We switched to Labtech from Kaseya shortly after it's first release. For the first few years, it was amazing - better design and functionality than Kaseya, awesome tools, great reporting, powerful scripting and easy access to data to build our own applications that interact with the LT data. Since Connectwise bought it and chased off the original developers / managers, they have taken it from a tech tool to an "anyone can be an MSP" tool. They dumbed down the interface, completely screwed up patching, buried features and made it so buggy that it's practically impossible to rely on as an RMM tool.

I get more use out of LogMeIn now than I do with "Automate".

Had Labtech since 2010. Started with 250 agents license. Increased to 500, 750, then 1000 agents. Paid thousands in yearly assurance/maintenance. But the product still has many issues (mainly performance). After many painful upgrades, the remote access got worst. It took 15 minutes or more to remote to a PC to resolve 2 minute issues. Full of surprises with increasing cost of ownership. Final straw was when they convince me to Pay nearly $7,000 for assurance to upgrade to ScreenConnect and LT10. After purchasing a new server and loaded LT10, they inform me that I need to buy another server for ScreenConnect. Tech support's answer was that 20 minutes was normal for remote connect. Nerver offer to look at our server instance to troubleshoot issues. They disbled our Labtech instance last night, even though we paid and own at least 700 agent licenses. I tried to work with them every step of the way, but this is the last straw. I am considering legal action. They sell you agent licenses, but you don't actually own them.

Not a fan of this product, I moved from Kaseya to LabTech 2 years ago, and we have had nothing but crappy performance. We have about 1100 workstations and 175 servers and we have had to rebuild our server 4 times and still we have issues and are not able to move to the new server. LabTech support has been bad, and they want to charge me every time we have an issue.

A bug called Labtech.

You can open 100 tickets ( and believe me , you do it ) and 99 have no solutions, really.

They say always "An issue of this type will typically be resolved in an upcoming patch release or marketplace update. Please be advised that our typical resolution time for a reported issue is 90-120 days."

So, wait months for a solution.

You want a stable tool to connect remotely? buy an option

You install the last version of a "great" out of the box tool? you receive 3000 mails every single day.

You need a specific report ? there is a bug, sorry.

There are better products, less function, but stable.

The one thing I like is that we can interact with the database to make queries, import our own data and even customize some of the functionalities. There is much to be desired. All the modules are set up in sort of an ad-hoc fashion. There are several forms of security and to achieve the security you want means taking away much of the choices and functionailities to achieve any security at all. It is very complicated to achieve desired results for items such as no upgrades for older versions of IE. Simple features such as spreading out the execution of the same script over a larger time frame had to be done by us since LabTech Support had no idea on how to do this. We have been telling their support that their network probe does not work for 2 years and they have finally started taking this seriously as we had to demonstrate this to them with our own equipment and allow them to practice on our equipment to diagnose. Many requests that fall into the support guidelines are immediately sent back ans Out of Scope for support. One example is a general information request. We had to customize our own virus scan definitions for a major antivirus application. When we provided them with the definitions that would work, they changed them and now they do not work. We are stuck with deleting theirs and re-installing ours every time we do an update. Another major anti-virus that they have been supporting with definitions, they refuse to continue to support with their new version. Their are some individuals in support that do a good job and help us promptly, however the management of their support and support philosophy seems seriously flawed.

We have used LabTech since late 2010 in various states. Before ConnectWise got involved they were okay, with a decent little product that could have been a good fate sealer for Kaseya.

However.... Sales figures meant the world, well above and beyond the support infrastructure and rather than managing by capacity, management simply opened the flood gates and swamped their support teams. Panic set in around late 2011 and the management team filled the holes with poorly skilled support staff who can just about string together a subject for a ticket (expect no more than this when you call in, no matter how urgent the problem is).

The 2012 product itself must be providing the debuggers a time of their life. The code is shoddy, framework design terrible and UML must be a new name for a burger and CMMI a side dish in Tampa because these guys seem to have followed absolutely no standard at all. If you find a bug, be ready for an onslaught of design feature, you need to get training, hey have a consulting day and a million other excuses before you either become totally ignored, or the problem disappears into QA for six months (your ticket goes with the problem too, so do not expect to be able to retrieve or comment on it).

This brings me on to the ticketing, which is where ConnectWise should be utterly ashamed of themselves! It seems as though somebody walked into the LabTech offices, turned a server on, installed ConnectWise out of the box and walked back out again. Workflow setup is diabolical and the connectors still to this day have not been setup correctly. Staff have not been trained how to use ConnectWise and the support staff seem to be in a complete spin on how to work with the ticketing. Prey that LabTech do not contact you on a Friday (okay prey that they actually contact you in the first place), or your ticket will auto close over the weekend and…. firstly somebody forgot to click the checkbox to reopen a ticket, and now workflow is missing again as you will never hear from them. Portal based tickets are limited as they hide most departments, thus the QA disappearing ticket black hole etc.

If you scream and shout enough, you may get to speak with management too! These guys sound like they are holding onto the stern of a sinking ship and morale certainly does sound low. They all seem to have been programmed with a standard set of excuses, but in some way they all admit to having grown too fast and lacking infrastructure to support their product. They even try to bring together a team to resolve the problem, but this soon fades away unless you chase like a Doberman, and eventually the management begin the usual process of ignoring with their heads buried firmly in the sand.

Moving on from there, ignite is fantastic, no really it is! It is fantastic because in the utter panic to release it, they forgot a few things.

1) Debugging code is rather important.
2) Documenting the application is quite a good idea if you want a client base to understand and use your product to its full potential.
3) Teach your support and customer services teams the product before you release it.

So, if you are one of the unlucky ones who took on 2012, I feel for you. If you are one of those who then took on Ignite, you have my deepest sympathy!

I could go on about this for weeks to be honest, but I can provide you with one comment to make you think before you commit. On speaking to a very high end consultant @ LabTech, he not only was unsure of many of the features of 2012, but also made a comment stating "2012 was released way too soon".

Personally, I believe that LabTech will be a good product by 2015, but I also have the feeling that 2012 will be a product they will not admit to.

I very strongly recommend staying away from LabTech primarily due to poor management and customer service.

We switched from Kasaya about two years ago. It is a powerful tool, but it takes quite a bit of time to make it do what you want. As long as you are willing and able to spend some time with configuration, customization, and scripting- the product is quite good. They also seem to be doing good things on the development side. New features, scripts, and plugins are useful. The one caveat is there 'Marketplace', the system used for deploying scripts, reports, and plugins. The Marketplace has virtually no information about the update other than it's title and publish date. It seems to be a work in progress that hasn't really progressed.

As good as I think the program is, I am looking to move to another system. We had an issue with the ShadowProtect licenses that we purchased with LT that required resetting the license key. I admit that we caused the initial issue by not properly deactivating the SP license before removing/replacing several servers. But the response has been completely unacceptable. On June 6th I emailed LT asking to have the license key reset. It is now October and it is a continuing nightmare. My account rep has stopped returning my emails and the support staff takes over a week to respond. When they do they either ask for something I have already given them, point the finger at someone else, say it is being escalated, or act as if no ticket ever existed. There is no way to contact anyone in upper management. I even got a business card from a couple of their management staff at a conference, but when I tried contacting them I got a bounceback that one of their email address was invalid and the other guy just ignored me.

I finally got to the point where I revoked my authorization for auto-pay and said I was withholding payment until my issue was resolved. That got the attention of someone in billing, but that was also a dead end. I tried contacting StorageCraft, but they said that I could only deal with Labtech.

I guess LabTech feels that once you are integrated with them and ConnectWise it would be such as huge mess to migrate away that they can treat their clients like crap and they will just roll over and take it. It will be a huge expense and hassle to move away and I will probably end up paying more for another RM tool, but I can't continue on like this. I have not had much of an issue with ConnectWise that would require dealing with customer service. However, now that they are basically run together, I worry that I would have a similar experience with CW. Now I face the nightmare of replacing both.

Stay Away!

I have been using Continuum/Zenith for years and had heard a lot about LabTech since ConnectWise invested in them. I tried LabTech in 2010 and found that it had a very steep learning curve to it. Wanting to see if the ConnectWise investment had paid off I looked at them again in May of this year, also hoping to lower my overall management costs. Unfortunately, while the surface looks better, the product is still not a viable alternative. To top it off, billing and customer service may as well be on two different planets.

First, the technical aspects. LabTech tried to create this Ignite portion which starts monitoring certain aspects of Windows systems out the gate, similar to what Continuum does. In the first few days, I had over 200 alerts for one client who also had Continuum installed (three alerts generated). After speaking with some people about the amount of noise being generated, I paid extra (still during my implementation) to have training on how to quiet that down a little. LabTech does an awful job of making things intuitive; all they talk about is groups, alerts, actions, etc. but have no real documentation explaining how things work clearly. Instead, they always offer to sell you more time for training. Continuum maybe expensive, but they don't charge me to teach me how to use their system.

Now the customer service and billing. They have a money-back guarantee, but I just found out after trying to cancel my services with them since June, that it only applies if you go through all of the training processes and programs with them. Odd, since I was paying extra for training, I felt like I was done, but because I wanted my money back, their records showed differently. Now, I am out the money I put into this software and went through four months of frustration and stress to get to this.

I don't care if LabTech figures out how to dispatch a robot to hook up printers and mice on demand, I will never look to this solution again. Between the amount of effort and time you have to put into the software to make it work, and the incredibly poor customer service, I would rather spend 10x more for another solution.

Windows Search installed on all of our computers which completely slowed down all of our computers and everyone complained. Labtech fails to warn admins in this regard.

Also it runs the script everytime someone logs in, no option to silently check for previous install, every user see's the words when they log in everytime they log in. And because of this we have many PC's full of events were labtech crashes.

Do not purchase - do not buy into the hype. It is a very new product that needs a LOT of work.