Pulseway, a little-known RMM solution that’s been quietly gaining a foothold among U.S. managed service providers for the past five years, is now available in an edition tailored specifically to MSP requirements.
Called Pulseway MSP, the new software supplements the core monitoring, management, and remote control functionality included in the original version of the product with scripting and automation features, a white-label customer reporting tool, and an integrated PSA system that provides basic ticketing, billing, and time-tracking capabilities.
The new solution also offers subscription-based pricing. Buyers pay a flat $2.40 per system per month for a minimum of 25 managed systems and an unlimited number of technician user accounts. In addition to Windows, Linux, and Mac devices, managed systems can include cloud-based applications equipped with either the REST API or the solution’s own native program interface.
According to MMSOFT Design Ltd., the system’s Dublin, Ireland-based manufacturer, Pulseway is a “mobile-first, cloud-first” RMM solution optimized for IT professionals whose top requirement in a management platform is the ability to receive alerts, diagnose problems, and take corrective action at any hour from any location via smartphones and tablets.
“Pulseway was designed to give you an overview of all your critical systems that you’re currently managing from the mobile device in real time,” says Marius Mihalec, CEO and founder of MMSOFT. The company currently provides apps for devices running the Android, iOS, and Windows 10 operating systems. There’s also a web-based edition of the product that runs on any browser with HTML 5 support.
All versions of the product are designed to function over low-bandwidth connections, Mihalec notes, adding that at least one person has used the system to address a technical issue from the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Mihalec created the first release of Pulseway himself in 2011, when he was working as a software developer with infrastructure management responsibilities and wanted round-the-clock access from his iPhone to status information and basic remote access and remediation functionality. A quick search of Apple’s App Store failed to turn up a system that met his requirements.
“There wasn’t any that was really cloud-based, so I said ‘I’m going to build one,'” Mihalec recalls.
Introduced as a “freemium” solution with both a free edition offering entry-level functionality and a paid premium version with more extensive capabilities, Pulseway began attracting interest from IT managers almost immediately.
“The uptake was absolutely amazing,” says Mihalec, who was quickly getting as many as 300 feature requests a day via email from early adopters. “We kind of built this solution around their needs based on their continuous feedback,” he states.
Though the free version of the product is no longer available, Pulseway presently has roughly 3,000 customers in 80 countries. About 70 percent of those companies are in the U.S., and roughly half of that contingent are MSPs or IT consultants. The other half consists mostly of SMBs with in-house IT departments.
MMSOFT is the latest in a slowly expanding list of software makers to build PSA functionality into an RMM system. Others include East Greenbush, N.Y.-based Autotask Corp. and New York City-based Atera Networks Ltd.
Pulseway integrates with third-party PSA systems from Autotask and Zendesk, of San Francisco, as well. Support for the ConnectWise PSA system is slated to arrive in the fourth quarter of the year.
MMSOFT will also introduce an MSP partner program by the end of 2016, Mihalec says.
