Teamviewer alternatives

John Ellmaker · November 8, 2021

Welcome to my love hate relationship with Teamviewer software and just a quick note, I appreciate eager beavers that want to help but if you don't use this software in a professional setting and your experience is limited to helping a few friends and family here and there with the free edition, I'm not interested in your advice, no offense. One of the reasons I've stuck with the license for Teamviewer is its simply noninvasive to my clients or at least has the reasonable appearance of being this way, I know this isn't important to everyone hence all the software that I've rejected like logmein and similar "always on" remote softwares. I tell every client that they can either uninstall Teamviewer after a session if they are paranoid about being snooped on by anyone and the software is very easy to remove and re-add (at least on Windows), and most of them elect to keep it on and I advise them not to give out codes to strangers as well as checking that the startup with Windows is unchecked. I discuss this with my clients every single session so they are aware of how to see when it is running and how to ensure it is closed afterwards which gives them confidence, warranted or not, that they have control of when someone connects to them in a clear manner that I can explain to a young adult or senior.

Other softwares like IDrive or logmein have a persistent system tray icon that cannot be turned off, as far as I know, without fully uninstalling the program and I've had issues with full clean removal of some of those brands in the past so I'm not interested in many of the remote software that you might recommend and please do not go recommending anything if you don't clearly understand the previous paragraph and ask for clarification if it wasn't clear to you. The ability to tell my clients that they have control in an easy manner like how Teamviewer can be opened or closed (just the fact that it doesn't minimize when hitting the "x" and actually closes is important to me), is paramount.

The big gripe when it comes to Teamviewer is their pricing for small business, they go from the free edition which is fine if you are the defacto family or friend group tech troubleshooter to an edition that is designed for a mid sized corporation with nothing in between for small business users. I can have stretches of days in a row where I have 1-2 hours a day of remote support for my small business or residential clients followed by stretches without any remote support at all, its heterogeneous use but overall estimated use is 10 hours a week or less on average. My license fee even when I bitch and moan to Teamviewer support, and believe me I do every year, is in the neighborhood of $400 and it would be higher without the haggling. My only recourse is to tie up as much time with support and expressing my repeated ire at them until they get the message there needs to be a middle cost license option. I can't believe I spend more on remote software in 2021 than I do on secure offsite backup and productivity software combined.

The second more minor annoyance is always cresting close to the maximum number of installs, I'm a frequent upgrader being in tech so I can clearly explain what the difference between generations feels like to clients and I'm always close to the maximum number of reinstalls for Teamviewer. In 2021, how they haven't figured out how to get rid of the maximum reinstalls for techs is again ridiculous. Not to mention they just had their highest revenue year ever and trying to tell their clients currently (if you are a license holder you got the email, go check it) that this incurred them more cost so they have to raise prices. Seriously? The price should be getting lower save for inflation perhaps but that should be completely offset by how much more revenue they made. Ok, I think my rant is finished, thanks for reading all of it if you made it here.

If someone has a remote software that they use in a professional setting that can replace Teamviewer, I'm all ears and would love a recommendation but only if it fits the criteria outlined in this, please do not try to convince me to run an always on software, its a dealbreaker. Teamviewer also works with my numerous Mac users so any suggestion should have a very polished Mac installer that didn't falter during new releases of MacOS. I'm actually really shocked that other remote software hasn't been created like Teamviewer considering the popularity.

manikyath · November 8, 2021

it's a rather bigger software package, but kaseya VSA has (or had.. i'm not sure they fixed them yet since the recent breach incident) "temporary agents" that completely remove themselves 12 hours after intervention. it also features a prompt for the end user to 'approve' of a connection before it is made.

pricing on kaseya stuff isnt very nice though, and support is "disappointing at best".

beyond that... i'm sharing in your love-hate relationship of teamviewer...

they have really defined the expectation people have about remote control software, but they have also defined the way to alienate long term partners, while the freeloaders still thrive.

LWM723 · November 9, 2021

There is a very good alternative software, but I wouldn't want to recommend it to you as you feel that you're "the expert" and it may not meet your "standards". I'm sure you'll find it yourself, Good Luck!