I have several machines around the country that I need to remotely manage. Team Viewer has been unreliable and I'm looking to move our organization away from it.
Can anyone recommend a better remote management solution?
RDP ? Why doesn't anyone use the official protocol for remote desktop on Windows ? It's fast. I say this as a unix dev that likes to RDP into a Windows box to test stuff.
Many people don't think of RDP because it isn't great for support-type jobs: you can't share the screen with the local user. But for administrative purposes where that is not required it is a good way to go.
"By following a few steps, you can invite someone to connect to your computer. After he or she is connected, that person can view your computer screen and chat with you about what you both see. With your permission, your helper can even use his or her own mouse and keyboard to control your computer and show you how to fix a problem."
yeah cuz i want to spend half an hour explaining how to send an invite to the CEO who cant connect to his email 5 minutes before a critical meeting....
in other words, teamviewer requires 0 user interaction
Let me add to this that in addition to OP stating that it has been unreliable I think there are two other big reasons to move away:
1. TeamViewer is used a lot for Microsoft scams and AFAIK they don't care very much.
2. Dark patterns. TeamViewer upgrade their protocol all-the-time and once one part has updated the others have to as well, forcing the cost on everyone. (And the pricing is outrageous IMO. When you can get a full office suite for less than the subscription cost of the remote support solution then something odd is going on.)
It's difficult to configure chrome remote desktop for persistent sharing and autostarting, at least in linux. THen it times out every few minutes asking the local user to continue approving access. It doesn't seem to compete with teamviewer by design.
(a bit of port forwarding or VPN) + (VNC or RDP) ?
What you get from TeamViewer/LogMeIn/etc. is the zeroconf aspect of the experience, which in turn is because they provide of a central rendezvous/discovery point. If you know where your peers are, you don't really need an assisted remote management service.
Maybe you're thinking about Windows (you didn't specify), but if you happen to be on OSX, then a lot of people don't realize that iMessage in Messages.app has screen sharing built in. "Buddies" menu -> "Ask To Share Screen".
You should list more detailed requirements. Are the hosts you manage behind network firewalls and/or NAT? Do you expect to be able to initiate requests in, or does the client initiate requests out?
The best alternative that I've used for end user support is Remote Utilities: https://www.remoteutilities.com/ They have an executable that non-technical users can easily download + run in addition to a version for unattended access.
If you are an Industrial Machine builder/Industrial OEM, you might be interested in our marketplace for remote diagnostic services. The remote screensharing tools are backed into the platform via WebRTC. We however don't offer remote control.
I've been using join.me and HipChat's builtin screen sharing. Back in days, when I had to manage many Windows hosts, I've used Radmin (https://www.radmin.com/).
Why would you want that? Pretty much no hardware natively support h265 and any bandwidth gains you might get are swamped by the CPU and latency cost with software encoding h265
After being both out by Connectwise, Screenconnect's new pricing model is horribly expensive now - I'm grandfathered but wouldn't touch it now. Simple Help is seems to at the point where Screenconnect was a few years ago - works, cheap, and good support.
