Free Alternatives to Teamviewer?

[Anomnomnomaly]

I've been using teamviewer for many, many years now... It's for personal use only not commercial.  But they've started to get really obnoxious lately trying to extort money by getting me to buy an expensive license.

 

I have 3 systems... 2 of them in the same house one is my main rig and the other my mediaserver. It's simply easier to remote onto it to do stuff than it is to trudge downstairs, turn on the TV and then try to balance a keyboard and mouse on my knee perched on the edge of a chair.

 

The other system is my mums who lives 50 miles away... and occasionally I may remote help a member of the Parkinson's group I volunteer at once a month.

 

Now my mediaserver is always connected to a VPN as is my main rig... Not always to the same VPN server though.

 

Now in spite of repeatedly telling teamviewer that this is personal use... they simply refuse to remove the blocks/limits on my account... as such I cannot stay connected for more than a few seconds before getting kicked off... then randomly it will stay connected for hrs.

 

 

As they won't listen... and I'm sick and tired of trying to reason with idiots... I need an alternative that's free and not littered with ads/tracking/data harvesting and so forth.

 

 

What are others using?

[lewdicrous]

Tried discord?

[Anomnomnomaly]

6 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

Tried discord?

Discord is a voice chat app for gamers... I'm talking about remote software to access and control other computers.

[lewdicrous]

Just now, Anomnomnomaly said:

Discord is a voice chat app for gamers... I'm talking about remote software to access and control other computers.

Ahh, misunderstood your post, my bad

[badreg]

For machines on your local network, VNC works just fine. I can also remote in through a VPN, so no ports (besides the VPN) have to be exposed and there are no security concerns.

 

Maybe if you connect for fewer sessions and to fewer machines, TeamViewer will stop interpreting your usage as commercial.

[Anomnomnomaly]

Oh man... I'd forgotten all about VNC, I used to use that back in the early 2000's.

 

 

Just had a look at their site, and can't see a free version, just a trial which is limited to 30 days and then you have to buy a pro or enterprise license... Can't see anything about a free for personal use option.

[badreg]

6 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

Oh man... I'd forgotten all about VNC, I used to use that back in the early 2000's.

 

 

Just had a look at their site, and can't see a free version, just a trial which is limited to 30 days and then you have to buy a pro or enterprise license... Can't see anything about a free for personal use option.

Plenty of open source options. TightVNC is one.

[Anomnomnomaly]

2 minutes ago, badreg said:

Plenty of open source options. TightVNC is one.

Yeah, just started reading up on tightvnc & ultravnc and there's another one called tigervnc

[Elmojo]

What sort of nags are you seeing on Teamviewer? I use it daily on MANY machines, and have never felt pressured to buy a license. The worst i ever see is the pop-up each time I close a session saying that it was a sponsored session...
What sort of limits? If you're getting kicked off, that may be more of a technical issue, unless it's giving you a specific message?

Can you post an image of what you're seeing?

[Anomnomnomaly]

It's a very common issue that people using the free version for personal use... and it simply says they commercial use has been detected and your session will be cut short and that you must buy a license.

 

There are so many reports of this, and it's not the first time I've had it. Last time I informed them that it wasn't being used for commercial purposes and the message went away

 

This time in spite of repeatedly asking them to mark my account as personal use and not commercial... they continue to ignore me and I continue to get the message and my connections are cut short after 30-60 seconds... and then blocked from connecting again for I think 10 mins.

 

If you've ever tried to help anyone, 60 seconds every 10 mins is not acceptable.

 

Teamviewer simply refuse to respond to personal users, they eliminated email support and you have to fill out a webform that only has room for a single ID... and then it takes them weeks to email you a response and the response is always 'commercial use detected'.

 

It's like they decided that anyone who uses a VPN must be using it commercially, in spite of the ip address clearly being from a service that is for private users.

 

The attitude is basically... give us hundreds of pounds for a commercial license or GFY

[adammcd94]

Check into AnyDesk. I had the same issue as you where TeamViewer started restricting me to 1-minute sessions for "commercial use detected".

 

The main benefit I found for it over VNC was that it supports address book type functionality that Teamviewer had so no need to remember IDs.

 

https://anydesk.com/en

 

Apparently made by ex TeamViewer developers.

[Anomnomnomaly]

21 minutes ago, adammcd94 said:

Check into AnyDesk. I had the same issue as you where TeamViewer started restricting me to 1-minute sessions for "commercial use detected".

 

The main benefit I found for it over VNC was that it supports address book type functionality that Teamviewer had so no need to remember IDs.

 

https://anydesk.com/en

 

Apparently made by ex TeamViewer developers.

Thanks, I'll look into it... whilst VNC would be fine for my own use... the need to set it up and open ports would mean it's all but impossible for members of the parkinsons group I help out with. We're talking pensioners with severe health issues, and my mum isn't very tech friendly either.

[DarkShame2]

Check here to see any you like: https://alternativeto.net/software/teamviewer/?license=free

[homeap5]

You have few options, all of them probably not perfect.

 

1. VNC - as people said - it's free, but requires direct connection, so ports must be forwared etc. And it's very slow compared to other tools.

 

2. Radmin - is the best option in my opinion (I'm using it for years and it's faster solution I know), but it's NOT free. But unlike TeamViewer, you pay for lifetime license and it's cheap. What is cool is that almost all special keyboards and key combinations are supported on remote machine, so you can forget about stupid special buttons for opening Task Manager for example (ctrl+alt+del is handled separately though, so you need to configure your special shortcut key for remote computer). Like VNC it needs to forward ports.

 

3. Remote Utilities - similar to Radmin, but slower. But it's free up to 5 or 10 (I don't remember now) computers. Server is free in this case, but Viewer is paid if you're using more than 10 entries. They may change that, so I'm not sure how it's now working, but I'm still controlling one or two computers this method.

 

4. Remote Desktop - if you forward port 3389, you can remotely access other computers from wan; unfortunatelly, when you're working, remote user see only login screen.

 

[Caennanu]

@Anomnomnomaly Have you found a suitable pick? I have been getting the same message to acces my local game server. The form on their site doesn't even seem to work as in 3 months i haven't gotten a reply, not even 'a copy transcript' when ticked.

 

As mentioned up above, from the description anydesk.com looks most like teamviewer in terms of accesibility. Wondering if you have tried any of the packages.

[Anomnomnomaly]

It's completely random at the moment... I get it every time but I've remained connected to my mediaserver for 36hrs or so now... So who know's WTF they're playing at... I got a form demanding ALL my personal info to state I'm not using it for commercial purposes but they refuse to agree to remove the blocking and state they can and will remove access if they 'think' I'm using it for commercial.

 

I'll be trying anypc once I visit my mum again, so I cans et it up on her system... they won;t let me connect to that one for more than 60s and then block you for 10 mins before you can connect for another 60s.

 

But seriously... FUCK teamviewer and their extortion racket... they're just trying to force people into paying hundreds for a license for personal use and they have no morals or ethics what so ever... Fuck em.

[Caennanu]

Just now, Anomnomnomaly said:

It's completely random at the moment... I get it every time but I've remained connected to my mediaserver for 36hrs or so now... So who know's WTF they're playing at... I got a form demanding ALL my personal info to state I'm not using it for commercial purposes but they refuse to agree to remove the blocking and state they can and will remove access if they 'think' I'm using it for commercial.

 

I'll be trying anypc once I visit my mum again, so I cans et it up on her system... they won;t let me connect to that one for more than 60s and then block you for 10 mins before you can connect for another 60s.

 

But seriously... FUCK teamviewer and their extortion racket... they're just trying to force people into paying hundreds for a license for personal use and they have no morals or ethics what so ever... Fuck em.

I hear ye, i hear ye.

I just used Teamviewer, with the 5 minute timeout, to install anydesk on the machine. Then continued to set it up via anydesk for unattended acces.

So far i'm liking it, and thats after a whole 10 mins of experience with it.

(can't seem to use the address book tho, but atleast i can add favorites)

[DeaconFrost]

LogMeIn used to have a free license for 10 computers.  I loved it because I didn't need a viewer application.  I've been searching for something that would allow me to connect via a web-browser with similar functionality, but I haven't found anything that's a suitable replacement.

[Anomnomnomaly]

27 minutes ago, DeaconFrost said:

LogMeIn used to have a free license for 10 computers.  I loved it because I didn't need a viewer application.  I've been searching for something that would allow me to connect via a web-browser with similar functionality, but I haven't found anything that's a suitable replacement.

Yeah, I used logme in for years before they shut down the free service about 4yrs ago.

[fatfattie]

I haven't seen Chrome Remote Desktop mentioned yet, I've been using it for years and just a few months ago, they added the feature to access your PC from a single Website. So as long as you granted access to the targeting device, you can access it from anywhere.

 

It cuts short of configuration features, but you'll get something that works for 99% of the time. It should also work with mixed VPNs and such, because the main authorization goes through your google account. Haven't tested though.

 

The only problems I had was when the Ports where blocked (like in an Uni), for that, I've been using realvnc.

[Joluch]

Not sure if this will help much but a while ago I tried using Steam's Remoteplay as a LAN Remote Desktop. It's of course, not officially supported but I did get limited success in getting it to work using workarounds. When it does work, the latency is pretty low and the graphics work very well, since of course, Steam would optimize these. Not 100% sure if you can still use it and the work-arounds, though aparently there are equivalent "hacks" if you have a Nvidia graphics card and use their Gamestream or the Open Source version, Moonlight. Unfortunately, I don't own an Nvidia card, so I can't attest to its effectiveness. Again, this is only an option for LAN.

[FlappyBoobs]

 

On 7/10/2019 at 1:25 AM, Anomnomnomaly said:

But they've started to get really obnoxious lately trying to extort money by getting me to buy an expensive license.

 

A commercial company that's trying to actually make money off of your usage of their services rather than you costing money to them. That's unpossible!

 

You claim it is for personal, non commercial use (they group personal with non commercial, that's what you are missing I think), but it's not, you are providing a service to other people (your mother and that group you help with) just because you don't get paid for it doesn't mean that it is not commercial use. TeamViewer are correct in what they are saying. 

 

Remote Desktop is built into windows 10 (all versions, even home) but I think you need Pro or Enterprise to act as the "host" of the session. VNC is the best way to go really, because you can support all OSs that way.

[Guest]

Windows 10 has a free built in program