ConnectWise ScreenConnect Is Discontinuing Their Free Tier
Posted by reaper527@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 78 comments
Just got this email in my inbox:
Dear Partner,
Thank you for choosing ScreenConnect to support your remote access needs.
For over eight years, we have provided the Free license for personal use. However, to reduce the potential for misuse, we are sunsetting the Free license on October 2, 2025.
To avoid disruption, please ensure you transition your Free instance by October 2, 2025. After October 2, your instance will be unlicensed. If you do not act by November 2, 2025, your data and instance will be permanently deleted.
Starting September 2, 2025, your Free instance will automatically switch to a 30-day evaluation license, allowing you to explore the ScreenConnect platform before upgrading to a different plan.
Based on feedback from partners who want to move to a paid license, we’re offering a 20% discount on your first year of any annual ScreenConnect plan—but only if you upgrade by October 2, 2025. Your discount will be applied at checkout.
For more information, see our technical bulletin.
We appreciate your understanding and continued partnership.
Regards, The ScreenConnect Team
ConnectWise reserves the right to modify, discontinue, or terminate this promotion at any time, with or without notice. Participation in this promotion constitutes acceptance of these terms and conditions. ConnectWise shall not be liable for any direct or indirect damages arising from the modification, discontinuation, or termination of this promotion.
Certainly disappointing. For the volume I do on the side-gig side of things, having a reliable, free remote connect option has been great.
RallyX26@reddit
I'm disappointed because I do use it for personal use, it's not worth it to me to spend $240 a year to help my mom un-fuck her laptop or interpret an error message every couple of months. I understand that people were abusing it, but if you can work within the bounds of a personal license, you're not exactly costing ConnectWise a ton of money.
Asuras_Wrath_@reddit
I'm in the same boat as you. I actually use it for very seldom assistance with folks now and I have one session for my home PC in case I forget something. I actually used it for personal use. I can't justify the cost to touch this once every 5 months.
OgdruJahad@reddit
Rustdesk is your friend and you don't even have to host it if you don't want to. Supports unattended mode too!
FullOf_Bad_Ideas@reddit
I use RustDesk for personal use. I think it may be missing a few features (or i can't see them) but it works fine for attended access when I need to help someone.
No_Adhesiveness_3550@reddit
What about Parsec?
havocspartan@reddit
Just use quick assist. It’s baked into Windows and works fine.
FrivolousMe@reddit
Until you need to do something that requires admin elevation
dustojnikhummer@reddit
Or copy paste
DiSTURBED_oNE1@reddit
I use screen connect to support my parents Mac. Quick assist doesn’t work on Mac, also it’s not unattended access, require the user to enter information.
For an old person that can be a very drawn out process.
lunchmoney@reddit
If you have an apple device, I have found FaceTime screen sharing easier than screenconnect for supporting Macs.
greenstarthree@reddit
Or AnyDesk free
reaper527@reddit (OP)
doesn't that have obnoxious time limits built into it where it stops working after like 10 minutes?
Wackyvert@reddit
Chrome Remote Desktop has been completely free for the last 10ish years that I can remember and has support options where you enter a code
greenstarthree@reddit
I haven’t come across that with AnyDesk, only Team Viewer
bageloid@reddit
Just set up tailscale and then you can RDP into her machine whenever.
iixcalxii@reddit
I just had one session to be my mom's personal IT monkey. I hate connectwise more everyday. It's also the ticketing system I use at work..
Plausibility_Migrain@reddit
Check out Action1. It seems pretty good.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
They are
GeneMoody-Action1@reddit
Thank you and u/Plausibility_Migrain fort the shoutout!
While you will not find feature parity with those products in Action1, as Action1 is a patch management solution, not primarlity marketed as a remote access or SOS platform. That said, it does have full unattended remote access, and you get all the other benefits in the same package. Scripting & automation, reporting z& alerting, and of course patching for the OS and third party apps.
Our free is free, we do not scrape data, or monetize free clients in any way. It is the same product release you get as a paid user minus the occasional pre-release features, and support is community based in the free tier (Our discord, reddit, etc) which we have a lot of very smart people helping in those places so they are great. We even have paid Action1 users that participate in them.
If I can assist with anything Action1 related or otherwise, just say something like "Hey, where's that Action1 guy?" and a data pigeon will be dispatched immediately!
Xionous_@reddit
Tactical RMM self hosted fully featured RMM
NoReplacement224@reddit
Outside work, for the few times I need remote connect I just go to spiceworks. They have a free remote connect option that uses zoho assist in their it tools section. It has been very helpful. For something unattended I just got started with action1 and use their toolset. Not sure if it is still around but I have also used liquidware control center and can add up to 5 devices there. A little different featureset but still has remote connect
reaper527@reddit (OP)
didn't realize that existed. definitely will have to check it out. my use case is just attended remote support, so it doesn't even need to handle unattended remote access.
doing a quick search to see what's out there in 2025 (the last time i looked into this was 5 years ago) i also came across rustdesk which looks promising as well.
jcpham@reddit
Windows 10 and up has ez assist or quick assist or whatever as part of the OS and all you need is a Microsoft account.
I’ve been using it for years now for remote attended support. It’s much easier than anything else
sys_127-0-0-1@reddit
You will get stuck every time an administrative command is issued with Quick assist. The user needs to intervene during that phase.
jcpham@reddit
Uh huh and that's generally the point where I use something else and kick the user computer off their computer remotely and tell them to go take a coffee break. I have a 15 minute rule - if it takes more than 15 minutes, including walking the user through the steps; it's time to take over and do it myself or walk away, deprioritize the issue and come back to the issue later.
00001000U@reddit
Good, free tier was being abused by malicious actors and damaging the brand and product. A single seat doesn't cost much but is a barrier for malicious actors to overcome.
reaper527@reddit (OP)
not interested in spending $400/year for a couple thousand bucks in side work.
donith913@reddit
Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that unfortunately ScreenConnect was used pretty heavily by tech support scammers and similar actors. It sucks to lose a free service and ScreenConnect is a solid tool, but it’s totally not worth the legal risk for ConnectWise anymore.
null-character@reddit
It's not a legal risk for them though. Also pretty much every normal person has no idea what screenconnect is at all even remotely.
And I'd bet people who have been scammed by dirt bags using screenconnect also have no idea what it is.
donith913@reddit
Yes and there’s no media coverage of it at all to find out what happened.
I’m not a lawyer and don’t work for ConnectWise but I suspect the costs of preventing the free service being used by scammers is way more than the benefit in terms of signing up new paying customers. And the risk of being found liable of not doing enough to prevent it made this the obvious way out. At the end of the day they’re a business that primarily sells tools to MSPs, operating a free service isn’t exactly an obligation.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
Welcome to the real world. You were given multiple free alters, but you’d rather come on here and piss and moan and argue then except that there are other free utilities. Times
CharacterLimitHasBee@reddit
Just pass the cost on. That's what a good business does.
roll_for_initiative_@reddit
Use quickassist, it's free and already built in. If you need something more advanced, you're doing something more advanced and then need to charge more and then the tool cost isn't an issue.
quantumhardline@reddit
Agreed, worth it so scammers can't use it to easily scam. I'm actually for them requiring some kind of org/business verification and mandatory wait time for new sign ups like adding txt record to DNS as well to help cut down on malicious use via stolen cc etc. Even having a separate URL for non-verified so SOCs etc can use it as trigger for alerts.
Nu-Hir@reddit
Most of those malicious actors were making a lot more than $20/month on their scams, so this really isn't putting a barrier on malicious actors, but a small cost of business.
kuroimakina@reddit
If a boatload of people use Linux for hacking, should the Linux foundation or Torvalds or the like be held responsible?
If you rightfully say “no, that would be stupid,” well, guess what, it’s the same thing. They could have made some changes that made it a little harder to use maliciously while allowing it to be free.
Just because people abuse things doesn’t mean it’s a good thing when good free tools disappear/become paid products
pc_load_letter_in_SD@reddit
I've been using DWService for a number of years. Quick and easy. Supports 2FA. I requires an agent on the destination computer you want to remote to but otherwise it's all browser based.
https://www.dwservice.net/en/home.html
Whyd0Iboth3r@reddit
Self-host. Run Mesh Central.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
I hope one day they find someone who can get Wayland working, otherwise I really love MeshCentral. Especially for Windows servers, MeshRouter is awesome.
Whyd0Iboth3r@reddit
Wayland support is needed, yes. What is funny about that, is that Wayland does work on the main desktop, but if the display goes to sleep and locks... That's when ti won't show anything. If you log in, it works fine. So it is better than it used to be. Why are you using a gui on linux, anyways? LOL
dustojnikhummer@reddit
It does? Last time I tried it it just told me I need to switch to xOrg, both on KDE and Gnome
Not every Linux machine is a headless server. Endpoints, personal machines, terminal servers...
Whyd0Iboth3r@reddit
It was slight sarcasm. =P
dustojnikhummer@reddit
Sadly, on this server you can never be too cautious. I once got "called out" for suggesting to have users connect to a Linux RDP jump server... Yeah, GUI doesn't belong on a database server but there are legit cases. And how that RHEL10 is Wayland... sadly I don't got the skills or money to push MeshCentral there :(
Whyd0Iboth3r@reddit
I use it at home, and at work. Luckily, a 90% windows shop, and all linuxes are headless. So it works like a charm for us. Way better than the VNC Address Book they used before I got here.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
If you are willing to selfhost, I really like MeshCentral. It has attended/unattended options. Though, the screen sharing itself isn't the most bandwith efficient nor fast. Can't speak for ScreenConnect but MeshCentral is definitely slower than Teamviewer.
Sinwithagrin@reddit
Yeah, you likely were violating the TOS. This doesn't really belong in this subreddit. Gotta pay for tools as organizations and business owners.
phpnoworkwell@reddit
This isn't just for one person it's for all who used the free tier because they're shitting it down. Way to be an uninformed judgemental ass
Sinwithagrin@reddit
Explain to me in what case a free tier would be an acceptable use. I'll wait.
phpnoworkwell@reddit
I use it to log into servers and computers at home. With a limit of 3 instances you can't really do much more than that.
the_zellers@reddit
"Yea, saw this. Sucks as it was an easy way to help Mom out when she got confused (...)"
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1n6q2or/comment/nc1x8vj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
"I use screen connect to support my parents Mac.(...)"
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1n6q2or/comment/nc3ckrf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Sinwithagrin@reddit
/r/pchelp
topher358@reddit
Rustdesk. Don’t even need to host a server
FrankDarkoYT@reddit
I mean, if you’re comfortable, there’s a self hosted tool called remotely which uses downloadable agents for temporary or persistent remote access.
MaracxMusic@reddit
RustDesk is a FOSS alternative or AnyDesk is also free for 5 PCs.
witty_username_taken@reddit
Where are you hosting RustDesk? Trying to keep costs down but also want something more robust than my home network.
cjbarone@reddit
Not OP, but I host it in a docker container on a VPS. I use the VPS for many things, and it's a drop in the bucket in terms of resources used.
nitzlarb@reddit
I've been enjoying rustdesk for supporting family members, and on a few things at work as well.
At work it's just used in a couple places for people to locally remote into signage PCs
phillymjs@reddit
This. I moved to RustDesk for friends/family support after TeamViewer's "free" tier got on my last nerve with their constant "encouragement" to buy a license.
Drivingmecrazeh@reddit
Sign up for Remote Utilities -- free up to 10 devices.
Subject_Estimate_309@reddit
God this company fucking sucks
reaper527@reddit (OP)
to be fair, i was a big fan of screenconnect for once every month or two i used it.
not a big enough fan (or more specifically, a frequent enough user) to justify paying $400/year, but their software is pretty good.
Subject_Estimate_309@reddit
big fan of the product. not a big fan of everything that’s happened since they got bought out 🥲
LevelHQ@reddit
Level.io is free for 10 devices:: https://level.io/pricing-preview
RaNdomMSPPro@reddit
Finally. Ever commercial rat with a free tier is ripe for abuse.
techtornado@reddit
I didn’t know they had a free tier…
It’s sad, but scammers are actively and aggressively using SC to steal millions from people
This is evidenced by Scammer Payback
aaiceman@reddit
Yea, saw this. Sucks as it was an easy way to help Mom out when she got confused on things and didn’t require her to put in a code or anything with the agent on her pc.
tch2349987@reddit
I thought I was the only one that used it to help my family 😂😂 Mom and Dad can’t even remember their passwords.
aaiceman@reddit
Yea, it's super helpful not requiring any interaction from the endpoint to hop on.
SpotlessCheetah@reddit
Chrome Remote Desktop works great for things like this.
aaiceman@reddit
Thanks, I'll check it out.
D1TAC@reddit
This was coming. I used it mostly for onboarding my few personal clients, then swapping them over to my managed platform. Sometimes it just worked much easier then doing the alternative. Unfortunate, but not a surpise. It's screenconnect after all.
Brief_Regular_2053@reddit
No complaints from me. Been using the paid version for years for my contract IT work. I just build the cost into what I charge to support my clients.
dirtyredog@reddit
I remember when logmein got bought and pushed me away and mostly my ability to recommend them for small clients
I pay software companies from my day job because they usually have a free tier that I can support on outside clients. Hoping my clients grow enough to also fucking pay you....idiots. If microsoft sold windows like oracle or IBM we'd still be accounting in fortran
CyberHouseChicago@reddit
Acronis has a products thats $85 a year works fine for basic things and it's cheaper then anything besides free stuff.
reaper527@reddit (OP)
thanks, will definitely look into that. used acronis for backups 10-15 years ago, haven't used their remote-connect stuff.
TechIncarnate4@reddit
Sounds like you were violating their "personal use" policy for business use.
Stonewalled9999@reddit
20$ a month for a single user (you) to license it. Or for free use Action1 or google remote desktop or MS Quick Assist. The reason they got rid of the freebie is tons of scammers were using it. Pretty easy to understand IMHO.
TheBrossef@reddit
Yeah i got same email and was surprised too, dam shame time to start finding another free alternative for the few times i need it lol