From a technician's point of view, it is extremely easy to create new work orders or tickets. It's also very simple to enter in data and keep track of the state of the ticket without taking too much time to keep it updated. I would love to see a cloud instance available to be able to make it a global installation as our company grows.
PDQ Inventory is great if you have a local network of computers on or off a domain. As long as you have a way to log into them with common credentials. Great for large organizations, particularly ones interconnected with VPNs. PDQ Inventory isn't so great for PCs that aren't connected to the same LAN the server is on. (i.e. non-vpn remote users) They used to have a remote agent you could install, but it was removed after numerous issues.
Care must be taken when configuring automatic replies otherwise you can end up in an endless loop of emails if response goes to another auto-responder. This will cause tickets to automatically be generated with every reply and then it takes a while to clean up the unwanted tickets.
The support model is prohibitively expensive if you let support lapse and then need support once again. This is because they expect you to pay for all of the previous versions/years between when you last paid for support and their current version. This means that if there have been 3 versions of the software since you last had support, they expect you to pay for the 3 versions even if you did not use them. This is a primary reason why we are looking at alternative ticketing systems currently.
It would be nice to have the ability to selectively kick a user our of a ticket without having to kick them entirely out of the application.
The interface is straight forward and guides you through the process there. PDQ keeps track of the when new updates are made available writes the scripts and all l you need to do is push the button. (Mr George Jetson) Now with the download done you just sit back worry free and watch the software install in 1% of the time it would take to take care of the PC manually.
I only gave it this rating for the fact that we did not really use their support for much of the time we used the product. The support documentation in the actual program seemed to be lacking, so finding the information via the web or the vendor's site provided more helpful, from a support standpoint. I did notice that the vendor does have a portal where you can manage support cases and also has live phone support and an email option. All of these options are good for any customer that needs good support while using the product
I have not had to use PDQ Deploy support's process. In terms of the actual application, I haven't found an exe, msi or script that I can throw at it that it can't handle. Being able to call the config file for Office is an especially useful feature.
ConnectWise was far more robust with a lot more customization, project management features, templates, and documentation. It tied into other software that we needed to do our jobs. The interface was cleaner, the software was faster, and users had an easier time. Oversight was also much better. That said, it was also far more expensive, and it was developed more for managed service providers and large companies than smaller enterprises like ours.
The only other product on the market is Ninite, the major disadvantaged of Ninite you need to build you own packages and scripts for deployment. I would much rather download the packages and manager the software in this fashion then to take all of the time to do it Ninites way. I would need to go find and keep update date in the industry when a vendor updates something... I have not time to do this Please Choice PDQ.
Convenience! Despite being a small team, PDQ Deploy has boosted our ability to deliver up-to-date Windows applications to our client PCs in a fraction of the time it took when the process was a manual one. Our reach has naturally improved; installing a simple application on a suite of 20 PCs no longer seems to be a daunting task.
TIME-SAVING! I cannot emphasize enough the time savings one can enjoy with this product!
