ConnectWise Manage Reviews

MSP Help Desk (Dispatcher & Help Deskt Engineer/Tech).  Clients call, I create, assign, schedule, update...  tickets in Connectwise Manage.  As dispatcher, I only use a small percentage of the application.  85 to 90% of the form I don't even bother with, I just ignore those fields.  My job is the firefighting aspect...  all the other stuff, operations, accounting, sales, etc is all on the boss... and much of those features are available to me, but it's really too much clutter on one form, and I don't mess with it 'cause I don't have the time.

Before I joined, they used it right out of the box...  no saved queries/views...  ticket creation was never standard, and contact info was always questionable...  I created new views for lots of things I needed and got life a little more organized.  So, even w/o much training, the Views & macros lauguage used for it in the interface are GREAT. VERY Intuituve!

ConnectWise has a lot of shortcut keys, and you can manipulate the forms. This is all great stuff. If I had the time, I would create some more custom forms. There are some canned forms for basic input, like call-taking forms. When I open a new ticket, I've got a zillion fields, and only 10 apply to the current situation. I haven't taken the time to see if they have any way to import or download forms for specific situations, like forms specific to billing. I'm sure my boss doesn't want to see a form with 3,000 fields on it, and he's only interested in two of them.

I also like ConnectWise's ability to set up queries. I can set up all these different queries that look for specific things and end up with a list of results, like feedback from the client or the ticket status. There is a little thing where you can click a dropdown box. And I don't know if ConnectWise added some by default, but when I discovered this, it was like, "Wow, what a gold mine!" I usually have ConnectWise open with five to six tab screens where a specific query is the end result in each screen. I start my day, sign in, and run macros to open up my basic five or six screens to run throughout the day.

All other ticket systems can search previous tickets, whether they were homegrown in Oracle or something else. I'm talking about searching the actual contents of the discussions in the ticket. In ConnectWise, you can only search the summaries. It's ridiculous. It needs to be a usable knowledge base. I know I could probably search our ticket base and find 800 tickets for customers with the same problem. And that's the whole idea. I was always an analyst evaluating trends. If we show the data to management, we can get them to focus on certain things and make problems disappear forever. 

Also, it's nearly impossible for visually impaired people to use the ConnectWise application because there are only two modes. There is a mobile mode that is optimized for the iPhone, and it doesn't change. You can't change the font size. It's quite limiting, but I've grown used to it.

ConnectWise is really the only ticketing system that I've ever seen that ties into the money, like the billing, contacts, etc. It's a little overwhelming for a ticketing system. If I had the time, it would be nice to create custom forms. But I also made a bunch of macros that were isolating only open tickets for a particular tech. It would be awesome if there were a way to insert some form of macro language in ConnectWise, like dialogue boxes that prompt. This is the kind of stuff I used to do. It's what we call "continuous process improvements." 

I worked on the help desk many years ago, and I stepped away for about 12 years to focus more on network activity. I was working for a network provider help desk. Because I did a lot of scripting myself, I ended up developing tools to evaluate their product. So I was away from desktop support for about 12 years. During that time some of the solutions changed hands from company to company. I left that company and decided that I really like doing desktop support. I sought a job in that field. I'm not very mobile anymore, but I can work from home and have a dozen machines here. 

Well, I can't speak to what Manage's limits are. As a dispatcher on the front end of the help desk, I'm putting out fires. 

to clarify...   IT Helpdesk is the 'putting out fires'....  allot of people out in the world who need help with their PC's & laptops...    not with the ticket system of Connectwise...  that usually runs like a clock.  It's rare that we have issues with the ticket system. :)

I can't provide any honest feedback here.

The few times I've had to call, when I first joined the company...   Always excellent, professional, courtious, friendly, and efficient...   always resolved my issue or answered my questions...  I never had to wait forever, and get questioable help.  Your support team is great.

(I rate it a  '9' so you still have room for improvement...  ha ha.)

Positive

Four years ago, I started working for this gentleman who hired me primarily for my scripting skills and experience at the help desk. And when I first started, he had already owned and LabTech for a few years, but he wasn't really using it. They didn't understand how to use it, so they were only using the remote access feature. It was going to waste. After I was there a few months, I figured things out and wrote a whole flow chart for them. Then they switched to Kaseya right when I had gotten everything under control and was starting to feel good about what we could do with LabTech. Kaseya was a nightmare. It's so useless and convoluted.

A guy who was working with us unscrewed a lot of that and got Kaseya working better. But then had some security problems and had to restore. They had to go back several months in their restoration, and all of our problems returned.

I want my boss to go back to LabTech. With LabTech or Automate, one individual with minimal training and a certain amount of focus could manage 400 different clients with special setups. I loved it. It was the first time Ihad been introduced to anything like it. I'd been away from desktop support for 12 years. So when I saw things like that, I was like, "Holy moly, you guys have remote access to everybody? Wow." 

Remedy is another option. I haven't used it in years, but Remedy was the ticket system I used at another company. At another place, they tried to make their own database ticketing system with Lotus Notes and Oracle. Oracle's ticketing system is homebrew. They give you a bunch of stuff out of the box, and you have to hire a development team to make it usable.

The whole ticketing system was already in place when I was hired. We've had some other changes to the operations structure. I don't know if we changed providers or it went from on-premise to the cloud or something, but there was a lot of funny stuff going on. 

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I was never involved in the choice...   always on the tail end as a user or admin.

I'd rate ConnectWise Manage nine out of 10. It's the utility that I have to use. 

We have one of the servers that our managed stuff runs on, and it's hosted by ConnectWise themselves. They keep all of our stuff up to date.

The primary tool that we're using is the service desk functionality. Our help desk ticketing system goes through there. Pretty much what that allows us to do, is it allows us to keep all of our clients in one location. It also keeps track of all the tickets and contacts. On top of that, we have what are called configurations and our configuration is like any type of endpoint or log-in or object or anything like that. Therefore, workstations or accounts or all that type of stuff is stored all in ConnectWise. That way, whenever we create a ticket, we can quickly look at the configurations for that client and pull useful information.

Some of the most valuable features, at least for us, are definitely apparent when it comes to the kind of central management on offer. Being able for it, number one, to directly integrate into ConnectWise Automate, goes hand in hand. What that allows us to do is it allows us to, have an up-to-date inventory on all of our stuff, and also have all of that information available to us in ConnectWise. Being able to pull pretty much any information needed directly into our ticketing system without having to go outside is always really useful. 

We handle our service agreements and our billing and finances and all that stuff. Being central helps us keep track of how much we need to bill each of our clients, as well as how many different tickets we have and how long technically takes when it comes to time and expenses and stuff like that.

It's definitely one of those tools that is super powerful.

The initial setup isn't too difficult.

There definitely is a learning curve to it. It has its issues. You've constantly got to make sure you're saving everything. You have to refresh and save stuff all the time, to make sure that things are applied as needed, and also, you have got to have some patience when it comes to making changes to things. 

A lot of times, it'll take a couple of moments for things to go through. If you're not patient about it, it may seem like things aren't working. 

If anything, I would say when it comes to just their features and stuff that are available, sometimes, it just needs a simplified view or some sort of way to offer a simplified view for our customers. Sometimes it's just so much information available to the point where you don't even know where to look. It could be more user-friendly.

Technical support could be better.

You're kind of locked down when it comes to how the interface is laid out and what your branding and stuff look like. Increased customization is useful for us as well.

We've been using the solution for a year and a half at this point. It hasn't been too long.

Pretty much everybody on our team utilizes Manage, even including people who aren't necessarily technicians. Our technical account manager is the guy who's in charge of making sure agreements and stuff are up to date and sends out quotes and invoices, et cetera. He's in the time and expense and financing section of Manage most of the time. However, it pretty much allows all of our team members to connect in one place, in a central office. Anyone who is using ConnectWise Manage is also using ConnectWise Automate, and they do directly integrate. All the information from Automate gets pulled into ConnectWise Manage by itself and then it's available in those configurations.

They definitely need better tech support. There's a lot of instances where we are kind of forced to go to them for their support team. It is a slow process and it constantly just feels like they're pretty much sending you to the documentation page that you already would have found, rather than actually offering direct assistance. Sometimes we'll send a question and then they'll just reply with a link to a documentation page. I would definitely say that there is tech support available, however, I would say it's a growing point that they need to focus on.

The only other tool I've really used before that I would say is comparable would be ManageEngine. It's a very comparable ticketing system. And just based on my experience between the two, ConnectWise does seem like it has a better feature set. It seems like everything's well-drawn out a little bit better and also, one thing I like about ConnectWise is that there's a kind of consistency between menus. Once you figure out where things are normally located and what menus typically look like, it's not like every single window you open is a brand new settings window. It's a lot of the pages, however, once you start using ConnectWise Manage, a lot of the things will look really familiar between the two solutions.

The setup isn't too crazy, however, due to the learning curve, you need to be training actual technicians. During that setup process, it was a bit of careful checking to make sure you've got it set stuff up all correctly. From my understanding, it wasn't too bad and not impossible to get set up.

I wasn't yet at the company when it was deployed, and therefore, I cannot speak to how long the process took.

I'm not 100% sure about pricing. My understanding is that ConnectWise is cheaper than ManageEngine, however, I would have to double-check.

We're partners with ConnectWise.

Our deployment is partially on the cloud and partially on-premises. 

If we needed to restart it, which we really ever have to do, that's all hosted by ConnectWise. This is convenient to us, as that's something that, due to the fact we're already managing so many systems, it's one less thing we have to worry about.

For others implementing the product, I'd advise that it's very much one of those ticketing systems that it's as powerful as you want to make it. My advice would be to utilize as many of the integrations that are available as possible. A lot of the integrations will help auto-populate data and pull in information that you'll want/need. Take advantage of the available integrations and add-ons. For example, we use Webroot antivirus for our clients and we can deploy Webroot through Automate. Through Manage, we have a Webroot integration that keeps a log of where our agents are at and that type of stuff. We're able to access that information from multiple places and it helps us. That way we'll get a ticket in our system that says, "Hey, this person got an alert on their antivirus. You need to look into this." Therefore, it allows us to catch things a little bit quicker.

I'd rate the product at an eight out of ten. It's really good software, however, they definitely have some things that need to be worked on, in regards to actually supporting their software. We've run into problems where, if we're able to fix it ourselves, it's not an issue and when we're just using it on a day-to-day basis, it's fine. However, once something goes wrong and we're trying to get it fixed, it's a slow process. Their support definitely needs to be fixed. It would be nice to just have some more customization options. 

It's our daily ticketing board. That's where we keep all of our companies with all of their configurations. We handle ticket dispatch through there, meeting scheduling, all of our triage boards, and so on. So, incoming tickets to our help desk all go there.

All of our projects are managed through there, along with our quoting opportunities, our product catalog, and our agreements with all of our clients. Pretty much our whole company runs through ConnectWise Manage.

I like the search function up top where if you know what you're searching for, you can find it pretty quickly. Because you've got the option to change what the search parameters are, whether you're searching for a project, quote, ticket, or an invoice, you can kind of pick and choose what you're looking for.

Some of the mass move features are nice, as far as being able to mass move some tickets and do some mass edit functions.

There are some edit and mass edit functions that don't exist. You can mass delete tickets or mass move tickets from one board to another, but you can't mass change a company. So, if you've got 40 tickets that come in, that get generated, that don't get properly tagged with the company, you can't just check them all and reassign them to another company. You have to individually reassign each one of those tickets to a new company.

Also, I have seen some unreliability on some of the workflow rules where we have rules that are set to inspect our board every five minutes and move tickets that match certain criteria to different places. At times, these workflow rules just stop working for a few hours. Then, we end up having a bunch of tickets that start piling up that were supposed to be automated out.

Also, integration with some of their other services could be improved so that the process is not as clunky as it is now.

I've been using ConnectWise Manage for a little over four years.

Reliability is definitely something that I have issues with, especially over a bad connection. For example, I'm on satellite internet at home, and we have a cloud solution. So, I know obviously that we've got a good connection on the other side, but it seems like if a connection gets dropped in the middle of something loading, sometimes it doesn't properly re-request the information that I was trying to get.

So, for instance, if I'm pulling up a ticket and my connection gets disrupted slightly, a lot of the time it won't load the ticket notes. There will just be a blank section where you know there's supposed to be data. We've got a bot built in Microsoft Teams. So I can go into Teams and use an API call to pull that notes section out. So, I know it's there; it's just that the system isn't fully getting it to me.

I definitely experience that on a slow connection much more. When I'm in my office on a fiber connection, a 200/200 fiber, I see a totally different operation than that when I'm at home on a 35/5 satellite.

It seems to be scalable. I know that we've got hundreds of clients, both past and present. I know that there are MSPs that are using much larger solutions and that we're using ConnectWise. So I think as long as your hardware is set up to support it, it's as scalable as you want it to be.

However, when we were running an on-premises version, we did notice that we had some scalability issues using hard disks rather than SSDs.

We've got about 20 people using ConnectWise Manage. About 15 of those are techs, and the other five are admin personnel, our ordering, accounting, ownership, sales, etc.

From an end-user standpoint, I would say that technical support is decent, probably a seven or an eight out of ten.

From talking with the NOC staff, from an admin perspective, about handling actual server configuration issues, I've heard that they would rate support at three or four. I've heard that they're better with end-user support than they are with system admin support.

From an end-user standpoint, the initial setup is very simple.

The cost can be the main barrier. It's not a solution for a three person company. It just isn't going to be cost effective.

Because ConnectWise Manage does have everything there, the licensing is a little bit restrictive as far as how they granularly assign licenses rather than having more of an all-inclusive package.

You're going to get everything you want, but you're going to pay more for it than you would for some other solutions that may offer all the same features but may require more technical abilities in order to implement them properly.

Make sure that it provides everything that you need. I think it probably does everything that you need it to do if you're willing to go through the work to configure it properly.

I think ConnectWise is a great solution. However, I believe it's going to start losing market share based on its somewhat restrictive licensing practice. I would say that it's similar to a Cisco or an Avaya phone system, where you're going to get the best, probably one of the best things out there on the market, but you're also going to pay the highest dollar for it. Also, you're not necessarily going to have the best tech support because they will be supporting such a large clientele.

Overall, I would rate ConnectWise Manage at eight on a scale from one to ten. Their team doesn't know the API as well as they probably need to in order to support the admin personnel who are trying to utilize it. 

We use this solution for support ticketing and for sales funnel tracking. We are end-users and resellers. I am vice president of international business development.

The program has improved our data management and collaboration as well as activity tracking. 

We use this solution because it does everything we need as opposed to other programs that are always missing one feature or another. This is the only product that has every feature we need and this makes it unique in the market because it has everything that any VAR or MSP would want.

The UI needs a lot of improvement. ConnectWise has a very outdated 90s interface and it's difficult to access from the mobile app because of the limited number of features you can access. The product needs to enable all features on mobile devices, it would be a big step forward for the company. The solution is far more complicated than Salesforce and NetSuite, even Sugar CRM beats it in terms of usability and interface.

I've been using this solution for 15 years. 

The solution is reliable and stable, it gets the job done.

Technically speaking, the scalability is fine. The company could grow 10 times its current size and we could continue using ConnectWise without a problem. The bigger issue with scalability is the same for any and every digital platform consistently across the board, scalability is never really an issue anymore with the way technology works today. The bigger issue is human scalability, making sure that everybody's using the system. From that perspective, ConnectWise is complex enough that a unified common language between all people takes time.

As a general rule, our engineers like to do things themselves rather than contacting the software developer or the service provider, but I'm sure they need to do that once in a while. 

I wasn't around when the solution was initially implemented but imagine the initial setup was straightforward. The company has a large team of engineers. We initially deployed on-prem and when we switched to cloud, I believe it took around two weeks to implement. We carried out the implementation ourselves. Our users are in engineering, sales, marketing, operations and legal. About 50 people in total. The product is extensively used and we do our own maintenance. Our usage increases linearly, both up and down.

If you are a service provider or a value-added reseller who needs to support your clients, this is the only all-in-one tool that contains every single feature you could possibly need. However, there is a sharp learning curve, the interface is clunky and there are many other tools on the market that could do 80-90% of what a value-added reseller would want. 

The solution gets a high mark for features but loses points with the UI. I rate this solution seven out of 10.

My team uses this solution for tickets and change management, and we also use it as a knowledge base. 

It's a pretty simple web interface. The rules engine was really easy to set up, and it ingests emails very well.

The speed could be better, and the reporting could be a lot better. 

The solution is super stable. 

I think the solution is pretty scalable. We have about eight users. We have the service desk, engineers, our change manager, and the developers, who use it to put in changes and stuff like that. I have one employee who is our admin for the solution and that's it. It's pretty low-maintenance. 

I really haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to deal with tech support, but everyone that we have talked to was pretty decent. We had a problem once with someone, but then we escalated it and it got resolved.

Previously, we used ServiceNow and we switched for a couple of reasons. Reason number one was the cost. ServiceNow is extremely expensive. Reason number two was that we wanted an environment that allowed us to have remote control and third-party package management all in one. I actually liked the overall ServiceNow product better, but the biggest pros for me with ConnectWise Manage are the cost and the remote control capabilities. My tool to manage my devices and my tool for ticketing are all in one.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It wasn't bad at all.

I have one monthly license for all of the ConnectWise products I use, and it's $85 per user. In addition to the standard license fee, I think there's a $1,500 implementation fee. 

If you are looking to implement ConnectWise Manage for a single organization, I would say that when you're having your conversation with your implementation consultants, make sure that you very specifically communicate what you want out of the solution. They've got a very defined script and they wanted to spend a lot of time implementing service levels, contracts, and companies, and all of this stuff that's really an ERP for MSPs, and we had to redirect them. I would say make sure you have enough hours to really get the ball rolling on Automate, and you have to dedicate some serious time to training your employees because it's all self-based training, so you have to make sure that you get those hours in.

I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten. 

We are using ConnectWise Manage as a CRM application for customer management and ticketing.

We use ConnectWise Manage to communicate with our clients. The records of what we do and what we provide to our clients are all documented in the solution. The knowledge base that improves on a daily basis is based on what we provide. The resolutions are getting noted and documented. Billing is very helpful because when you have your contracts logged, the tickets automatically generate the invoices based on the contract of each customer. It has been efficient for our organization.

All the features of ConnectWise Manage are valuable. However, ticketing, customer management, customer communication, technician efficiency, calendars, coding, billing, invoicing, and contract management are available. It's a complete solution. Additionally, the company is responsive with the ability to progress or make necessary changes happen. 

ConnectWise Manage can improve third-party integrations and the UI. The UI is good but it could improve in the graphics.

I have been using ConnectWise Manage for a year and a half.

ConnectWise Manage is stable.

The scalability of ConnectWise Manage is good.

We have approximately 15 users using this solution in my organization. Most of the users are engineers, technicians, or salespeople.

The initial setup of ConnectWise Manage is easier compared to Automate. It's less technical. It's mostly for administration and management. 

We have switched from another solution to ConnectWise Manage, it was a complete setup for both ConnectWise Manage and Automate and it took about four, or five months. Everything together in parallel took us about four, or five months.

We do not do a lot of maintenance for ConnectWise Manage. We are using it on a daily basis. The amount of people needed for deployment depends on who's deploying it and is it a brand new company or an existing company with a lot of information.

The pricing of ConnectWise Manage is reasonable.

My advice to others is they need to know their operation very well before they start deploying because it's a raw product. However you set it up, you're going to use it. If you know your system and you have the vision of the automation, then you can set it up however you want to set it up.

I rate ConnectWise Manage a nine out of ten.

We use ConnectWise for ticketing. It's our PSA.

It's our central business management platform.

The solution integrates with pretty much everything that we need.

The product has been pretty stable so far.

The solution can scale quite well.

The custom reporting needs to be improved. 

The initial setup can get complex. 

We've probably been using the solution for eight years at this point. It's been a while. 

The stability is pretty good. There are occasional issues as it's on the cloud. There are days that it's slow and days that it's better, however, for the most part, it's stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability of the solution is very good.

We have 14 users on the solution currently.

While we do use the product quite a bit, we have no plans to increase usage at this time. 

Technical support is okay. I would rate them at a seven out of ten. They are mostly helpful and responsive. 

We started with ConnectWise. We did not use a different solution previously.

The initial setup was fairly complex. It's not simple as it's a pretty encompassing system.

It's hosted, so we're not investing anything into maintenance or things like that.

They have consulting services that they offer on startups. We took advantage of their assistance when we implemented the solution. I'd rate their services at a six out of ten.

We're paying $940 a month for 14 users.

Costs vary and pricing depends on the modules that somebody purchases.

We're a customer and an end-user. We are not a partner or reseller.

Due to the fact that we are on a cloud deployment, we are always on the most recent version of the solution.

I've talked to other MSP owners and I still have the opinion that it's the best solution out there.

I'd rate this solution at an eight out of ten. The cloud platform has some slow days, which is an issue. The problem with custom reporting is an issue and support could be better. However, we're largely pretty happy with its capabilities.

It is primarily a CRM for us for sales tracking. I am most probably using its latest version, and it is most probably a cloud solution.

It helps in completing deal registrations. If I'm trying to get into a deal registration, I can go in there and quickly search and get a contact's name and information.

The search function is really good. To have a single place where we have the account information stored is probably most valuable.

There should be some improvements to the interface. It is not completely intuitive. When you click in a blank area of a screen, you'll find some options. 

I have been using this solution for more than three years. I used it at another job, and we recently got it here, so I started using it again within the last year and a half.

Its stability, reliability, and performance have been pretty good. I'm not aware of any recent service interruptions.

For our needs, so far, we haven't had any issues. We are able to add more and more accounts. Everything looks good so far.

We have about 75 users. In terms of usage, it is currently not being used extensively in the organization. We're pretty much in the walking stage. We are not running yet. We have plans to increase its usage.

I am not aware of it. They used lots of spreadsheets. This was more encompassing for the entire business unit. 

There is another group that uses a product from Citrix called Podio. This group is still using it. They didn't really switch. They are using Podio more for project management, whereas ConnectWise is more for sales. It is a CRM.

It got set up after I started, but I wasn't part of the team that was doing the setup.

In terms of maintenance, the operation team is responsible for managing that. I believe there is a consultant that we use to help with some of the customizations, but I don't work with that person.

The biggest delay we had was with some of the integration with some of the quoting tools that we used. There was some customization that was a little more involved than what we thought.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.