SolarWinds Service Desk vs ConnectWise PSA Comparison

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Onestop shop for Sales, Service Desk, Project Management Industry Leader Constant updates (see problems below) Integration with Connectwise Automate

Updates can break the software or features. Seems like they don't do enough Q&A If you don't know how the applications integrate then it's easy to make a mistake early on and this can trickle down in to the future. Hard to make changes to categories

Their service desk is a powerful tool to manage tickets, activities, time sheets and expenses modules are so great.

Not an easy tool to manage, they have a lot of features but also they have ConnectWise university.

Complete solution for Managed Service Providers. Great product for tracking your billable time and help desk tickets. Also includes great escalation functions.

It does take several days of training to master certain sections. I takes several weeks for implementation to work through the workflows.

ConnectWise Manage has a lot a features that allow for effective customer and ticket management. It meets the needs of an IT service desk, without being too simple.

The product has not evolved in appearance for a long time and it shows. It feels like a product that would be common 15 years ago, not something that is cutting edge for today's IT management company.

What I like most about this software is its Service Board ticketing system and that they have a variety of third party integrator that work with the software. It has a lot of bells and whistles to customize what you need to run the service desk team

What I like lease about the software is that it is not reliable. The email connector is inconsistently working which also means I don't know when tickets are not going through the system and potentially not helping a customer and losing a customer. Another area that it is week is its CRM , our sales team is looking go to sales force. Its not mobile user friendly.

ConnectWise Manage has a wide birth of functionality. It has 80% of what an MSP needs to manage its service offering. We used the product for 3 years. We used it for ticketing, project management, product inventory, lead tracking, marketing, and client communications. The product's maturity lead us to use many integrations with other services and products.

It's so hard to pick just one thing that I liked least. The company itself was my biggest issue. The sales team had no sense of ethics and resorted to lying in order to make a sale. If ignoring the deplorable ethics of the company, the product itself has innumerable flaws. The one thing we could not get past was our struggle to regain the efficiency we had prior to using ConnectWise Manage. We took an 30% efficiency hit using ConnectWise Manage. Previously we used MaxFocus Service Desk, and since moving away from ConnectWise we use SolarWinds MSP Manager. We immediately regained our lost efficiency and have maintained it for the past 6 months. ConnectWise Manage had great automation, but the number of clicks and manual steps required to take advantage of it were not worth it.

Many roads lead to Rome - there are multiple ways to accomplish what you need to get done. This is great but can also make it harder for a newbie to learn

The canned reporting is pretty poor and it is cumbersome to setup custom reports

Easy to find and track client information. Good integration with accounting software. Ticketing system and boards assist in keeping the Help Desk running smoothly.

Original set up is a bit of a slog but the team is good to work with. You need to guide the team if you are not in the US through some tax stuff etc etc.

We love how powerful of a help desk platform ConnectWise Manage is. It integrates well into our proprietary software, has a wonderful ticketing system, and has excellent customer support.

Although all tickets & processes are received quickly & efficiently, one can expect to see a slight delay when updating large batches of tickets. Thankfully, once it's processed, everything begins working well again.

Can be used as a one stop shop to manage everything from CRM to Help desk support tickets to KB and configurations. The work flows make customizing it easy and powerful.

Sometimes the updates break our custom workflows.

If you think "can ConnectWise do ..." the answer is mostly likely a "yes." ConnectWise has the most functionality of any ITSM tool that I've used in my 10 years. Billing, Help Desk, Quoting, etc. all in one package. Amazing.

The interface leaves a lot to be desired - CW still seems to be stuck in the 2000s. Onwards and upwards.

Nothing. Not one thing I can say about this system or service that is positive. Not the support, sales, or customer service. The feild service texhs hate it. Waste of money.

Outdated system. Does not do what was promised Not good for service techs. Tried to merge with quick books and it destroyed our system. Requested to speak to a manger and calls are never returned.

Targeted for Managed Service Providers.

Not intuitive to configure for needs.

It changed my business. Thanks to the organization the software provided, I was able to build the business to the point at which we sold 5 years ago and I'm now working at another small business which is building up its Managed Services practice.

The lack of feature enhancements the last few years is noted. Since the sale of CW to Toma Bravo I don't believe the software has been moving forward by any other means other than acquisition in a meaningful way.

Much better than our last platform. University makes onboarding a breeze. Customer Service beyond awesome.

Lots of learning, and a lot of setup, but in the end it has made us more streamlined. Very much worth it.

Thank you so much for your review! We really appreciate it and look forward to growing our partnership with your company.

I like that is covers everything you need to do as a IT business, from service work to purchasing to invoicing.

They are the 800 pound gorilla. So some things move slowly to develop. Once they do get on track things move fast.

Constantly evolving, quick and friendly customer service, powerful tool, very flexible to make it what you need, and seamless integration of the Connectwise Suite of products

Some software updates causes other functionalities to break, these however are not normally core items that become broken.

Fairy easy to learn and some Features are great like service board and scheduling. I like the ability to send my PO’s directly from the software.

Purchasing tab needs major work. You can have several back to back chats with support about the same issue and explain it the same way yet each time you get a completely different answer from each agent

Great functions that work in all departments. From Marketing, Sales, all the way down to the service we provide to our customers and reporting back on it.

It has a larger learning curve that many users are not willing to adapt to. Without proper training it is useless.

The basic service ticket functionality is the best on the market. With every option a firm could want. You can tell its designed BY an IT firm.

The syncing of products to our accounting system has to be the most complicated part of the software. Generally only a few employees are involved in this portion.

Automated billing and helpdesk service board is easy to use and teach to new users. Newer options like Kaseya have less features than ConnectWise. Lots of training webinars.

The billing portal isn't easy to use and sometimes support gets really backed up and you can't get resolutions to time sensitive issues. The cost to create a custom report is very high!

We've used ConnectWise since 2007, and over the years, the product has seen a multitude of feature improvements and enhancements. For an IT consulting firm looking to track client agreement invoicing, service level agreements, employee productivity, sales opportunities, marketing campaignment management, or inventory and purchasing, ConnectWise can do it with flying colors. From a client perspective,...

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I ranked Ease of Implementation as 3 stars. Keep in mind that we implemented CW in 2007, so much of the onboarding may be different today. Given the capabilities of the software, some pain should be anticipated and expected as you learn how to utilize the software. Additionally, setting up the integration between ConnectWise and other 3rd party apps can take some time. With most applications,...

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Its a great solution for small to medium businesses. Its helps to find tickets assigned to me easily and stay on top of it. It helps to find out older service tickets with all details which is really cool, so you don't have to worry about any older tickets. It also shows how much hours I spent on each service tickets and enter that hours to my timesheets.

It took sometime for me to understand the functionalities but once you get it, its much easier to work with.

There's a reason there's no free trial. Because their support is garbage and they won't allow you to cancel. Worst customer service of any software vendor in my 15 years in IT.

The UI, the customer service, everything truthfully including their training which is the worst I have had to endure. I signed up as we were looking for a sold Mac RMM tol and despite their claims their mac RMM is garbage and is nothing like the Windows equivalent and now after weeks of back and forth with their billing /customer retention I am having to resort to a chargeback to get back the nearly $6,000 I have invested in this utterly terrible software.

CW Manage inmediately catches you with the various tasks you can perform and how you can configure it, from entering it in the sales area, marketing, support services, project, management, among others.

Each update delays its entry but its service is sustainable, but for some it turns out to be a complex system that ends up abandonning it to be able to work in which you must have experience.