Comments on: ConnectWise Cuts Hosted Pricing

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:22:57 +0000

dsp: I’ll check in with ConnectWise to learn more about their international hosting strategy. Stay tuned.
-jp

By: dsp

dsp — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:24:39 +0000

I am based in Australia and Connectwise do not support their hosted service outside of Australia.
We really only need 2-3 users, hence I am looking at Autotask GO!. Does any one have comments on this?

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:27:51 +0000

Jim, Akash, Thomas: I’m “taking the high road” on this conversation since we cover all the vendors. Plus, I haven’t actually “used” the software.

Nevertheless, I do appreciate you offering your perspectives to MSPmentor’s readers.

By: Jim Van

Jim Van — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:59:47 +0000

We’ve used CW for close to 3 years, and have found it to be a critical part of our ticketing and time tracking systems. We find them to be incredibly supportive, and their wealth of knowledge available to all partners is worth far more than the licensing fees alone. They just keep getting better and better, IMHO

By: Akash Saraf

Akash Saraf — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:40:50 +0000

We use Connectwise at Zenith, as well as our NOC engineers have been entering tickets into our partners’ Connectwise for years now. We’ve not had problems with the web front-end and from our experience the web front-end gives pretty much all the functionality that we get from the windows client. Sure the windows client runs quicker than a web client but that is true for any software out there.

By: Thomas Fox

Thomas Fox — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:21:09 +0000

We use ConnectWise’s browser client at a number of client sites, and don’t have any problems getting our job done. We can access tickets, enter time, review configurations, etc. without issue. I’m not sure where the “You cannot perform your job in virtually any capacity using the Connectwise IE interface” comment comes from, or what basis in fact it has.

Additionally, version 8.1 of ConnectWise, in beta now, supports IE8. I’ve also tested it in Chrome (http://www.MyTechExperts.com/images/cwchrome.jpg) and on in Safari on an iPhone (http://www.MyTechExperts.com/images/cwsafari.jpg). Works great!

And, my ConnectWise server and my client information reside in my data center. That option isn’t available with some of the other solutions.

Finally… On the “fat client” comment. It’s a 678k download – almost all of the e-mails I receive are larger than that.

Tom

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:56:02 +0000

Len, Arnie: I’m happy to see the fireworks didn’t end this weekend.
-jp

By: Arnie Bellini

Arnie Bellini — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:47:21 +0000

ConnectWise has a robust browser client and WILL soon run native on Macs and Linux machines. ConnectWise is rapidly moving toward browser independence. Our latest release supports IE 7.0 and 8.0 and by December 14th, 2009 ConnectWise will support Firefox, Safari, Chrome and iPhones and Blackberries. So again ConnectWise is about choices. We understand our Partners and their needs and we respond.

Joe you mentioned that we are a private company, correct….in fact we are 100% EMPLOYEE owned and most of our 100+ employees have stock! ConnectWise has $0 debt and plenty of cash in the bank. But mostly we have plenty of passion to make a difference for our Partners. Dropping our Hosted Price to $39/user/month for EXISTING and future partners is our way to say thanks for making us the industry leader.

By: Len DiCostanzo

Len DiCostanzo — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:08:04 +0000

Accessing Connectwise through a browser interface provides a user a bare minimum of services. You cannot perform your job in virtually any capacity using the Connectwise IE interface. Autotask provides access to the full functionality of Autotask Pro or Autotask Go! via IE. You do not have to load a fat client to get access to the fully integrated Autotask solution, as you have to do with Connectwise. Imagine going onsite to a client, or anywhere, and having to access Connectwise (due to mobile limitations) and you let your client, or anyone, know you will be down loading a fat client on their machine. I don’t think so…

By: Rich Forsen

Rich Forsen — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:16:53 +0000

So, with responses from Commit and probably soon to come from TigerPaw will there be a 4th site, PSAMentor.com ?

Seriously, though, we’re happy whenever we see people either trying to improve their value without raising prices. Kudos to Connectwise for, especially in this economy, trying to deliver more for less.

It does bring up an interesting point in terms of people doing cost comparisons between hosted SaaS solutions and RYO (Roll-your-own) solutions.

Since Virtualadministrator.com lives squarely in that conversation, we tend to have an opinion, which usually is that being able to start with SaaS and move to RYO is usually what benefits partners the most. It allows them to grow until they are confident enough to bring it in house.

I tell you, Joe, you always stir up interesting topics!

Rich Forsen
http://www.VirtualAdministrator.com