Single Click vs. HelpDeskVNC vs. Remote Support System

[T313C0mun1s7]

I sure would like to see a disscussion comparing and contrasting SC, HelpDeskVNC, and Remote Support System. I currently own HelpDeskVNC, but I am unfamiliar with the other two.

I just got an E-mail from Scott of HelpDeskVNC answering my question about an update, because UltraVNC has gone 1.0 since my purchase. Here is the response:

Hi John,

Thank you for contacting HelpDesk VNC. I am working on an upgrade now. I am not sure when it will be ready but plan to send out an email when it is.

Single click is a great product that the Ultra VNC team has put out. It will be hard to compete but I still plan to do so and will make changes to the website when my updates are done.

Thank you,

Scott Fisher
www.helpdeskvnc.com

If anyone in the know could put together a matrix of features and cost that would be great. I think what we have here is a group a products with some overlap, but they each have a place where they would excel over the other two depending on a persons specific situation. If we could have a thread that helps people make the best educated decision for there situation, we may find that we can help all three projects grow individually in the areas in which they are most unique.

Thank you in advance to all who participate.

[ipsec]

How about this?

U post what you know

We post what we know.

SC = free . Needs a bit of work at first to get you to understand everything and the only caveat I see right now is you cant look at outlook menus with SC?!

I love SC and I use it as my home remote support tool all the time. Fast and easy with DynDNS and I can update my key at any time by recompiling the key into my app. Very cake to do if you have a small understanding of networking and how remote computer support works.


I dont know the other two so thats what I have to say about SC. Personally I like UVNC better - and I think the SCIII project is about where you can use a fully functional UVNC to remotely controll and set up through firewalls ect. I havent been a part of it so I dont know.

[T313C0mun1s7]

Here is what I know so far.

Both HelpDeskVNC and Remote Support Tool are based on UltraVNC and so have all the same features and interface available.

For the $85 you spend HelpDeskVNC they custom code the thing to work automatically just like SC. In addition you get the ability to reboot the computer and have the client automatically reconnect. This feature is the one I think is worth the $85 to anyone trying to really do remote support - you can't live without this feature if you are trying to use this tool as a support professional.

The price is significantly higher for Remote Support Tool:
1 to 4 users $349
5 to 9 users $524
10 to 19 users $796
and it continues up from there; however, you get significantly more features as well. This includes:
Reboot or reboot into SAFE MODE
the client allows you have a menu to pick a tech to connect to
collect client info and optionally auto-generates an invoice
tracks client time
create custom toolbox with self extracting tools

I have only mentioned the features that to my knowledge Single Click is not currently capable of. If I am wrong please correct me. It can be hard sometimes to get a good feature comparison with out the input of people who are familiar with the project. this is why I started the thread. This is also why it would be nice for us to build a feature matrix.

As I see it Remote Support Tool is the ultimate support tool option, but is a bit too expensive for many people, maybe even too expensive for some professional tech shops that would use it on an occasional basis.

HelpDeskVNC is perfect for the small tech shop and the shop that would use it on the occasional basis, as it includes the ability to reboot. There are currently ways to manually get all the other features of Remote Support Tool, like edit the registry to force a safe mode boot, or use the file manager to transfer your own toolbox tools, etc. HelpDeskVNC is not as complete and convenient at Remote Support Tool, but if you don't have the money paying $85 and doing the rest manually is a good option for some.

Single Click may be a great option for the weekend tech and home user. However, the fact you have to roll your own, and the lack of reboot (as I currently understand it) keeps it from being the mainstream tool of a professional shop trying to run a medium to large remote support business. Also if you are making money off the product it may be a good idea to purchase a commercially supported product.

My ultimate idea for this thread would be to have a discussion that would hammer out all the features and differences of each product to help a person or business decide which option would be best for them. Then abridge that thread into a good article that covers all the information as concisely as possible and make it a sticky. Maybe even get the information posted on the websites of HelpDeskVNC and Remote Support Tool, if they don't feel to threatened by the other projects. I think all three have a place where they fit and that they can co-exist fairly well if given the chance.

[Rudi De Vos]

When SC was created we needed a little tool that allow you to support
persons who are sitting in front of there PC.

The company's i'm working for does not allow unattended control or a way of doing it.
To accomplisch this we needed to make sure you can only make a connection on user invitation.
The drawback is that you can not use a service or runonce key to reconnect after reboot or save mode,
as this would allow to reconnect without user knowledge.
Adding unattended connections will block my own use for it, so we will possible never add that option.

The creating of the config file can be made easyer.
The SC generation will possible be added to the viewer.
-SC/viewer always have the correct release versions
-Mechanical creating of the config file will better exclude syntax errors and
some preview engine will allow to view better the layout.

Time and connection logging is current done be the repeater (80% of the people use SC in combination with a repeater. As soon as we have a fixed syntax of doing it, some other people possible can write some little
txt reporting tool.

A zero config version, will be for later this year.

[T313C0mun1s7]

I have a really hard time believing this is not of more interest to people. This thread is getting a lot of views, but alas, few posts.

Could it really be true that nobody cares if there exists a easy reference for the similarities and differences in these three projects? I don't think so, or the thread would not be getting any views. The problem must then be that nobody wants to participate. That is a real shame as this could have turned into a fairly valuable resource to all three communities and possibly even ushered in a new era of remote support. Oh well.

[cheaha]

I have a really hard time believing this is not of more interest to people. This thread is getting a lot of views, but alas, few posts.

Could it really be true that nobody cares if there exists a easy reference for the similarities and differences in these three projects? I don't think so, or the thread would not be getting any views. The problem must then be that nobody wants to participate. That is a real shame as this could have turned into a fairly valuable resource to all three communities and possibly even ushered in a new era of remote support. Oh well.

I would be happy to explain how Remote Support System differs from the others listed, but to be honest I will probably be slightly bias, as I am the creator of Remote Support System.

As for the comments above about the pricing point, let me explain it this way, with RSS there is NO PER SEAT (no per user, no per technician) license as with most all other products out there. One time purchase for as many technicians, and clients as you wish. Most other products require that you specify your IP or Domain Name destination, and they compile the client exe for you, make any change or add any new technicians , or hell even change your ISP get new IP addresses, and guess what mo' money, mo' money, mo'money.

This is not the way that most IT shops work. You need FULL control over the software, the ability to change ANYTHING at any time, in order to be effective. If you evaluate the price this way, Remote Support System is a value. The price only goes up if you are a large company. This is why price is based on company size, NOT techs, or clients.

The small IT shop is usually 1-4 people. The reason it is structured this way is so that no one is limiting your number of technicians locations or clients you can support. No big brothers here. But there had to be a way to keep companies of 600+ from only having to pay the same as you small business owners. Employee number was the answer.

If you read HelpdeskVNC license agreement you see that for a limited time only you can get a copy at $89 per license . A license is one tech. EchoWare's SCversion requires each concurrent connection to the Echoware business server purchase a $200 license.

Remote Support System supports an unlimited number of technicians or technician locations (work, home, on the road), but to be fair lets say three per client.exe. To reproduce that with HelpdeskVNC it would cost you $267 with no ability to change those IP addresses without incurring any new costs and you would be dealing with three seperate exe's instead of one that can handle all three of them all. Not to mention the features you would be missing out on. Echoware's would cost you $600. I think that you will find that this is the same for all other products out there of this nature.

There are MANY features added to Ultravnc that are tailored for the small business and single IT support professional. In fact, that is why Remote Support System was developed. I will would be happy to list them for you, but they are all on the website, www.RemoteSupportSystem.com

Remote Support System has really turned into something that I am proud of, as I have had MANY people tell me that they love the features that are unique to RSS, and that they more than paid for it with just two support sessions. The automatic invoicing makes it so much easier for you to ask for money for your time, as the time is accurate for all to see, and with version 1.4.1 the custom invoicing feature allows your clients to pay their bill online, instantly as soon as you finish the session. There is much more to RSS, just checkout the website and forum. I would be happy to answer any questions for you. There is a fully functioning demo available for download.

Hope this helped.

Added: I also read in your post above that you said that you can reboot to safemode by tweaking the registry to boot that way. I have to tell you that this by itself would not work, as yes the computer would reboot into safemode, but it would not run any programs but native window programs, so you would not have the remote control ability auto-connect. It is not just simply a matter of rebooting the PC, many steps have to be taken to pull this trick off. And Remote Support System does them all with one click.

-=Cheaha=-

[cheaha]

*Bump

[TKD]

Just curious... Because UVNC and all flavors of VNC are considered opensource, wouldn't applications such as Helpdesk VNC, RSS, etc. be in violation of current opensource licensing? I thot the rule was that what is opensource must stay opensource. Does this mean applications such as Helpdesk VNC and RSS can just repackage UltraVNC and sell it as a commercial product off the shelf without any kind of problems or consequences??

[cheaha]

Just curious... Because UVNC and all flavors of VNC are considered opensource, wouldn't applications such as Helpdesk VNC, RSS, etc. be in violation of current opensource licensing? I thot the rule was that what is opensource must stay opensource. Does this mean applications such as Helpdesk VNC and RSS can just repackage UltraVNC and sell it as a commercial product off the shelf without any kind of problems or consequences??

TKD,

TKD, if any open source code is used in a commercial product than the source to that code must be made availlible to the public as part of the open source agreement; however, any new code created by the 3rd party can remain private. In the case of RSS, all new code is added and compliled into complely seperate execuatbles, so there is no inter-mingling of open-source and private code. In the EULA of RSS there is a link to download all open-source, source code used in the project. Hope this answers your questions.

[TKD]

just to be very clear...

can I make plugins to this ultravnc and sell it bundled with the ultravnc executable if I havent modified any of the original ultravnc code?

so I can distribute and sell my developed plugins packaged with the vnc code. correct?

what if we compiled the vnc code (unmodified) with our developed plugins into one executeable and sold it? would that be okay too?

[merwinb]

just to be very clear...

can I make plugins to this ultravnc and sell it bundled with the ultravnc executable if I havent modified any of the original ultravnc code?

so I can distribute and sell my developed plugins packaged with the vnc code. correct?

what if we compiled the vnc code (unmodified) with our developed plugins into one executeable and sold it? would that be okay too?

I'm fairly positive that compiling the vnc code and your developed plugins into one package actually constitutes modifying it, and hence that would be a no go - but if you distributed Uvnc with your developed plug-ins you should be fine provided that you either distribute the source of Uvnc or make it clear where to find it in its entirety.

I'm sure someone can clarify this further.

[TKD]

I'm fairly positive that compiling the vnc code and your developed plugins into one package actually constitutes modifying it, and hence that would be a no go - but if you distributed Uvnc with your developed plug-ins you should be fine provided that you either distribute the source of Uvnc or make it clear where to find it in its entirety.

I'm sure someone can clarify this further.

Thanks, merwinb - your response corresponds with the response given by the main developer of this app.

The answer to this question is found [topic=3374]HERE[/topic].

If this is true, then all ultravnc based companies that I have come across are in violation, but are not impacted.

[T313C0mun1s7]

Interesting, although I have my profile set to notify me of replies, I have not received any since my last post. It is nice to see your answer Cheaha. I have spent little bit of time on your website, as it was more informative than the rest.

Thank you for pointing out the points I may have missed. You would do well to add this price justification to your website. (Which you may have done already, as I have not been back to your website since my last post either)

To be fair however, the other product compiling the EXE for you does not mean you can’t change anything, especially if you control your own DNS or use a Dynamic DNS service. In my case they complied in a URL rather than an IP.

I can see your point on the cost justification. However, in my case I am the only tech that would use it, and I don't use it frequently enough to justify the cost. In other cases it is possible the person is not even in business, but just helping out a friend or relative. So as you can see, my original statement about each product having its place still holds true.

Please note that if I get to the point that my usage increases, I will most likely purchase your product. For the IT shop, or outsource IT business that needs frequent use, or has more than one tech that would use it, your product is the obvious best choice. It is just that not everyone fits into that category.

[Duff]

I'm fairly positive that compiling the vnc code and your developed plugins into one package actually constitutes modifying it, and hence that would be a no go - but if you distributed Uvnc with your developed plug-ins you should be fine provided that you either distribute the source of Uvnc or make it clear where to find it in its entirety.

I'm sure someone can clarify this further.

You absolutely can include both proprietary and GPLed code on the same media; that's what the license is referring to when they say "mere aggregation" is OK. The trick is that the GPLed work and the non-GPLed work need to be identifiably separate items. Sooo, if your installer installs both UltraVNC (for which you're fully complying with the GPL) and your own proprietary frontend (which you're not applying the GPL to), but it gives the user the ability to independently start either of these and at no time does there exist a single memory image in RAM (created by either the linker or the loader) with both GPLed and proprietary code, you're probably just fine.

But as for the authority -- the authority on how the license was written is the Free Software Foundation. The authority on how the license should be interpreted for a given piece of software is the copyright holder of that software -- in this case the UltraVNC developers. Consequently, so long as they're saying in writing that they'll allow you privileges above and beyond what the GPL might permit if strictly interpreted -- go for it!

[cheaha]

...In other cases it is possible the person is not even in business, but just helping out a friend or relative... ...For the IT shop, or outsource IT business that needs frequent use, or has more than one tech that would use it, your product is the obvious best choice...

Thank you for the vote of confidence for RSS. Want to point out that for those "just helping out a friend or relative", RSS is a free product as the only limitation is the lack of corporate branding. They would simply build a client distribution exe, and send it to their friend via email, or post it.

BTW T313C0mun1s7, very cool avatar.

[Renz]

cheaha, i am not sure I understand your pricing to make sense IF you base it on comapny empoyees How can a company have 100 tecs using it when there company size is 1-4 people?

an unlimited number of support technicians <---- This makes zero sense IF your comapnay has 1 to 4 employees

thanks

[T313C0mun1s7]

cheaha, i am not sure I understand your pricing to make sense IF you base it on comapny empoyees How can a company have 100 tecs using it when there company size is 1-4 people?

an unlimited number of support technicians <---- This makes zero sense IF your comapnay has 1 to 4 employees

thanks

The licencing is based on the size of the company; however, there is technically nothing built in to limit the number of techs. Cheaha is relying a bit on the honor system. Basically he would like to assume that most people are honest enough that they would not lie about the size of their company, and so he does not build any limitations into the software itself.

[cheaha]

In order to level the playing field for small business which normally get screwed by larger ones, we base the price on the size of the company. We us third party research firms like D&B to verify the size of license requests. So far we have only had a handful of dis-honest applicants, who have all paid the difference and a fee (due to erronious application) once we confront them. Plus there is size information embedded in the registration code, so checks can be emplimented should it be required in the future. I would like to think that most people can be trusted, but should this be a problem, there is code to take care of this

Once the initial purchase is made, as your company grows you do not not need to re-register, thus the no limitation on growth (unlimited clause).

Hope this helps.

[Renz]

Sounds fair enuff to me!

[Zane]

In addition you get the ability to reboot the computer and have the client automatically reconnect. This feature is the one I think is worth the $85 to anyone trying to really do remote support - you can't live without this feature if you are trying to use this tool as a support professional.

[topic=6731]I definitly agree[/topic]! I think that autoreconnect + ability to reboot is the only useful thing that these suite can offer more than SC: yes, these commercial product have got many feature, but, let's face it: how many of them do you really need?

[LeeL]

RSS is a free product as the only limitation is the lack of corporate branding. They would simply build a client distribution exe, and send it to their friend via email, or post it.

Cheaha it is great that you allow this functionality for non-commerical use my only suggestion is to please lose the "not for commercial use" text in all four corners of the remote screen. This is a little bit of overkill and makes it hard to see areas of the screen you need to control.

I should say that the software looks pretty nice I can see why you have gotten so many kuto's.

Lee