Teamviewer shift to Subscription Sucks!

[DataMedics]

Are you using Simple-Help's enhanced features for limited monitoring, etc? If so, how are they?

I don't really use the monitoring features, so I'm probably not the best person to ask about that. I mostly just use it for unattended access, and remote support, and it works great for that. The only issues I ever see there are when the end point is in a country or area without good internet service, then it can be glitchy compared with TV.

 

[fencepost]

I don't know how much Simple-Help is, but I'm sure it is higher than what I use. There are lots of posts on here pertaining to it, and others, both good and bad. I would suggest the "try before you buy" model.

Either $300 or 450 depending on whether you want the added (limited?) RMM capabilities. That's for 1 year with upgrades and a single simultaneous session, renewals for continuing upgrades are $120/180. If you want more simultaneous sessions, it's the same price again but drops by 20% at the 5-session level (more beyond that?)

I'm actually tempted to get it just to drop on key systems as an emergency backup remote access option.

 

[fencepost]

Paying off Venture Capitalists does.

Exactly this - a huge amount of corporate problems are caused by VCs purchasing the company, saddling the purchased company with the debt for that purchase (not as weird as it sounds, basically buying a business then using the revenue from it to pay off the loan), but also looting the company in the process by selling off higher-valued portions of it.

That's why the term "Vulture Capitalists" is sometimes used.

 

[sapphirescales]

So with that logic, would not things like RepairShopr, any RMM or MSP, online invoicing, etc. fall under that? After all, in the end, it is programs and other operating information used by a computer, otherwise known as software.

No, absolutely not. Online software are NOT products, but services. It costs them money to run and maintain the software on their site. It would be unreasonable to expect them to continue that indefinitely. Software that you INSTALL locally on your own computer is different however because once it's installed, it costs the publisher NOTHING except via software updates, which they limit to a set number of years/revisions. After that, you're on your own, but you can CHOOSE to continue using it because you BOUGHT it.

If you don't, it's having to deal with an inferior product.

"Inferior" is a relative term. There are many, many old software programs that are still in use today. Just because the developer hasn't touched it in years (or even decades) doesn't mean that it's useless. Most users would be fine using Word '97 even to this day. Word really doesn't do anything differently than it did back then. It was simpler, and ran a LOT faster, used far less resources, and worked better with less problems than newer versions. The only problem is it's so old now that I wouldn't recommend people use it. But they can if they CHOOSE to. It's all about choice, and companies taking that choice away. If you don't have $150 right now to buy a new copy of Office, you don't HAVE to. You can put it off as long as you want.

In the end it's the difference between renting vs. owning. I will ALWAYS choose to own a product rather than rent it. Look at anyone with money. What do they do? They OWN things. Poor people rent things. It's better to OWN a copy of Office 2010 than to rent a copy of Office 365.

 

[fencepost]

It all depends on what makes financial sense and who your customers are. I pay for O365 Personal because I want convenient online storage that I can use for my personal stuff without having to futz about setting it up and OneDrive with O365 is the cheapest option around without requiring that I fiddle with it ($50/year for 1TB, $70-80? for 5TB with some fiddling around). With the most recent Windows 10 update bringing back/adding Files On-Demand, that just improves things and actually got me to go ahead and upgrade the second laptop I use regularly from 7 to 10. At some point I'll likely also grab enough added licenses for it to extend my subscription to 4+ years, then spend $10 on a 1-month Home subscription that'll convert that into a 4+ year Home subscription so I can upgrade Office on my wife's PC as well.

For an awful lot of people Office Home & Business made a huge amount of sense - you could get it for what, $150 or so for a retail key card back when it was Office 2010? So somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 the price of even the cheapest volume licensed versions. On the other hand now Home & Business 2016 runs roughly $300 and Home & Student is the cheap option at $90-150.

For home use where you don't care about the online services, yeah, the permanent version makes a bunch of sense, particularly if you're only talking about 1 PC. If you're talking about 4 PCs, well, maybe that O365 Home subscription might not be so bad. For properly-licensed business use, O365 Business or Business Premium might not be so bad - $300 for 3 years of O365 Business or $300 for Office 2016 Home & Business with no upgrades but you can keep using it until it exits extended support in 2025.

 

[NJW]

Online software are NOT products, but services. It costs them money to run and maintain the software on their site.

TeamViewer is a service, too. It's their servers that provide the connection so you don't have to do the port forwarding or know the remote IP address.

Just an observation – not defending their update policy, though it's just the same as MS Office changing formats so older versions won't open new (default) documents.

TV is still pay-once licensing here, but you're scuppered if the remote end has a newer version. Now that new versions are an annual event, it takes some fancy footwork to keep an older version working.

 

[Your PCMD]

I will ALWAYS choose to own a product rather than rent it.

^ This right here is something I totally agree with. The ONLY exception is my MSP. I have several copies (retail) of Office 2010 (acquired when I bought out a computer shop) and have sold a few this year to happy customers. Its a one and done sorta thing.

I like you prefer to own rather than to rent/lease. Which is why I paid the one time done and forget it for AnyDesk. And upgrades are free - if I choose to upgrade. I only use my remote service for clients that are on one of my MSP plans, not just anybody that wants/needs it.

 

[Krynn72]

The biggest reason why I dislike subscription based software isn't necessarily the price. Its the fact that its now irrelevant how much money you've spent on it, you can still be out on your ass in the blink of an eye with nothing to show for all that cash. Imagine if repairshopr goes under as a company. So many other businesses have it so integrated into their business structure that if RS suddenly stops working, some of them may go out of business as well. They could have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with RS and be just as boned as the guy on the free tier.

I don't like trusting my business to something that can be taken away from me through no fault of my own. But it seems to be the way of the world that we have little to no choice in the matter anymore. Every business is built on the backs of others.

 

[sapphirescales]

Every business is built on the backs of others.

And hence when the next financial crisis occurs, the house of cards falls down.

 

[NJW]

I don't like trusting my business to something that can be taken away from me through no fault of my own. But it seems to be the way of the world that we have little to no choice in the matter anymore. Every business is built on the backs of others.

This is why it is important to have open platforms, where your business foundation is not hostage to a single provider's product. An interesting quick read can be found here (it's concerned with healthcare systems infrastructure, but the principle is widely applicable):

The core principle of an open platform is that access to data and services on the platform is via a set of open APIs that accept and return data in an open, shareable and computable format. Definitions of these APIs need to be open so that any willing party can freely implement them. As long as all participants in a open platform ecosystem conform to these APIs both applications and data are portable and vendor lock-in is no more, irrespective of whether components and applications are open source or proprietary.

There are plenty of examples of this arrangement working well – you can get your bank account data through a common-standard .ofx file, for example – but any system, whether for business or social purposes, must be accessible to protect against the provider disappearing and taking your data with it.

 

[Diggs]

Either $300 or 450 depending on whether you want the added (limited?) RMM capabilities. That's for 1 year with upgrades and a single simultaneous session, renewals for continuing upgrades are $120/180. If you want more simultaneous sessions, it's the same price again but drops by 20% at the 5-session level (more beyond that?)

I'm actually tempted to get it just to drop on key systems as an emergency backup remote access option.

BTW - Branding is easily done at any level which is nice and Simple-Help has a free trial version for those interested to explore also. I may wave the SimpleHelp flag a bit, but I don't have to worry about the drastic price increases and subscription fees that everyone here has so much fun talking (and paying) about (and it's been solid on Linux also).

 

[fencepost]

I know Simple-Help has tweaked its prices and capabilities at least a bit over time - I think it used to start at 320 and the annual renewal was quite a bit lower, but the limits on number of machines were also quite a bit lower.

 

[NJW]

@Diggs Do you host your Simple Help on your own hardware? Digital Ocean? Other?

I'd prefer to host on my own hardware, but tend to shrink away from always-on connected services. Any tips?

 

[Diggs]

@Diggs Do you host your Simple Help on your own hardware? Digital Ocean? Other?

I'd prefer to host on my own hardware, but tend to shrink away from always-on connected services. Any tips?

It's on my hardware on its own VLAN but it requires port forwarding which may cause concern for some. It runs as a service and I don't always have it running but the machine it runs on is so I can bring it up during a phone call faster than the client can get to my website.

@add - If you try the demo, the desktop experience is probably a bit slower than you would have on your own server but lets you get a good feel for it. I was a bit confused on my own (purchased) $ install on my equipment as I thought it was a server(with GUI)/client relationship but the server runs headless as a service (runs on any machine) and you configure and manage it from the client (logged on as admin) from other computers anywhere.

 

[fastremotehelp.com]

You guys are right, it is greed on Teamviewer's part. We were led to the purchase with the idea that it's once and done. We paid a huge amount at the time, $1600 I believe, so that we could use this product/service for as long as we wanted. Teamviewer got ALL THAT MONEY IN ADVANCE, IN EXCHANGE FOR A LIFETIME LICENSE. They even called it that, "a lifetime license". And now the deal has changed. The more I think about it, the more angry I get.

 

[knc]

Greed has nothing to do with it. Paying off Venture Capitalists does. TeamViewer, for example, was founded in 2005 and then sold to GFI (which at the time was 100% owned by VC companies) in 2011 only to be sold again,along with a lot of other GFI acquisitions, in 2014 to VC holding company Permira who is said to be soliciting bids to sell it again. The change in billing can't be a coincidence.

I thought solarwinds bought GFI?

 

[nlinecomputers]

I thought solarwinds bought GFI?

No they purchased LogicNow which was spun off of GFI. GFI was sold off from Logicnow before Logicnow was itself purchase. VCs stripping the company bare.

 

[knc]

Wait, everyone who complains about software being sold as a service doesn't, in turn, do this to your clients? I know I do, that's where some of my profitability comes from.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Wait, everyone who complains about software being sold as a service doesn't, in turn, do this to your clients? I know I do, that's where some of my profitability comes from.

Exactly and would anyone of us here not expect to go personally bankrupt if you offered lifetime PC repairs? Why do you expect companies to be able to cash flow that kind of thing when you yourself would never be able to do. Always remember that lifetime contracts are for THEIR lifetime not yours. It really is not about greed.Companies that reneging on the deal are showing you that they are heading off bankruptcy.

 

[GTP]

Some interesting graphs of remote desktop software (apologies to @sapphirescales for not being "unusual/unexpected")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_remote_desktop_software