Choosing a ConnectWise ScreenConnect alternative without guessing

Concurrency is the number that matters

Concurrent-technician licensing charges for how many sessions run at the same time rather than how many people could start one. For a desk of eight where three are typically connected at once, that is a materially different bill from a named-seat model, and it is the single biggest reason teams either stay or move.

Before comparing anything, pull a fortnight of session data and find your genuine peak. Then apply each candidate's meter to that number and to your headcount. A product with named seats can still win if the seat price is low enough, and a concurrent product can lose if your peak is close to your headcount.

Self-hosted or cloud: price the whole thing

Self-hosting a remote support server gives you control over where session data lives and how the service is configured, which matters for some regulated environments. It also makes you responsible for a public-facing service that grants privileged access to every machine you manage.

Cost the operational side honestly: operating system and application patching on a security-sensitive cadence, TLS certificate renewal, backups and restore testing, monitoring, capacity and someone available when it fails during a major incident. If those hours are not funded, a hosted service is usually the safer and cheaper answer.

If data residency is the reason for self-hosting, ask hosted candidates directly which region their session metadata sits in. That answer often removes the requirement entirely.

The comparison rows that decide it

Once concurrency and hosting are settled, the rest of the evaluation is the standard one. Score every candidate on the same sheet rather than on the table a vendor supplies.

• Time to a working session from click to desktop, on a normal broadband or 4G connection.
• Managed (unattended) and on-demand (attended) access, both included rather than separate purchases.
• Peak concurrent sessions supported, and what happens when you exceed them.
• Enforced multi-factor authentication on operator accounts, group-scoped permissions and session consent.
• Audit logging: what is recorded, retention period and export format.
• Platform coverage across the real estate, including older Windows builds and any Linux machines.
• Silent agent deployment, and outbound-only connectivity with no inbound firewall rule.
• Vendor security advisory history and patch cadence for the remote access component itself.
• Twelve-month cost under each vendor's own current pricing, applied to your peak and your device count.

Migration from a self-hosted deployment

Moving away from a self-hosted server is a slightly larger job than swapping one hosted tool for another, but it is still measured in days. The work is agent replacement across the estate, updating documentation that names the old product, and dealing with the server itself.

Do three things before you decommission anything. Export the audit history you are required to retain, because it usually lives only on that server. Confirm every access route the old deployment quietly served, including out-of-hours server access and any single kiosk nobody thinks about. Deploy the new agent alongside the old one for a fortnight, then remove the old agent through the same automated task rather than as a later tidy-up.