentivized

I think this is a solid tool for enterprise IT, however it would be higher if Kaseya VSA addresses the areas raised around recent stability, their support team, multiple session & screen support etc. It does do it's main job and allows an easy way for IT to operate and is mostly fine.

Incentivized

It used to be great, but then they broke reporting, speed and responsiveness with version 11 and the new Patch Manager. It's really bad and their support people are way behind on fixing so many bugs. They have really gone downhill. If they don't get it together soon, we'll start looking around.

Incentivized

Far too many issues that take ages to get resolved. Even their chat support takes a long time to get in contact with someone. When you do chat with a support rep they generally can't help you and just escalate the ticket. At least everything you've chatted about is now in the ticket.

Incentivized

It was lots of back and forth email communication whenever I tried to solve my connection issues. I would send them detailed logs of the date, time, computer, and more of when I was experiencing connection issues. All I would get is an email back a few days later saying that they didn't find an issue in the service

Incentivized

LabTech online training is very very thorough in training and helping individuals understand the theory and practical side of using a Remote Monitoring & Management. The training has multiple methods of explaining each section which helps to re-enforce everything about the Training Modules. I have had some Engineers lose their interest after a number of modules because they said that it was too much, that was too similar. I've found that the training is tailored towards a technical background but the Sales training does help NON technical individuals familiarize themselves with the Remote Monitoring and Management components and how it relates to Managed Services.

Incentivized

ConnectWise Automate was already implemented at all organizations I have used it at when I started at those MSPs. At my current MSP, we used professional services for a period after I took over management of it, and they assisted with changes that I saw needed to be made. While not specifically implemented, those services were well organized and well scheduled, and all things we discussed were tracked and recorded, allowing for good change management/tracking.

Incentivized

I have evaluated NinjaRMM, but it was after I was already familiar with ConnectWise Automate. While it seems like a good product, I found that ConnectWise Automate was more flexible in allowing me to make custom configurations to meet various business needs across different clients. I have also evaluated Addigy. While I think Addigy does a better job of managing apple devices, it is clunkier, and customization is harder in Addigy than in ConnectWise Automate.

Incentivized

We moved away from NinjaRMM for support of PowerShell scripting and APIs. Overall, the experience with NinjaRMM, though limited in features, was tenfold better than our experience with VSA. We have been desiring strongly to move away from VSA to N-Central (having been provided a full demo that we installed on our cloud infrastructure) but have been unable to do so due to Kaseya's draconian contract policies. It's important to note that NinjaRMM was allowing us to go month-to-month and switching to Kaseya VSA was one of the worst business decisions I ever made. It's equally important to note that, if you are considering Kaseya VSA, you will be locked into a 3-year contract that is nearly impossible to escape from once the documents are signed. SolarWinds N-central only requires a 1-year contract and then has month-to-month billing available. I can provide no good reason for anyone to consider Kaseya VSA when there are dozens of better systems out there to choose from.

• As mentioned briefly previous there have been a couple of times where accessing servers at different sites due to point to point connectivity going down where this has been a big life saver
• Ease of management of servers
• Made deployment of applications rule based easier

Incentivized

• It has increased the efficiency of operational tasks for our technicians
• It has change the speed at which we are able to deploy updates and software patches
• It caused us to spend additional money on more security tools due to concern from breaches

Incentivized