With ConnectWise Manage behind us, we've spent the last 6+ years blazing a trail in our local market. Taking on client for year over year growth. And not enough thanks can be given to the tools that helped us get there. With a friendly (now giant) team behind it, ConnectWise Manage integrates with, and has truly become a standard in the industry. You've been with the rest, now get with the best.

ConnectWise Manage has enough features to essentially run your entire business out of! When it comes to tracking issues, maintaining inventory and documented details across many partners/clients/sites - this is THEE tool. Abundant resources to learn the tool exist including certification learning courses. (You're going to want to take them).

Interface has been ignored for a long time - its universally uglier than ALL of its competitors. This has been massively improved over the last year and continues to get better as it is finally a focus for them after the many recent developmental hurdles they need to address from the various M&A from the last 4 years. Some more advanced features really require some 'higher' learning to understand and best implement. Thankfully they have many MANY resources for this.

Comprehensive and easy to use once it is configured.

While it is extremely powerful it does take a fair amount of time to set up and configure.

Toma Bravio and Connectwise do not care about their clients AT ALL! Connectwise will teach you new levels of frustration as you try to get it to do what you want or just to operate at an acceptable speed. Before purchasing this product I really wish I had fully demo'd everything else. Try dealing with their support. Call current clients using it. Research before buying! After Toma Bravo bought this company things got really bad. They used to make regular progress to features and functionality. Since the TB buyout they just buy other companies that fix some aspect of Manage (like buying IT Boost for documentation in lieu of their "knowledge base"). Third party integrators that don't play ball with Manage's team have their products harmed. Like when Manage wanted to get users to use their payment portal, they broke the viewability all custom invoices from the ConnectBooster payment portal for several months. Shop around!

Manage integrates with almost everything that MSPs use. It does a good job as a centerpiece to all of the other software. It excels at letting ticket management be as detailed as you could possibly want. It has a lot of partially developed features that can still be made use of. It has a detailed report writer capable of making any report you can figure out how to make.

Connectwise Manage is super slow! (Can't stress this enough!) It will cost you a fortune in lost tech's time as they want to enter things end of week/day because it is so frustratingly slow. A fast click in this software is like 3-5 sec. Slow clicks will be 10-30 seconds. "Normal" clicks by the company's definition will cost between 3-8 sec before support will recognize there is an issue. Second detractor, most of the features are just introductions to the functionality designed to get you to buy another system. For example, it has a quoting engine that you can't modify the quote template at all (like to add disclaimer text or a logo or instructions or anything) because they have another costly program called Sell. Sell way over does the quoting feature (adding in so much functionality, complexity and cost that it is prohibitive to use for most shops). Knowledge base lol lol lol. Demo it first!! If you use multiple computers regularly then every time you log into a different system it kicks out your other session. The report writer takes a full minute or two to open and you will need a masters degree in that interface to make it do what you want. Regarding support, expect to be on chat for 10-60 min to get a response from a tech, depending on the issue. If your issue is related to reporting whatsoever they will refuse to assist. Then there is the high cost to it and the lockin. Once you start integrating software into it, it becomes super expensive to switch.

I love how much you can do in this software. I feel like everything you need is in connectwise manage and its a great way to keep an MSP's cost down by adding this to complete everything you need from sales to tickets to project portals.

The support can be a bit off most of the time its guesswork. Which is done by the IT person usually first but the chat option can be tiresome sometimes.

All our ticketing, service, project management, and sales cycle tasks are all managed from within ConnectWise now, with all our 200+ staff using this system we still have a very responsive system with a great interface that has interface components that have been customized to match some of the terms we use to describe our business processes.

It's super customizable, with a very extensible API and integration capabilities, allowing us to centralize so many of our systems and daily tasks into one platform.

Initial customization and training of staff has taken some time, but and some staff still have issues with managing Internal vs. External communications.

Negative. The only software owned by Connectwise that was any good was screenconnect, which Connectwise is doing it's best to try to break.

Not very much, it did not leave a good impression.

I was not very impressed with Connectwise PSA. It seemed like to get it to do the basic functionality you had to pay for all these third party plugins in and add-ons. It's almost as if the software was written by somoene who has never worked for an MSP and doesn't understand how the business runs. Bringing up ideas and issues to support was like talking to a brick wall.

Careful with there sales tactics. They will appear to be a partner but always make sure they have the leverage or upper hand. Read there MSA carefully and understand what your agreeing too.

Easy system to use and implement. Support is quick and easy to access.

There products have been prematurely release and have outages.

As an integrated PSA / Billing System / Ticketing System it functions great. In comparison to the other products in it's space it's light years beyond in functionality and usage.

ConnectWise support and account management leaves a lot to be desired, though there recently have been noticeable improvements and if they continue on this path they'll be a world class company once again. Manage really lacks at: CRM/Sales and a few other items. Dashboards require a third party add-on. It's base functionality is decent but everything else is a pay for me option.

Setup was straightforward, CW has a great implementation team that works with your schedule and dives into the areas important to your business.

Integration with other customers' ticketing system is not available natively and requires costly 3rd party tools.

Tickets, projects and CRM are all integrated.

There are some issues with latency and ability to use product services when updates have been released. There tends to be a period of issues after new features are rolled out. There additionally seems to be periods of slow connectivity towards the end of the month, which as part of the sales team can prove difficult.

I would highly recommend IT firms looking to improve their internal efficiency and client support look at CW for a PSA tool. The software is stable, support is great, and updates arrive quickly. Access to your data can be gained through any web browser, iphone / droid apps, or through the native .net application. Many vendors are writing to the CW API allowing for real-time data integration from products such as backup solutions, spam and virus filtering, firewall statistics and even sales opportunities. CW integrates with MANY RMM solutions providing even greater management capabilities. The biggest benefit is by far the great and active ConnectWise community. We are very involved with the ConnectWise users group on a quarterly basis and we attend the partner summit (ITNation) annually. If you are only looking for PSA software, ConnectWise can fulfill that need. If you're looking for a great community of business peers, ConnectWise will bring an even greater ROI.

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, ConnectWise makes it easy for end users to submit service requests as well as get the status of said requests. An integrated web portal for clients allows the review of hardware and software assets, service request approvals, and invoice reviews. Additionally, for our larger clients, we've been able to extend service capabilities to in-house IT providers while hosting them through our installation. Due to the great support, active community, and rapid development, I can't imagine running my business without ConnectWise. While the software is great, the community is even better.

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, you setup 1 or 2 API accounts, grant access, and test the integration. Some integration takes more time. One example is the integration for QuickBooks. To really get the accounting side setup, expect to spend some time and money working with a qualified accountant (if you don't have one on staff) to ensure all data is passing through and classified correctly. Even with the cons of setup, the ConnectWise University is very well done. Video tutorials are available on almost any aspect of management, and step-by-step checklists are available for just about any multi-step process.

Overall my experience with Connectwise Manage has been positive. We've had the software in daily use for over 12 years so have grown with it as it's been developed and improved. Like with any application that has so many roles and spans multiple departments, there are always some aspects that don't line up exactly with our existing business practices, but the application has a lot of built-in flexibility so there is almost always a way to get it aligned to our needs. On the occasions where it's not possible, the community is strong and the Connectwise dev team seems to generally listen and accept input from partners, even if execution of some of those feature requests may be slow at times.

The best feature of Connectwise Manage is that it offers very good integration with other Connectwise and third-party systems for ticketing, finance, configuration management, etc.

Some of the (relatively) newer features and modules, Change Management for example, are not as intuitive as the older modules. The inclusion of more features and functionality is welcome and necessary, and sometimes is going to involve a learning curve, but Connectwise could make these features easier to use and implement for better adoption.

As an overall end to end PSA, ticketing, time/expense tracking, and CRM sales activities tool it provides some very good features needed to operate a service and support organization. From a functionality standpoint on just the CRM/marketing tools (which I use exclusively) there are some glaring weaknesses. Importing and de-duplicating contacts is still a problem. A lack of mass maintenance features makes quick data updates cumbersome and time consuming. Developing marketing lists and adding group members is a pain that could be easily solved and after 4 years of use I've seen no progress that front. Even with the new Campaign Director tool woven in, other drip marketing tools are far easier to use. There's still a long way to go but for our organization there are some must have features. I would just like to see vast improvements on the sales/marketing front.

End to end complete organizational tool that spans ticketing, sales, projects, time and expense. Fairly comprehensive and easy to use.

Sales and marketing functionality is severely lacking when it comes to running and managing marketing and sales campaign efforts.

Very good

Does everything our practice needs from sales to invoicing to run the business

Issue management requires a lot of customization, could be made easier to automate

If we were to do it all again, we'd still opt for ConnectWise. It does the job but it is very much a leap of faith putting your business and livelihood under the control of such inconsistent software. User forums and user group meetings are great as is the annual conference - there's more to be learned from other users than the company itself. CW also has training in other areas of running a small IT business. They run webinars and seminars on sales, marketing, staff hiring and firing, etc. You get a lot more than just software.

"If it isn't in ConnectWise, it didn't happen" is their mantra. CW will capture every single piece of time and expense in your company, it will manage marketing campaigns, projects and even stock. Ours links to Kaseya and MYOB accounting but the preferred setup is Labtech and Quickbooks. Quosal quoting completes the suite to be everything a small IT company needs.

It does everything adequately and none well. Whilst it is riddled with bugs, it is getting better. Issues like stock control not being able to count are gradually being ironed out. Reports are basic bordering on non-existant - but every release improves on that. One annoying "feature" is the ease in not doing things correctly which causes problems later on. For example you can add stock items to a service ticket but if the tech forgets to mark it as shipped then it will remain in the stock count. Why not a prompt that you're about to close a ticket with unshipped items? How about the option of not using shipping at all? User interface if very annoying due to inconsistencies. Sometimes you have to search, sometimes you don't. If a search returns a single result, sometimes it just fills in the form for you, other times you have to select it from a pop up list of one.

Extremely powerful top notch CRM tool that can really take a business to a new level.

This software is very powerful and a great all in one tool for managing marketing, contracts, customer service, and all other sales functions. It's pretty impressive just how many functions you have access to within the software the can really take an organization to the next level operationally if it's used properly.

The user interface isn't the most intuitive and it took me a lot of tinkering to really get the hang of it. I still am probably missing out on a lot of useful functionality within the software that I do no not currently know how to use.

Organization and follow up via the closed loop methodology really allowed us to move our service delivery forward and service our clients more efficiently.

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.

CWM meets our needs in so many ways. It's designed to be used by businesses like ours and meets nearly all our requirements without needing to be heavy upfront development to become functional.

There are limitations and customizations you'll wish for that it just cannot accommodate. There is a "right" way to use it that most companies will not likely align with 100%.

Connectwise PSA does the job well enough, but we often find ourselves eyeing up competitors. That said, we never make the jump because the grass isn't usually any greener and Connectwise PSA does offer so much integration that is nearly impossible to beat!

Connectwise PSA integrates with so many platforms that this is really its key strength.

The software is often slow and suffers from being too bloated. There are so many configurable options and different modules that it is frankly overwhelming. The sheer vastness of the modules, areas, menus, configurations etc usually leads to frustration because you feel you aren't getting value for money - simply because you can't know it all.

worked out what not to use

There are lots of features, crm, helpdesk, sla management, project management. They provide a course which is aptly named university - as you will need a degree to work out the way they set up the system, its not logical!

Support from connectwise is poor and got worst when opened their uk office. Been using CW for 6 years. When it works its good. When it breaks you have to wait for USA support to wake up. Then you will get a read the manual option, if they don't close the ticket before answering. It is expensive and they then expect you to pay to join them on their jolly meet ups.

ConnectWise was designed from the ground up for MSPs, by MSPs. The service tickets and CRM functionality works well. ConnectWise also have a huge partner network of add on tools that fit the gaps so ConnectWise does not need to build in every solution.

There are things that are limiting like the dashboard functionality, reporting, customer portal options, knowledge base and document management where ConnectWise is limited. As long as you know you will need other system or tools that integrate with ConnectWise to fill the gaps, your strategy should be sound.

Customization, organization

There are so many features. You can use this for timesheets, project management, ticketing, sales, etc...I think it's a great ticketing system. You can assign people, set alerts, and manage boards the way you like. I like that there's quite a bit of customization available for views, custom fields, etc. I also love the sandbox tools; being able to test things out is great.

Using from a sales perspective is kind of a nightmare. Important contacts and companies is awful, and leads to tons of duplicates or little errors if not entered exactly right. Customer service is always available through chat, but not always knowledgable about how to fix things. Feels like a delicate system that can be messed up quite easily.

We are using ConnectWise Manage to manage out Help Desk (Support), Maintenance, and Project tickets within our organization of abour 200 end-users. I was not part of the selection & vetting process, so I cannot speak to that. In day-to-day usage, the interface is okay once you learn it, but it takes some effort to teach new users how to use the software. The administrative & management of the software is broken up in a way that can be confusing as well. They have extensive training videos, but I would rather have something I can figure out without having to watch hours of videos to learn the software.

It is scalable in a technical sense since it is cloud based, and it is affordable compared to other solutions.

The UI in my opinion needs to be overhauled and could be much better and more user friendly.

The software has a lot of features, and in fairness most of them we will never use. Unfortunately, there has been nothing major released in the past few years. All new features are from acquired companies and are a hefty Bolton.

Clunky UI and can be pricey. Integrations work but never feel quite integrated. ConnectWise Manage has not progressed much over the past few years, with every update only bringing minor changes. Account Manager has lost touch and only every contacts you when there is a sales opportunity.