AnyDesk / Teamviewer alternatives?

General Discussions
1

Oops I did it again.

With me being active on the forum again, broadcasting my ability to and willingness to help people with Pylontech issues ext, I have unknowingly shot myself in the foot again :crazy_face: :laughing: :rofl:

Doing all this for free, and quite frequently in the last two weeks, flagged Anydesk and Teamviewer that I am a suspected business user using their product not as an occasional user, but as an professional that is making an income from it. Now I need a solution (Hopefully opensource) that I can use to connect to my own teams on site when they occasionally need assistance.

Tried to help them today and both software packages threw some delays my way to make it almost impossible to assist my guys, let alone anyone else with issues.

Anydesk brings up a block with a 100 second timer which I can clear at the end of the countdown, then it allows me 60 seconds to work and then the block pops up again. Tried to get myself whitelisted as an occasional user and the AI bot “Laughed” at me!! Sorry, you have made 58 connections to 27 devices in the last 14 days, you do not qualify to be whitelisted. Single user licence R4500 per annum.

Okay I have TeamViewer I thought, not knowing they were waiting for me as well, 60 seconds working time, log out, ask my guy for new password, log on and 60 seconds later auto log off. Single user licence R2250 per annum.

Doesn’t sound like a lot, but a bitter pill to swallow, I help because of my passion for it, and now I have to pay for the privilege to to help someone for FREE!!

Does anyone know of a reliable opensource remote desktop program I can use that is easy to download for the customer, that I can use to continue helping people that came here to be helped.

Just stupid crazy, or at least that is what I think it is. But to be honest, I can understand where they come from, afterall I am using their software more than what their free licence allow for, does not really matter what I use it for, I am in the wrong here. Does not make me feel better about the situation, but it is understandable.

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2

Have you tried plain “remote desktop” on windows?

3

I do use that between PC’s belonging to me, not sure how to do it with a customer or someone else’s PC. How ever, that should be perfect for me and my team, let me read up on how to do it with a customer.

I guess, Teamviewer and anydesk or anything similar has some security build in that needs either an password or acceptance from the remote PC, so the moment we are done, i cant log back in to the customers PC without him sending me a new password or accepting my connection. I dont know of similar security measures in Remote Desktop that will prevent me to log back in uninvited.

If I am wrong, please correct me.

4

The problem you’re going to face is you’re going to have to assist the client to forward port 3389 from their router to their PC so you can connect to it. Too much hassle in my experience.

We were in a similar situation as you a few years ago. We had a perpetual licence to TeamViewer 6, and then they unilaterally changed the licence terms and we could no longer use it without paying exorbitant annual licence fees. We declined on principle.

We then tried a few of the free options, like UltraVNC, but it’s not as hassle free - you have to configure your own server to do the routing, for example.

Eventually we bit the bullet and bought a licence for AnyDesk.

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5

Maby wait till Monday. Normally these things goes on Cyber Monday promo’s.

Ive learned that sometimes the time/energy/kopseer and “stuur my siel hel toe” is not worth it!!

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6

You can use Microsoft Teams or Chrome remote desktop.

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7

OMW how easy is this, I did not even know about this in Chrome. Took me 20 min to set it up on the 8 PC’s in the house. Going to take me longer to uninstall TeamViewer and Anydesk from all of them.

It will take anyone with Chrome about 2 min to activate the extension, install the Remote Desktop Host and give me a generated Code.

I like the build in security and think anyone would be comfortable using it. I also like the fact that the customer have to accept my connection and can cancel it at any given time. Newly generated access code with every new connection is a plus imo and the fact that I cant find a setting to allow for unattended access is even better.

Thanks @_a_a_a

@ebendl once accessed my PC via Teams, but I forgot about it till you mentioned it. Also something I will look into as an alternative method, Covid truly promoted the use of Teams and just about anyone in the corporate world should be comfortable using Teams for assistance.

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8

@JacoDeJongh consider a small fee for support.

Like:
1st round free.
2nd round a token of R250 per hour or whatnot.
And when you know exactly what effort is coming on your side, a flat fee for that effort.

Just a thought.

Above R250, most will run away, to come back later grudgingly. Don’t want that.

9

I was about to suggest a VPN product and VNC, but it seems the hive mind has sorted you out
 and then some.

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10

And there you solved my problem, same as Jaco’s, I also ran out of TV licenses. AnyDesk any day now.

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