Cheaper Alternatives for Network and Classroom Management

[Steve21]

Morning All,

 

With the annual renewal dates coming up I was just wondering if anyone's using any new/cheaper software nowadays? The normal ones I check pricing on (NetSupport/Impero/Ab Tutor) are all still working out at thousands a year for full coverage (4-450~) and if I'm honest I'm not sure we can justify it anymore.

 

Been looking at Senso after a few reviews on here and just wondered if anyone had actually tried it live yet?

 

Thanks,

Steve

[ThatBoringBloke]

We use AB Tutor here for classroom management.

Does what is says it does and doesn't cost the earth.

[Steve21]

Does what is says it does and doesn't cost the earth.

 

Thanks Out of curiosity, how much are you paying roughly? As last time I got a quote it was roughly £100 per teacher machine, so even though we only have like 10~ "rooms/trolleys" to manage, it was like £6k to cover them from any machine.

 

Steve

[ThatBoringBloke]

We pay for it by annual subscription and only have it in 4 x suites at a cost of £112 per room.

[Norphy]

Might be worth looking as Veyon, the successor to iTALC. It looks like it's being actively developed (last release was about a couple of weeks ago) so it's possible that it's better than iTALC was.

 

http://veyon.io/

[Katy]

We used to use NetSupport School, but we don't use anything now, if we need to remote onto a PC for tech support purposes we use VNC, otherwise it's just down to the teacher to control the class. The staff who used to use it (and asked for it) have left and to be honest if I re-installed it (We have enough V8 licences I think) I doubt it would even get opened.

 

Saying that I may look at Veyon as already suggested....

[ollyyllo]

Abtutor has two parts, Tutor and Client, you only pay for the Tutor part.

 

It sounds like you have requested a site licence that covers all machines to run the Tutor software.

 

If you are able to allocate a single pc in each room for the teacher to use and install Tutor on that machine only and install the client on everything else, you could save yourself some money.

 

For example, If you had 10x Tutor licences it would come to £2200 based on thier perpetual licence.

[Steve21]

Thanks guys Will have to have a look at Veyon for sure.

 

Aye AbTutor wise the main problem we had was things like laptop trolleys, as we don't know what room they'd be in all the teacher desktops would have to be covered so it worked out like 65~ teacher licenses. Doing it just for fixed desktops in suites etc it comes out nicely as you said Might have to check and see what their latest pricing is.

 

Thanks,

Steve

[LanSchoolUK_Adam]

While I don't think anyone would like to be associated with 'cheap' (meaning flimsy, not value-for-money! ), we are certainly priced lower than the costs outlined in your OP. PM'd you my details if you'd like to chat and weigh up your options.

[Passat1983ICTech]

ABtutor all the way we get the update easy to use and tutors can set thing ready to us for classroom I use it all day

[NB9457]

Netsupport were doing I think around £3 per machine per year for the full thing, safeguarding, DNA, classroom monitoring. Price is pretty good when compared to the competition.

EduGeek.net - Summer Special for EduGeek members - NetSupport DNA for only £3!

[Steve21]

Seems we must just have real bad timing as our quote was £20 a machine for NetSupport last year :s Will have to get a re-quote off them too it seems!

 

Thanks,

Steve

[Tesla]

Gonna tag @Al_NetSupport in this, may be able to help!

[Matt_NetSupport]

Hi Steve21,

 

Give us a call and we will see what we can do!

@Matt_NetSupport

[MkII]

 

Aye AbTutor wise the main problem we had was things like laptop trolleys, as we don't know what room they'd be in all the teacher desktops would have to be covered so it worked out like 65~ teacher licenses.

 

You can run AbTutor from a USB stick too

[mavhc]

If you're licensing per controller user, could a) ask for simultaneous licencing, or b) have a VM per trolley, make some shortcuts: Control Laptop Trolley 1, etc

[Al_NetSupport]

Gonna tag @Al_NetSupport in this, may be able to help!

 

Thank you @Tesla - appreciate there are lots of options available, I always work on the basis that if one of our solutions does what you need, PM me or Matt and we’ll always ensure we are the lowest like for like price.

 

When needed we can be quite creative to ensure you can get what you need when you need it.

 

Al

[MichelleC]

We subscribed to ABTutor last year, we won't be renewing later this month as it's really not been great for us. We've found it really buggy connecting to PC's and we've been unable to use any of the internet monitoring features. Every time we apply an internet policy through AB Tutor it stops the machine from being able to access the internet entirely. They've admitted it's a problem with their web handler, but they still haven't provided a solution for my ticket which was logged last November!

 

Funnily enough I got a quote from Katie at Netsupport earlier today, I fear DNA without the Edugeek special pricing is out of my league. I wanted Netsupport last Summer when the first round of special pricing was on, but I got out-voted.

 

I don't intend to look at Impero again, I wasn't overly impressed with my trial last year and their much talked about reliability issues puts me off. I think I somehow missed Lanschool last year, I might look it up to see how it compares.

[paulellam]

+1 for Lanschool here, used it here for a few years, the staff love it so do the pupils!

[EdTechJedi]

Look into Senso.cloud, I think that with what they are offering and at lower prices than I've seen anywhere, it would be a smart choice.

[mavhc]

Senso is currently ok if you don't want to do your own keyword filtering, they're still working on that, currently you can just enable predefined groups.

[speckytecky]

Senso will be hard to beat as far as I'm concerned when it includes WOL; which I'm told will be part of the package - soon.

[Norphy]

How does Senso work then? Does it pull the image from the PC, send it up to their cloud service then push it down to tutor/admin PC? That seems rather wasteful. What if your internet connection goes down? What if it's being hammered? Is there not a local daemon that you can connect to before it goes up to the cloud?

 

I can see the benefit in having the cloud based console, especially if you're monitoring remote users but monitoring a user on your own network via an internet service seems, well, nuts to me.

[NB9457]

How does Senso work then? Does it pull the image from the PC, send it up to their cloud service then push it down to tutor/admin PC? That seems rather wasteful. What if your internet connection goes down? What if it's being hammered? Is there not a local daemon that you can connect to before it goes up to the cloud?

 

I can see the benefit in having the cloud based console, especially if you're monitoring remote users but monitoring a user on your own network via an internet service seems, well, nuts to me.

 

I asked this and it was something along the lines of that once a connection has been established, it works on a peer to peer type system when on the same network.

[Matt_Renato]

How does Senso work then? Does it pull the image from the PC, send it up to their cloud service then push it down to tutor/admin PC? That seems rather wasteful. What if your internet connection goes down? What if it's being hammered? Is there not a local daemon that you can connect to before it goes up to the cloud?

 

I can see the benefit in having the cloud based console, especially if you're monitoring remote users but monitoring a user on your own network via an internet service seems, well, nuts to me.

 

Hi Norphy,

 

As NB9457 has correctly stated, once the client has made an initial connection to the server all data is routed through your local network. The only time the clients would be sending screenshot data over your internet connection would be if you were viewing the devices from outside your network. As the product is cloud based it does require internet access to operate, so depending on the reliability of your internet connection this might be an issue. However there is no need for a server on site which you have the job of backing-up and upgrading.