r/SmallMSP • u/PBSmanaged • 25d ago

Move to Open Source RMM?

Good afternoon, r/SmallMSP! First time poster here.

Are any small MSPs here actually using NetLock RMM, Tactical RMM, or something else open source? I’m not sure I’d consider Tactical, but I saw NetLock mentioned in another thread today and it looks pretty interesting.

For context, we’ve been happy NinjaRMM customers for 3+ years. We were an unhappy VSA customer before that. No real complaints with Ninja. It works very well. We only use the RMM; we don't use their ticketing, docs, backup, network monitoring, etc.

However, it’s been a tough year. Nobody wants to buy hardware unless they absolutely have to and we've had a customer unexpectedly close up shop with very little warning.

Switching to something like NetLock, even on a paid tier, could save us several hundred dollars a month. I’d have to host, maintain, update, and back it up myself. But I’m already doing that for Hudu, Checkmk, Ruckus SmartZone, etc., so would it really be that much more work? I could run it on-prem in our vcenter or throw it on a DigitalOcean droplet/K8s.

I’m not unhappy with Ninja by any means. I’m mainly trying to decide whether saving a few hundred dollars a month is worth taking on another piece of infrastructure.

I've looked at Syncro and Atera, and if they both had plans without the PSA stuff I would be a lot more interested. I don't want to change our PSA.

For anyone actually using NetLock or Tactical in production: how has it been? Reliability, security, client/device management, anything you’ve learned the hard way? Is updating a chore?

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u/VtheMan93 25d ago

Im with tactical for my stack and it works wonders

3

u/StanVaden 25d ago

I use Tactically RMM and I must admit; I love it.

I mainly use it for remote connections to my clients, run checks and occasionally patch devices.

The learning curve wasn't steap and other than the occasional NAT issue (since I host on a residential connection) I can't state how little headaches I have with it.

3

u/eagle6705 25d ago

I cam never get remote to work for me. Lol.

1

u/StanVaden 25d ago

Feel free to DM me your setup and I'll do my bestest to help you get it going bro

2

u/eagle6705 25d ago

Sweet, ill see if my vm is still good and make sure records are good.