ConnectWise was founded in 1982 as an IT solutions provider, making it one of the most experienced players in the industry at the moment. Over the years, it has continued to introduce and improve its products that have helped IT professionals around the world.
It recently won the 2024 Channel Futures MSP 501 Gala Award in the “Preferred Supplier” category for its RMM product. Furthermore, it also won 25 other awards in 2024 in various categories. This says a lot about 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 information panels, along with unified user interfaces, make it easy to navigate, even if you use multiple ConnectWise products. In this article, we'll take a deeper look at ConnectWise and explain 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 basic plan, with features like automated operating system and third-party patches, AI scripts, intelligent monitoring, and various third-party integrations. We found this plan to be sufficient for most small and medium-sized businesses and MSPs.
However, if you decide to upgrade to the Pro plan, you will get additional features like advanced smart monitoring, network monitoring, and backup monitoring.
The Premium plan is designed 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 price of each of these plans, you will need to contact the ConnectWise sales team. However, it is worth noting that most RMM platforms maintain an on-demand pricing structure because they offer customized plans, which is not the case with ConnectWise. All plans are well designed beforehand with predetermined features. Therefore, maintaining an on-demand price seems a bit strange in this case.
ConnectWise: Features
ConnectWise offers many useful features that make remote management easier. For example, it is one of the few RMM platforms that comes with built-in ScreenConnect, its proprietary remote desktop access management software. The best thing is that you get this from the most basic plan.
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 detailed business intelligence (BI) dashboards. You can capture data to turn it into crumbly graphs, helping you analyze trends and patterns quickly. Like ScreenConnect, BrightGauge is also available on the Essential plan.
ConnectWise supports operating system (Windows and Mac) and third-party patches. 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 feature that does it for you.
ConnectWise also offers dedicated NOC services, where the platform essentially takes the workload off of you. This applies to the usual activities of patching, daily BDR, routing management, and recovery backup.
This allows your IT teams to focus on more critical customer issues, ensuring a better overall customer experience. However, and not too surprisingly, this comes at an additional cost and is not included in any of the pre-built plans mentioned above.
ConnectWise: interface and performance
The main ConnectWise RMM dashboard is clean and clearly displays 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's ConnectWise's Asio panel that steals the deal for us. Unlike other RMMs, Asio's dashboard combines all ConnectWise product features and more than 20 UIs in one place.
You can get live endpoints, patches, and network statuses from the “Unified Monitoring and Management” tab. The 'Solutions' tab allows you to manage your PSA functions, such as assigning and resolving customer tickets. Next, the “Centralized Data” tab at the bottom combines all your data across multiple products to avoid repetitive functions and enable hyper-automation across multiple functions.
ConnectWise: Security
ConnectWise has put a lot of effort into building 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 detailed access history of various systems.
Endpoints are also protected through regular and thorough penetration testing, vulnerability testing, and phishing assessments. Additionally, in the event of any data loss during a major disaster, ConnectWise has active disaster recovery programs running in its cloud environments.
However, it is worth mentioning that ConnectWise's ScreenConnect was hacked in February this year when malicious actors exploited two vulnerabilities in its system. Both issues were fixed in time, and ConnectWise has since strengthened its security infrastructure.
Overall, the platform has put a lot of thought into designing and enforcing its security measures to ensure users have a safe experience.
ConnectWise: support
The level of customer support you get from ConnectWise depends on your plan. Below is a quick look at the available support channels.
| Support channel | Essential | Standard | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yeah | Yeah | Yeah | |
| live chat | Yeah | Yeah | Yeah |
| Outbound phone support | No | Yeah | Yeah |
| Inbound phone support | No | No | Yeah |
It's good to see that email and live chat support is available to all users, regardless of their plan. However, please note that if you are on the most basic plan, you will only be able to connect with the service team Monday to Friday between 8 am and 5 pm For Standard plan users, support is available 24 hours a day , 7 days a week, and Premium users can access support even on holidays.
Additionally, there is a dedicated community forum where you can discuss your queries with experts of the platform. We also found a lot of product documentation on the website that will help you with common problems or questions.
ConnectWise: final verdict
ConnectWise is a pretty solid RMM software that offers features like intelligent monitoring, automated patching, and AI scripting. However, its unified Asio dashboard is the most spectacular and easily what impressed us the most.
Even if you have purchased multiple ConnectWise products, the Asio dashboard combines data from all platforms into a single dashboard. This saves you a lot of data duplication and gives teams a comprehensive view of the states of multiple endpoints.
Next, the entry-level Essentials plan, in our testing, is more than enough for most modern IT teams and MSPs. It comes with built-in features like ScreenConnect, which allows you to remotely access and troubleshoot endpoints. Additionally, its Business Intelligence reporting tool, BrightGauge, generates insights-driven reports in no time.
However, you will have to contact the ConnectWise sales team to get a quote, although the Website has well-designed pre-configured plans.
ConnectWise: Frequently Asked Questions
How much does ConnectWise cost?
Although ConnectWise does not reveal its price, it has three well-defined plans: Essential, Standard and Premium. The basic plan comes with all the essential RMM features, such as Windows and Mac remote monitoring, operating system and third-party patches, and automations.
The Pro plan comes with advanced smart monitoring capabilities and basic network monitoring. Lastly, the Premium plan offers unlimited remote access and support for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 SaaS.
Is ConnectWise legit?
Founded in 1982, ConnectWise is a legitimate and trustworthy company. With over 40 years of experience in the IT industry, ConnectWise has grown to become one of the most reputable names in the RMM space. Its more than 25 awards in 2024 are a testament to the quality and reliability of its products.
Additionally, it takes security measures seriously and has detailed policies for vulnerability management and threat mitigation. These are based on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) and the platform also complies with ISO27000 standards.
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