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TeamViewer Alternatives and Competitors

The best TeamViewer alternative is ZohoAssist because it’s easy to use and provides unattended remote access. Save more than 15% by subscribing to one of the yearly subscription plans of ZohoAssist.

TeamViewer is a popular software for providing remote support or gaining remote access to a computer. It provides the most efficient remote support services. Though TeamViewer did make our list of the top remote support software, it is not the only or the best option for your business. 

The Quick Sprout research team researched various remote support software for hundreds of hours. After careful analysis of data and developing a criteria system, the team shortlisted a few of the best remote support software services.

The 8 Best Remote Support Software Services

The best alternative to TeamViewer is ZohoAssist, as it enables you to maintain or update any device without the presence of another person on the other end. Save more than 15% by subscribing to one of the yearly subscription plans of ZohoAssist.

Company logos for our best TeamViewer alternatives and competitors

ZohoAssist – Best for Unattended Remote Access

Company logo for ZohoAssist, one of our best TeamViewer alternatives

ZohoAssist provides unmatched capabilities to monitor and manage a device without anybody on the other end.

ZohoAssist has various diagnostic tools that keep you updated about the status of hardware, printers, software, and task management on the devices, which can be helpful when performing native system diagnostic operations. It also allows you to form groups and sort different computers according to different criteria. You can even shut down, log off, or hibernate your devices remotely. 

Moreover, you can control permission for specific teams or technicians to keep the operations of your system organized and avoid unnecessary confusion. Security features like these make ZohoAssist an unmatched remote support software service that is also easily affordable for many users. 

How ZohoAssist Compares to TeamViewer

ZohoAssist and TeamViewer both have an easy-to-use interface. However, ZohoAssist provides some additional unique features that make it a better remote support software. While TeamViewer offers more integration options, ZohoAssist provides better unattended access.

Both of these remote support software tools provide excellent customer support service.

When it comes to pricing, ZohoAssist offers more affordable pricing options than TeamViewer. ZohoAssist offers three remote support plans, namely Standard at $10 per month, Professional at $15 per month, and Enterprise at $24 per month. Additionally, separate unattended access plans are also available. You can choose the subscription plan most suitable for your needs.   

Screenshot of ZohoAssist homepage
ZohoAssist is an excellent online workplace for teams working from different locations.  

BeyondTrust – Best for Extra Security Enforcement

Company logo for BeyondTrust, one of our best TeamViewer alternatives

BeyondTrust is another secure remote support software that enables selective access for specific devices. It provides highly secure access to systems like Mac, iOS, Linux, Android, and Windows. Moreover, it has various tools that help you provide remote support either unattended or guide a customer to fix any technical issues on the other end. 

Real-time reporting tools of BeyondTrust enable you to monitor key parameters of IT support and security issues. Easy integration with password tools for permission management and team management can help analyze every log or account of the remote support cycle. These features can be really useful in the event of auditing or other compliance issues.

The several security features offered by BeyondTrust make it an optimal choice for remote support, especially for technical support teams dealing with high-profile or sensitive data. 

How BeyondTrust Compares to TeamViewer

BeyondTrust is overall easier to use than TeamViewer.While TeamViewer is ideal for small businesses, BeyondTrust is better suited for bigger enterprises. TeamViewer provides slightly better security than BeyondTrust. 

BeyondTrust is mostly used in the IT industry, education, and healthcare sector whereas TeamViewer is used mostly by businesses in the IT sector. BeyondTrust has no set Subscription plans. You can request a price quote on its website.

Screenshot of BeyondTrust webpage for managing and securing remote access for service desks and vendors
BeyondTrust helps manage secure remote access for service desks and vendors. 

AnyDesk – Best for Fast, User-friendly Remote Desktop Support

Company logo for AnyDesk, one of our best TeamViewer alternatives

AnyDesk is an ideal remote support software for app developers and others in the software business. It is an efficient remote support system that maintains quality, is high-speed, and has a user-friendly interface or management screen.

AnyDesk is the go-to remote support software for IT professionals onsite or anywhere in the world wanting to connect to a device quickly. Therefore, AnyDesk can help provide excellent customer support from a single operating location.

AnyDesk allows you to set a secure password and access your computer on the go from anywhere in the world. Moreover, its banking standard TLS 1.2 is equipped to ensure that your computer stays protected from unauthorized access. Another method used by AnyDesk for ensuring a secure connection is the use of RSA 2048 asymmetric key exchange encryption. 

Additional features offered by AnyDesk include:

  • Unlimited endpoints
  • File transfer
  • File transfer
  • On-screen whiteboard
  • Auto-discovery

At only 3 MB, AnyDesk is a light and convenient software option. Moreover, it is compatible with iOS, BSD, Mac OS, Linux, and Android.

How AnyDesk Compares to TeamViewer

AnyDesk offers faster navigation, remote desktop control, an interactive dashboard, and more. On the other hand, TeamViewer offers better security features and communication modules in comparison. 

Both support software work well in several operating systems. All types of organizations — small and large can use AnyDesk or Teamviewer. However, TeamViewer is better suited to smaller businesses. 

AnyDesk offers three subscription plans: Essentials at $9.90 per month, Performance at $19.90 per month, and Enterprise at $29.90 per month. 

Screenshot AnyDesk webpage for remote desktop software
AnyDesk allows you to complete your work at blazing fast speed from anywhere in the world.

Pulseway – Best for Personal Use 

Company logo for Pulseway, one of our best TeamViewer alternatives

Pulseway is an ideal remote support software for personal use. It allows you to monitor from two to 19 systems at once. Moreover, it also allows you to control your devices and quit processes, run windows, or hibernate your device from anywhere in the world.

Additionally, you can schedule recurring tasks to occur automatically. Automation helps save time and many IT-related tasks may run in the background without active supervision. Pulseway also offers remote plans specifically for businesses and IT teams.   

Additional features offered by Pulseway include:

  • Application programming interface
  • Activity tracking
  • Accounting integration
  • Notifications
  • Audit trail

How Pulseway Compares to TeamViewer

Pulseway is a super easy-to-use support software ideal for beginners. It allows easy integration with slack, zendesk, and other platforms. Pulseway provides 24/7 customer support, which is a feature not offered by TeamViewer. Overall, Pulseway offers plenty of more features than TeamViewer.   

In terms of pricing, Pulseway’s subscription plan starts at $32 per month. However, the price increases based on the number of endpoints or devices you connect to.

Screenshot of Pulseway webpage for remote monitoring and management that works for you
Pulseway is a modern management and monitoring tool perfect for personal use.

Mikogo – Best for Video Meetings

Company logo for Mikogo, one of our best TeamViewer alternatives

Mikogo doesn’t require any download or installation before use. It provides excellent features like chat, recording tools, interactive whiteboard functionality, playback tools, and more. All these tools are perfect for providing remote support.

It allows teams of 25 users to connect to a single computer at the same time. Moreover, it allows you to quickly switch admin roles. It makes virtual meetings super easy and allows teleconferencing in several countries. It also allows the safe transfer of data up to 200 MB.

How Mikogo Compares to TeamViewer

Mikogo offers several unique features like API, collaboration tools, video support, and other useful tools. Team viewer also offers various unique tools comparable to Mikogo. In terms of customer support, TeamViewer offers better customer support services than Mikogo. 

In terms of pricing, Mikogo allows you to join for free. However, you have to eventually pay a small fee of $15 per month to keep using it.

Screenshot of Mikogo webpage for secure video meetings made and hosted in Germany
Mikogo allows you to make secure video calls and access a device from anywhere at any time.

Join.Me – Best for Small Businesses

Company logo for Join.Me, one of our best TeamViewer alternatives

Join.Me is another excellent alternative to TeamViewer. It also allows users to share screens, record sessions, use an interactive whiteboard, and conduct online meetings. It effortlessly integrates with Google Calendar and Outlook to help in scheduling. 

Ten users can use the basic voice-over IP for free. Paid versions provide more administrative features to individual users and enterprises. It allows users to hold meetings with up to 250 participants. 

How Join.Me Compares to TeamViewer

Join.me offers powerful remote support tools like web conferencing. It provides good customer support services just like TeamViewer. Moreover, Join.Me ensures that the quality of screen share remains good, providing an unmatched experience to many of its users. 

In terms of pricing, Join.Me offers different subscription plans. All of the plans are affordable and provide good value for money. The Professional plan costs $12 per month, the Business plan costs $16 per month, and the cost of the Enterprise plan can be variable. You can request the quote for the enterprise plan through Join.Me’s website. 

Screenshot of Join.Me webpage with headline that says "Best-ever virtual meetings and more"
Join.Me is perfect for virtual meetings and remote support.

VNC Connect – Best for High-Security Organizations

Company logo for VNC Connect, one of our best TeamViewer alternatives

VNC Connect is better suited to small businesses. It offers the best security features compared to any other remote support software. It employs two-factor authentication and 128-bit AES encryption to ensure maximum security. It provides high-speed cloud access, which ensures a smooth connection. 

Even though VNC Connect provides top-notch security features, it lacks web conferencing features. You can use a free trial to explore its features and conclude if it’s suitable for the needs of your business. You can also invest in a paid version to control unlimited devices. 

How VNC Connect Compares to TeamViewer

VNC Connect offers password protection to stop unauthorized users from accessing your computer. TeamViewer provides unattended access whereas VNC Connect doesn’t offer this feature. VNC Connect is easier to set up than TeamViewer. Therefore, VNC Connect can be easily used by new users with limited computer-related skills. An additional benefit of VNC Connect is that it offers a consistent user interface in different operating systems like Mac or Windows.

In terms of pricing, VNC Connect offers two plans: a device access plan that costs $3.39 per month and an instant support plan that costs $16.99 per month. Both plans provide unlimited users, full session encryption, and other features. 

Screenshot of VNC Connect home page with headline that says, "Securely access and manage any device, from anywhere"
VNC Connect ensures that you access and work from anywhere through a secure connection.

Dameware Remote Support – Best for Customer Support in the IT Industry

Company logo for Dameware Remote Support, one of our best TeamViewer alternatives

Dameware Remote Support works with an unlimited number of users. It functions in different operating systems like Linux, macOS X, or Windows. It helps make secure remote connections. Moreover, built-in admin tools help remote management to actively deliver remote support from iOS and Android devices from anywhere in the world.  

A unique feature of Dameware Remote Support is that it uses system tools to troubleshoot issues on a device instead of launching a full remote-control session. Additionally, it allows help desk integration.  

How Dameware Remote Support Compares to TeamViewer

Dameware Remote Support is easier to install and operate than TeamViewer. Both TeamViewer and Dameware remote support provide screen sharing and screen recording features. They also allow you to take important screenshots. 

Dameware has four authentication methods and offers a more secure connection than TeamViewer. One limitation of Dameware Remote Support is that it can only be installed on a Windows system. However, Dameware Remote Support offers several unique features that are not found in TeamViewer. Some of them include:

  • Centralized server
  • System management tools
  • Integration of active directory
  • Intel AMT KVM connection   

In terms of pricing and subscription plans, Dameware Remote Support is slightly pricier than TeamViewer. You can check out the price range for different packages on its website. No matter which licensing plan you choose, you get unlimited end users. 

Screenshot of Dameware Mini Remote Control webpage
Dameware Remote Support is an excellent remote support tool for IT technicians. 
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DNS Gotchas With CockroachDB and GSS-API

We just pushed a new release of CockroachDB and Postgres also had a recent release with a vulnerability impacting GSS. I figured it was a good time as any to update my repos with the latest versions of Postgres and Cockroach, and thereby test that everything works. I discovered an issue that is easily fixed but changes the behavior of cockroach and psql clients.

High-Level Steps

  1. Start a three-node CockroachDB cluster in Docker with GSSAPI.
  2. Demonstrate the problem scenario.
  3. Verify.

Step by Step Instructions

Start a Cluster

There's nothing more special about this tutorial than what was covered in my previous tutorials. Feel free to set up a stand-alone environment to follow along or use my docker-compose environment.

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Using CockroachDB Workloads With Kerberos

GSSAPI authentication is becoming increasingly popular as CockroachDB starting to make inroads in Fortune 2000 customer bases and financial services segment. That said, ecosystem coverage for GSS needs to improve for parity with other authN methods. Today, we are providing a workaround and a look at the future. By the way, do you realize this is my 15th article on Kerberos and CockroachDB?

Articles Covering CockroachDB and Kerberos

I find the topic of Kerberos very interesting and my colleagues commonly refer to me for help with this complex topic. I am by no means an expert at Kerberos, I am however familiar enough with it to be dangerous. That said, I've written multiple articles on the topic which you may find below:

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CockroachDB With GSSAPI Deployed via Systemd

Articles Covering Topics on CockroachDB and Kerberos

I find the topic of Kerberos very interesting and my colleagues commonly refer to me for help with this complex topic. I am by no means an expert at Kerberos, I am however familiar enough with it to be dangerous. That said, I've written multiple articles on the topic which you may find below:

  1. CockroachDB With MIT Kerberos
  2. CockroachDB With Active Directory
  3. CockroachDB With MIT Kerberos and Docker Compose
  4. Executing CockroachDB table import via GSSAPI
  5. CockroachDB With SQLAlchemy and MIT Kerberos
  6. CockroachDB With MIT Kerberos Cert User Authentication
  7. CockroachDB with Django and MIT Kerberos
  8. CockroachDB With Kerberos and Custom Service Principal Name (SPN)
  9. Simplifying CockroachDB Kerberos Architecture With a Load Balancer
  10. CockroachDB With MIT Kerberos Using a Native Client
  11. CockroachDB With Mixed Kerberos and Certificates Authentication

Motivation

Systemd has become a standard approach for deploying Linux services. We have documentation to deploy CockroachDB via systemd, however, we do not have steps documented to deploy CockroachDB with GSSAPI and systemd. This tutorial attempts to bridge that gap.

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How to Secure a Previously Insecure Cluster in Production

Cockroach Labs does not recommend running an insecure cluster in production. There are only a few additional steps necessary to secure an instance, so why do it? Convenience, you say. It can hurt you down the line but fret not, this article will demonstrate how to fix this. We are going to follow the standard insecure cluster start-up procedure. Once complete, we're going to flip to the documentation for a secure cluster to turn each node on with security enabled. Here's a handy video of the procedure in action:

Step by step instructions are below:

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Simplifying CockroachDB Kerberos Architecture With a Load Balancer

Today, I'm going to try to simplify our architecture or at least management of Kerberos artifacts as they relate to CockroachDB by introducing a load balancer. Given the presence of LB, we can obfuscate the CockroachDB cluster architecture from Kerberos and ease the management of Kerberos keytabs as well as service principal names.

Articles Covering CockroachDB and Kerberos

I find the topic of Kerberos very interesting and my colleagues commonly refer to me for help with this complex topic. I am by no means an expert at Kerberos, I am however familiar enough with it to be dangerous. That said, I've written multiple articles on the topic which you may find below:

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Import data into CockroachDB with Kerberos authentication

Articles Covering CockroachDB and Kerberos

I find the topic of Kerberos very interesting and my colleagues commonly refer to me for help with this complex topic. I am by no means an expert at Kerberos, I am however familiar enough with it to be dangerous. That said, I've written multiple articles on the topic which you may find below:

I was recently asked by a customer whether GSSAPI gets in the way of doing a table import in CockroachDB. The short answer is it shouldn't as GSSAPI is abstracted from any bulk-io operations. I've previously written articles on doing an import into Cockroach, here and here and encourage you to review those articles. So today we're going to focus on specifically the import with Kerberos.

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Mutual TLS With gRPC Between Python and Go Services

This tutorial walks you through the process of connecting services written in Python and Go via the gRPC framework using mutual TLS authentication. I assume that the reader is somewhat familiar with Python/Django and Go development and so omit most of the boring stuff like bootstrapping virtualenv with the Django app or how to “manage.py runserver” it.
The final code can be found here.

Introduction

I have an old system in Python undergoing a significant overhaul. It’s a two-component system:

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Extracting Server Certificates Made Easy With Certificate Ripper

Introduction

As engineers, we sometimes need to grab a certificate for different purposes. It may occur that we need it to update the truststore of our application with a new trusted certificate, or just want to analyze the content of it, or use it for testing or just for some other purpose. There are multiple ways to accomplish this such as drag-and-drop the certificate from your browser to your desktop or by using OpenSSL. The browser is only capable of exporting binary certificates and the commands of OpenSSL might be sometimes complex or tricky to build depending on which kind of output you want. I was seeking a simple way of just printing server certificates to either a pem format or human-readable format and I also wanted to export all of it into a truststore file and in that way Certificate, Ripper came into life. 

Certificate Ripper is a CLI application available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux and can be found here: GitHub - Certificate Ripper

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How to Change Certificate Without Downtime

Certificates Are Always a Pain in the Production Environment!  

Security is the one the most important part of any application these days especially the fact that most of the applications are running on a public cloud provider puts the security part on a higher priority. One of the ways application are using to keep communications secure is through the certificate. The certificate is one of the concepts that it is not as easy as another part of software development. First, you should understand how a certificate plays in the security part to figure out how to incorporate it into your application security. Moreover, you need to know how to generate/issue a new certificate for your application. 

Unfortunately, certificate generation is not a one-time job and it has expiration date. So, it means a new certificate should be replaced with the current certificate before the expiration date comes. In most cases, the certificate information is used in configurations of a deployed application on production. Therefore, you need to generate a new certificate and redeploy your application on production. This creates difficulties for software teams to see how they can handle this issue and justify the downtime in production. Lack of knowledge and documentation in projects often makes this operation highly error prune. Therefore, there is a high chance that even after a new certificate something fails on production unexpectedly because of misconfiguration. In this article, we are going to see how we can solve this issue without having downtime on production and also any change on the application level.

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Edge Security Policy at Kubernetes Ingress Using Helm and Envoy

Introduction: EnRoute Helm Chart

Helm is a popular package manager choice for Kubernetes. Installation of software, managing versions, upgrading versions, and finding charts from the registry are key benefits of Helm.

EnRoute helm chart installs the EnRoute Ingress Controller and provides easy configuration options to define policy for a service. The helm chart provides fine-grained control to define L7 policies with its ability to enable/disable plugins for a service using configuration options that can be specified when the helm is invoked.

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Migrate HDFS Data to Azure

During the middle of last year, my team decided to move our Hadoop workloads to Azure, including our data and applications. This article provides some of the best practices we used in migrating on-premises HDFS data to Azure HDInsight. Mentioned below are two approaches that we adopted to transfer the data over network with TLS encryption.

Method 1

The ExpressRoute Azure service uses a private connection between Azure and on-premise data centers (ExpressRoute offers higher security, reliability, and speeds with lower latencies than typical connections over the Internet). We took advantage of Data Factory's native data copy functionality using the integration runtime to migrate the data. Data Factory's self-hosted integration runtime (SHIR) should be installed on a pool of Windows VMs on an Azure virtual network. The VMs can be scaled out to multiple VMs to fully utilize network and storage IOPS or bandwidth.

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API Authentication Methods: An Overview

Authentication can be complex, and developers are forced to work within the framework of the APIs they’re integrating to.

If you’re building internal integrations, you’ll likely encounter easier to manage tokens, if they’re even necessary at all. But for productized integrations, you’ll have to manage your users’ credentials and tokens to third-party systems, which adds complexity and means more time and effort on your plate. 

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Don’t Give Up Yet… Keep-Alive!

We founded StormForger Load and Performance Testing SaaS in 2014 and while much has changed since then, one thing hasn't. 

HTTP is with its 24 years a well-aged fellow among the web protocols.¹ Today we are mostly using HTTP/1.1² or HTTP/2 and if you have fully embraced the new HTTP/2 world in your entire system this article is mostly an anecdote of past issues. But HTTP/1.1 is still alive and kicking for many systems. And even given its age, people are still forgetting about a very important feature that previous versions did not provide: keep-alive.³

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How to Easily Set Up Mutual TLS SSL

Mastering Two-Way TLS

This tutorial will walk you through the process of protecting your application with TLS/SSL authentication, only allowing access for certain users based on their certificates. This means that you can choose which users are allowed to call your application.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Tutorial
    • Starting the server
    • Saying hello to the server (without encryption)
    • Enabling HTTPS on the server (one-way TLS)
    • Require the client to identify itself (two-way TLS)
    • Two-way TLS based on trusting the Certificate Authority
  3. Automated scripts
  4. Tested HTTP Clients
  5. Demo and walk-through video

Introduction

This sample project demonstrates a basic setup of a server and a client. The communication between the server and client happens through HTTP, so there is no encryption at all yet. The goal is to ensure that all communication will be encrypted.

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Secure Communication with Token-based RSocket

RSocket provides a message-driven communication mechanism, by using the reactive streaming framework, and supports most of the protocols (TCP/WebSocket/HTTP 1.1&HTTP 2). Furthermore, it’s program language-agnostic interaction models (REQUEST_RESPONSE/REQUEST_FNF/REQUEST_STREAM/REQUEST_CHANNEL) cover most communication scenarios, from the Microservices, API Gateway, and Sidecar Proxy, to the Message Queue.

Considering security for the communication, it's easy to use TLS-based and Token-based solution in RSocket-based productions. RSocket can reuse the TLS over the TCP or WebSocket directly, but to demonstrate the RBAC feature vividly, in this article, we only talk about the token-based implementation.