Remote monitoring and access

[Mike McCall]

This is sort of startup 101 imo - go sell the first 1-5 clients before you buy the software (like while trialing? Or even after your trial expires)

You should be able to sell it on the idea without "showing" them..

It may be what's expected of startups by various vendors, but it does put them in a position of selling something they don't truly have in hand. Selling the concept before they have the substance.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

This is sort of startup 101 imo - go sell the first 1-5 clients before you buy the software (like while trialing? Or even after your trial expires)

You should be able to sell it on the idea without "showing" them..

Yup we've done that often. I usually will not "sign up" with a product/service until I know I can "cover it" fairly quickly..if not at least wash off the cost in the first month or 3....and then it increasingly turns into higher and higher profit as the numbers grow.

Recent example...when we wanted to introduce Solarwinds BDR. I trialed a few licenses for a couple of months....and then when we wanted to purchase a few more, thebig price break was at $500 bucks....so I held off on that purchase until I was able to obtain about 75% enough clients to fill that order.

A prior example of "not" jumping onto a product...a while ago, when I was looking at Anchor cloud (now eFolder I think). I hit the streets hard trying to sell enough to make that big initial purchase worth it. Couldn't get nearly enough to even give a hope of having it covered within a year, so I opted to not go with that product.

 

[GTP]

This is sort of startup 101 imo - go sell the first 1-5 clients before you buy the software (like while trialing? Or even after your trial expires)

You should be able to sell it on the idea without "showing" them..

Did my homework pretty well when I first started getting in to RMM/MSP.
Was given a free 3 month trial of AVG's Zendesk with all the bells and whistles, but selling it to people was harder than I thought!
There is so much to consider, like client base, demographics, ROI etc.
Trying to get $25+ p/m for managed services from something like AVG Zendesk, or Solarwinds was then and still is now - out of the question.
I've had people tell me they could pay off a car for $25 a week, so why would I pay that for you to watch my computer?
Sure, I may be able to hook 4 maybe 5 clients, but that is hardly going to cover the charges is it?
Kabuto worked perfectly for me because it was simple, cheap, and more importantly allowed me to get my foot in the door!
I now have customers that can see the benefit of "managed services" so maybe in the future it may not be so hard to sell them a much more expensive one. (Although, Kabuto is evolving quickly and as new features are added it becomes more attractive to stick with it.)

 

[fencepost]

Without disclosing much about pricing, I'll note simply that if you're doing monitoring and AV through Kabuto you're already paying well above the halfway point for just about everything you can do with N-Able on per-workstation basis (excluding backup). Servers can optionally be a different and more expensive beast, but if you don't need much remote management they can also be the same cost as workstations.

 

[GTP]

I might call my Logic Now/ Max Focus/ Solarwinds/ N-Able or whatever their called this week rep and ask about pricing again.
There are so many extra's that are not included in the pricing, like branding that can take the shine off.

 

[skdmaster]

I know recently the owner of this document had a mishap with his google account so this is the new link to it but gives you some idea on some RMM products http://rmm.msp.zone

 

[fencepost]

Hm, the pricing info in there for N-Able is pretty off, though maybe if you have thousands of endpoints....

 

[skdmaster]

I always take the pricing with a grain of salt - especially if you are talking to a rep towards the end of a quarter and they are hungry to close a deal. Best to always do a trial at 1 1/2 months thru a quarter - 30 day trial - hem and haw for a week - talk about other products you looked at then negotiate your pricing down - they all have room to work deals. Even with adding licenses reps will do things like buy 25 license and give you 5 for free for a month or two or other packages so they can make their numbers.

 

[GTP]

Hm, the pricing info in there for N-Able is pretty off, though maybe if you have thousands of endpoints....

Just curious which way? Too high or too low?

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Just curious which way? Too high or too low?

Too low, especially the server pricing. However, as has been stated it depends on your total number of nodes and when you sign up on what pricing you get. I think it's BS. It should just be a set price per node, even tiered at certain levels, but it seems like the reps can just go with whatever they want on sign up day.

 

[tucsonpc]

Has anyone tried the RMM One by Comodo? Reportedly free, looks comprehensive. https://one.comodo.com/

I use it for friends and family. It's very comprehensive. However, the remote tool is not very good -- a feature they seem to be working on with most updates. I love how granular their patch management is, but I wish I could sort it by 'installed' or not -- would be a huge timesaver.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Just curious which way? Too high or too low?

I find it mixed, inaccurate. It's either Essentials agent, or Professional agent...doesn't matter if it's a WS or server. And pricing of AV and Patch changes if it's on a Pro agent (they go down, or are included), versus an Essentials agent
And...as most of us that use N-Able know, you can get a ton of freebie Essentials agents. Yes this depends on your agent, and how much you spend with them...but this is part of business, it's very common.

Also re: support, any time I've called to get support, I'm talking to someone in Canada.

I dunno why he put "no" for screenshot/view. I can take screenshots, I can record the session, I can blank the remote screen, I can use a laser pointer...not sure why there is a "no" there.

 

[fencepost]

I'm still trying to figure out why we're paying for so many of the Essentials agents we're using. I believe they're much less generous with them now and they're mostly nice to have so you have a pool of available licenses to bring up a new customer..... I may need to revisit some things, or discuss with our rep "Hey, I'm thinking about adding Kabuto or Atera just to get patch management on these Essentials devices, because overall it'd still cost me less" and see if there's wiggle room, because I think we're creeping pretty well up there on monthly spend with them.

On N-Able you have pretty much 4 tiers:

1. Essentials (monitoring/issue reporting but with 4-24 hour check times, remote access)
2. Essentials plus Patch Management and Third Party Patch Management
3. Professional Workstation with Third Party Patch Management (same as above, plus real-time monitoring for some things and more remote tools/remote management - running processes, services, uninstall some software, remote command prompt, etc.)
4. Professional Server (probably with Third Party Patch Management added on)

Obviously each of those is a bump up in price, but I'm not going to discuss details here. Third Party Patch Management is an add-on for all of them with patch management, but it's inexpensive and I can't see leaving it off of anything that you're going to have Windows patching on. Essentials licenses can go on servers as well as workstations, so if you have servers that you don't need all the remote management features of you can save a little money there.

AV Defender can be added to any of those from your pool of licenses. Of possible note, AV Defender does have content control available and blocks phishing, etc. but only on workstations. If you're running terminal servers and want content control/phishing blocking, you should also have a UTM or a different AV solution that supports it.

Edit: I will note that there may be a bit of paper-pushing mentality there. We wanted to add 30 more licenses of AV Defender last week, and our rep had to get "approval from finance" to match the price we're currently paying on those additional licenses. Total amount of that discount on 30 licenses: $1.50/month, yes $0.05/each, and I'm pretty sure all the bouncing around of approvals, sending us the purchase order, getting it back to them, etc. added at least 3 days to the process and it's not like there was anything significant going on malware-wise last week.... If we hadn't re-signed for another year just a couple months ago that would absolutely be a topic of conversation during renewal.

 

[Alexander Thomas]

Remote Access monitoring reports remote user activity and status for DirectAccess and VPN connections. It tracks the number and duration of client connections (among other statistics), and monitors the operations status of the server. An easy-to-use monitoring console provides a view of your entire Remote Access infrastructure. Monitoring views are available for single server, cluster, and multisite configurations.

 

[axyr]

The comodo one doesnt look bad, but I'm in the same boat I'm trying to figure out what I should switch my company to. From what I have been hearing "maxfocus" solarwinds msp seems to be the way to go. Unfortunately there is absolutely no pricing information posted online.

 

[tucsonpc]

The comodo one doesnt look bad, but I'm in the same boat I'm trying to figure out what I should switch my company to. From what I have been hearing "maxfocus" solarwinds msp seems to be the way to go. Unfortunately there is absolutely no pricing information posted online.

That's because they like to price each company individually (that, and it's in their agreement that we can't discuss costs). They want to negotiate with you instead of up-front pricing (which drives me nuts). I used them for a while. Like them, but at my size, the additional 50/month fee on top of client fees is just not worth it.

 

[fencepost]

I'm not sure about Max/MSP pricing (and here's not where to discuss it), but I will note that if you're doing non-real-time monitoring, patching, and AV there's a lot less price jump from Kabuto to N-Able than I'd have expected at least if you're talking about several hundred endpoints. Real-time monitoring is a bit more expensive, but certainly worth it for business clients.

 

[greena2007]

I use one.comodo.com for remote control as its free, its got very basic monitoring, Helpdesk system and CRM. It also has cloud backup which is Acronis which is great, the pricing for this is reasonable.

 

[tucsonpc]

I haven't tried One's remote control lately. It used to be horrible, but they keep working on it. How's it working these days?

 

[greena2007]

I haven't tried One's remote control lately. It used to be horrible, but they keep working on it. How's it working these days?

One-Comodo is good, the remote control can be horrible but it you dont use the right settings, but I think its great for free. I typically change the view to be the seeing the remote control screen as the same size as the remote computer, this does mean that you will have a scoll bar to go left or right and up and down, but I do remote control on a small laptop screen, Im not sure if this would be the case if using a monitor.