I’ve been evaluating various remote support solutions lately. For a while we’ve been using a reverse VNC system, which is free, and works well for the most part. Being a reverse connection there are usually no firewall issues, since the customer adds us as a listening viewer and therefore the connection is from inside out, rather than outside in. However, some very strict firewall policies do actually prevent VNC traffic in either direction. So we have had to seek alternatives.
One of the most well known desktop sharing solutions is WebEx, but at prices starting from $149/month it’s not cheap! Other solutions such as Citrix’s GotoMeeting are more reasonable at $49/month. Another I’ve tried is LogMeIn which costs $99/month and seemed a bit complicated to set up and use. So I’ve been on the lookout for something more affordable and workable.
Well I’ve just discovered BeamYourScreen.com which starts at $19 a month (for a one:one connection – all you need for remote support) and there’s 25% discount to be had for a 2 year subscription. Seems like very good value. I’m currently evaluating it and it seems to work really well. The system is web and Java based so as long as java applets are permitted it should work and shouldn’t suffer the same security issues that VNC often does.
I found BeamYourScreen really easy to set up and use too. Once I had created an account and installed it all I had to do to start a session was click on the system tray icon. That gives me a session URL to give to a guest and a link to send it by email. The guest simply visits that URL and gets connected. Very simple. I’m running a seven day trial at the moment so we’ll see how it goes, but so far, I think this could be the one. If anyone wants to try it out, and get some free remote Macro Scheduler support at the time, let me know 🙂
