Atera

The licensing model for Atera sets it apart from most other similar RMM tools. Each licensed technician can manage unlimited client systems. This alleviates the overhead of tracking your head count and makes Atera possibly the most cost effective RMM product on the market today. Tech Support from Atera is also outstanding providing timely live chat interaction. They have provided more than sufficient answers to what I perceived as complicated propositions. The Atera Support Technicians are polite and appear to have a fairly decent mastery of the product.

Patch management is a little clunky and the Atera agent does not always restart on its own when the PC is restarted. There is a fix for this, but that fix should not be necessary for this type of product. Its a fairly manageable inconvenience. Client system naming can get off track, but is also not hard to fix.

The best thing about Atera is that it is always improving features, even weekly but at least monthly. I had some experience with NABLE MSP support software, so was familiar with many of the aspects that Atera had to offer and simply needed to start deployment of agents at my customer sites, so felt very productive very soon after starting. There are many resources readily available to gain additional training in areas where I don't feel as confident. Although it didn't happen often, I was able to receive technical support for issues relating to the agents or dashboard in general in CHAT, so there was no waiting.

Up until two weeks ago, I had no issues with Atera. There is many new features that are being developed monthly, but most of them are not available to the lowest subscription package, but it makes sense that people paying more money should have an increasing number of features available to them. Two weeks ago, I get a payment notification from Atera that is significantly higher. When I sent an inquiry email through Atera's Contact system, they suggested that they had sent out notification months before. My incoming messages from Atera are filtered into an ATERA INCOMING MAIL folder and I double checked and verified that I had never received it. The Atera Pro level subscription increased by 33% a month. I received a return email sent back suggesting that Atera hadn't raised it's pricing in the last 6 years. At a time where small business owners are trying to build back to pre-pandemic business levels, it's unfortunate that Atera didn't have our backs. The less than helpful response from Atera also suggested that if I prepaid for the full year, it would be less of an increase overall. I also moved many of my existing sites to make use of Emsisoft Business Software and a few to utilize Acronis Cyber Backups, my payments to Atera are more than double what the Pro subscription was originally set at and that obviously means nothing.