The cheapest tool here and the most expensive do the same session. What you are buying is the licence shape (who may connect, how many at once), the mode (a person at the other end, or an agent waiting) and the record — what can be shown about the session after it ends.
AnyDesk stores session recordings locally, on the recording side. BeyondTrust records every session centrally, tamper-evident, with the approval that allowed it. Same screen; different evidence.
Already decided — before the trial
Still yours to weigh
One human, one screen, somewhere else. Either a technician takes over a user’s machine to fix it (remote support), or an employee reaches their own office PC from home (remote work). The tool brokers the connection, encrypts it, decides who is allowed, and — in the products that cost more — records what happened so someone can prove it later.
Two mechanics underneath decide nearly everything. Attended sessions need a person at the far end to launch a code and accept; unattended sessions use an agent installed in advance, so the machine can be reached with nobody there. Products sell one, the other or both — and the licence shape (per concurrent technician, per named user, per device) follows from which.
The line buyers get wrong most often
Attended is not unattended. Splashtop SOS is attended-only; Splashtop Business Access is unattended-only, and for your own machines. A helpdesk that buys the wrong one discovers it on the first after-hours call — and a remote-work purchase made on a technician licence pays per seat for people who are not technicians.
Remote support vs remote work
Same session, different licence. Support is per technician (named or concurrent); remote work is per employee reaching their own PC. TeamViewer and AnyDesk cover both; Rescue, BeyondTrust and Splashtop SOS are support-only; Splashtop Business Access is work-only.
Remote support vs your RMM’s built-in remote
Every RMM ships remote control — NinjaOne and Atera bundle Splashtop, Action1 and ManageEngine have their own, LogMeIn Resolve is both. If an RMM is on the bill, a separate support tool is only justified by audit, approval or vendor-access needs.
Remote support vs privileged access
BeyondTrust Remote Support sits on the line: approval per session, credential injection, forensic recording. Third-party vendor access into production is a privileged-access purchase (its sibling, Privileged Remote Access), however it is labelled.
Often confused withRMM & Patch — if an RMM is already on the bill, its remote tool may be enough →· UEM & MDM — enrolling and proving the devices you reach →
The four routes of endpoint management — and which one is yours →
Pick the constraints that hold for you. A product that fails one stays on the page, faded, with the reason stamped on it; one we cannot verify for your plan line is marked and kept. Unset any chip and it returns.
Audit & control
Licensing model
Session mode
Hosting
Commercial shape
Mobile
Unattended access and poor-link performance remove nothing as chips — all eight have the first and all eight claim the second. Their reasoning is below, and in the audit ladder.
per month, annual — Remote Access · Business · Premium · Corporate (licensed users + concurrent channels)
The broadest cross-platform remote access there is — one tool for staff remote work, attended support and unattended machines, Windows to Linux to mobile.
The catch: Licensed by named users with a fixed number of concurrent channels (Premium: one channel), session recordings are kept locally, and the consumer-grade free tier blocks you the moment it suspects commercial use.
enterprise licence — SSO, conditional access, central auditability / event log, session recording
Enterprises standardising TeamViewer with SSO, conditional access by device and user group, and a central audit log a regulator can read.
The catch: Quote-only; conditional access is in Tensor Pro / Unlimited only; no credential vault or per-session approval workflow — policy, not privileged access.
per user / month, annual — Solo $6 · Pro $8.25 · Performance $13 (Pro / Performance add session recording)
Staff reaching their own office PCs from anywhere — the remote-work purchase, per user, at the lowest published price here.
The catch: Unattended access to your own machines only — no attended support sessions; session recording is local and only on Pro / Performance; on-prem is the separate Splashtop On-Prem product.
per concurrent technician / year — SOS is attended on demand; Remote Support adds unattended endpoints
Helpdesks and MSP-style teams: attended sessions on demand (SOS) and unattended access to managed endpoints (Remote Support), billed per concurrent technician.
The catch: A technician tool, not a remote-work licence; cloud session recording and mobile support vary by plan line and are not documented for every SKU — confirm before quoting; on-prem is the separate Splashtop On-Prem product.
per month, annual only — Solo · Standard (20 users / 500 devices / 20 concurrent) · Advanced (100 / 1,000 / 50); Ultimate on quote
Fast sessions on poor links (the DeskRT codec), a self-hosted On-Premises edition, and published tiers that scale named users, devices and concurrent sessions together.
The catch: Session recordings are always stored locally on the recording side, there is no central audit trail on the standard tiers, annual billing only, and the free tier is personal use only.
per technician / month, annual (~$1,299–1,560 a year); Mobile Support add-on ~$37.50 per seat / month
Enterprise helpdesks: attended support at scale with audit-ready session logging, disruption-free unattended access for kiosks and signage, and granular permissions.
The catch: Per-technician seats at a premium price, mobile iOS / Android control is a paid add-on, and it is a support tool — not licensed for staff remote work.
free plan (3 agents, 5 Pro devices); Starter $2.75 per Pro device / month annual; Standard $190 / month (3 agents + 100 devices)
Small IT teams wanting remote support, ticketing, patching and MDM in one light console, with automatic session recording on by default.
The catch: Licensed by agents plus Pro devices (not concurrent technicians); mobile support is a $20 / month add-on; remote-work use for staff is not documented; plan lines moved with the LogMeIn rebrand.
per concurrent technician, annual (one licence ≈ 150 managed assets); cloud or B Series appliance on-prem
Regulated support desks: forensic session recording, approval workflows, credential injection from a vault, Jump agents for unattended, and an on-prem appliance option.
The catch: Quote-only and priced like the privileged-access product it is; overkill for a five-person helpdesk; third-party vendor access is properly its sibling, Privileged Remote Access, not this SKU.
Approval workflow and credential vaultRules out TeamViewer Remote, TeamViewer Tensor, Splashtop Business Access, Splashtop Remote Support / SOS, AnyDesk, LogMeIn Rescue and LogMeIn Resolve — no per-session approval workflow or credential injection (policy controls at most). That leaves BeyondTrust Remote Support.
Central, tamper-evident session recordingRules out TeamViewer Remote, Splashtop Business Access and AnyDesk — recordings are stored locally on the technician or host side. That leaves TeamViewer Tensor, Splashtop Remote Support / SOS, LogMeIn Rescue, LogMeIn Resolve and BeyondTrust Remote Support. It flags Splashtop Remote Support / SOS — Central recording not documented for every plan line — marked on the cards, not removed.
Concurrent-technician licensingRules out TeamViewer Remote, Splashtop Business Access, AnyDesk and LogMeIn Rescue — named users (with or without concurrent channels), not concurrent seats; LogMeIn Resolve — priced per agent and per device, not per concurrent technician. That leaves TeamViewer Tensor, Splashtop Remote Support / SOS and BeyondTrust Remote Support. It flags TeamViewer Tensor — Licence model on quote — marked on the cards, not removed.
Attended supportRules out Splashtop Business Access — unattended access to your own machines only. That leaves TeamViewer Remote, TeamViewer Tensor, Splashtop Remote Support / SOS, AnyDesk, LogMeIn Rescue, LogMeIn Resolve and BeyondTrust Remote Support.
Staff remote workRules out Splashtop Remote Support / SOS, LogMeIn Rescue and BeyondTrust Remote Support — a technician support tool, licensed per technician, not per employee. That leaves TeamViewer Remote, TeamViewer Tensor, Splashtop Business Access, AnyDesk and LogMeIn Resolve. It flags LogMeIn Resolve — Remote-work licensing for staff not documented either way — marked on the cards, not removed.
Self-hosted or on-premRules out TeamViewer Remote, LogMeIn Rescue and LogMeIn Resolve — cloud-only. That leaves TeamViewer Tensor, Splashtop Business Access, Splashtop Remote Support / SOS, AnyDesk and BeyondTrust Remote Support. It flags TeamViewer Tensor — On-prem option not documented either way, Splashtop Business Access — On-prem is the separate Splashtop On-Prem product and Splashtop Remote Support / SOS — On-prem is the separate Splashtop On-Prem product — marked on the cards, not removed.
Vendor-published list priceRules out TeamViewer Tensor and BeyondTrust Remote Support — quote-only. That leaves TeamViewer Remote, Splashtop Business Access, Splashtop Remote Support / SOS, AnyDesk, LogMeIn Rescue and LogMeIn Resolve.
Supporting iOS and Android screensRules out Splashtop Business Access — desktop access only, no mobile device support. That leaves TeamViewer Remote, TeamViewer Tensor, Splashtop Remote Support / SOS, AnyDesk, LogMeIn Rescue, LogMeIn Resolve and BeyondTrust Remote Support. It flags Splashtop Remote Support / SOS — Mobile support varies by plan line, LogMeIn Rescue — Mobile support is a paid add-on and LogMeIn Resolve — Mobile support is a paid add-on — marked on the cards, not removed.
Unattended access to managed machinesRules nothing out: all eight reach an unattended machine through an installed agent (TeamViewer host, Splashtop streamer, AnyDesk, Rescue unattended access, Resolve, BeyondTrust Jump agent). What differs is who may reach it and what is recorded — the audit chips above.
Performance on poor connectionsRules nothing out on documentation — every vendor claims it. AnyDesk documents its DeskRT codec, Splashtop its high-frame-rate engine, TeamViewer adaptive quality. The honest test is your worst branch link at 4 pm; which tool wins it for your sites is [TechBag to confirm].
Already bundled in your RMMNot a chip because it removes nothing here — it removes the purchase. NinjaOne and Atera bundle Splashtop; Action1 and ManageEngine Endpoint Central include remote control; LogMeIn Resolve is an RMM with support built in. If an RMM is on the bill, its remote tool may already cover attended and unattended support — only the audit and privileged cases justify a second tool.
The session is the same in every row. The shortlist changes with who must be able to prove what, afterwards.
Why: Attended sessions on demand at published prices; Splashtop bills per concurrent technician, Resolve per agent with a free plan, AnyDesk per named user with concurrent sessions included.
The trade-off: Recordings are local on AnyDesk and plan-dependent on Splashtop — fine until an audit asks; then the next shortlist applies.
Why: Licensed per user for unattended access to their own machines — Splashtop Business Access is built for exactly this at the lowest published price.
The trade-off: Support tools (Rescue, BeyondTrust, Splashtop SOS) are the wrong licence for this — per technician, not per employee. And every tool here needs MFA enforced on day one.
Why: Central, tamper-evident recordings and audit logs; BeyondTrust adds per-session approval and credential injection from a vault, Tensor adds conditional access and a central event log, Rescue audit-ready logging.
The trade-off: BeyondTrust is priced as privileged access; Tensor is a quote; Rescue is per technician at a premium. The cheapest tool on the page does the same session — and cannot answer the regulator.
Why: NinjaOne and Atera bundle Splashtop; Resolve is itself an RMM with support inside. The remote tool may already be on the bill.
The trade-off: The bundled tool covers attended and unattended support; it does not cover privileged approval or vendor access — if you need those, one additional tool, not a replacement.
Why: Rescue's disruption-free unattended mode, BeyondTrust Jump agents, Splashtop Remote Support on managed endpoints — reach a machine nobody is sitting at, without interrupting what it is showing.
The trade-off: Unattended agents on shared machines need an offboarding process — the access outlives the technician unless somebody revokes it.
Why: Approval per session, credential injection so the vendor never sees the password, full recording — BeyondTrust (properly its Privileged Remote Access sibling); Tensor's conditional access scopes who may reach what.
The trade-off: This is a privileged-access purchase wearing a remote-support label; price it as one. Generic tools can do the session and cannot prove what the vendor did.
Why: Codec and relay design decide it — AnyDesk's DeskRT, Splashtop's engine, TeamViewer's adaptive quality; all three publish prices and self-serve trials for a real test.
The trade-off: Test on the worst link, not the demo. On-prem relays (AnyDesk On-Premises, Splashtop On-Prem, BeyondTrust appliance) change the answer if traffic must stay inside.
Why: Cross-platform attended and unattended with mobile screens: TeamViewer and AnyDesk natively, BeyondTrust with full audit; Rescue and Resolve add mobile as paid add-ons.
The trade-off: Mobile remote control depends on the phone's OS permissions (Android vendor-specific; iOS screen-view only) — no tool changes that.
This is the most useful content on the page. Every product connects; they differ in what can be shown to a regulator, an insurer or a court afterwards. Climb only as far as someone will actually ask.
Rung 1
Session happened
Connection logs with who, when, which machine. Recordings, if any, are started by the technician and saved locally — on their laptop, or the host. Enough for an internal ‘who touched this?’; not evidence.
Rung 2
Session recorded centrally
Every session recorded by policy, stored by the service, searchable in the console, with session reports. Rescue, Resolve (automatic by default) and Splashtop’s cloud recording where the plan includes it.
Rung 3
Access controlled by policy, centrally audited
SSO, conditional access by device and user group, a central event log of every action — TeamViewer Tensor’s auditability and conditional access (Tensor Pro / Unlimited).
Rung 4
Approved, injected, forensic
A session needs approval; the credential is injected from a vault so the technician never sees it; the recording is tamper-evident and attributable; Jump agents reach unattended systems under the same rules. BeyondTrust — priced as the privileged-access product it is.
Attended
A person at the machine runs a session code or app and accepts. Nothing installed in advance; nothing left behind. The helpdesk mode — and the only mode Splashtop SOS sells.
Unattended
An agent (host, streamer, Jump agent) is installed ahead of time; the technician connects with nobody present — servers, kiosks, after-hours fixes. Access outlives the technician unless revoked: offboarding is part of the purchase.
Remote work
Unattended access, but by the employee to their own office PC. Licensed per user, not per technician — Splashtop Business Access, TeamViewer Remote Access, AnyDesk Solo / Standard. MFA on the account is non-negotiable.
Licensing arithmetic
Concurrent counts sessions. Named counts people. Per device counts machines.
Poor connections
Test on the worst branch link at 4 pm, not in the demo.
Remote tools scale by desk size, not fleet size. The licence shape decides the bill at each step; the audit rung decides whether the tool survives the first incident review.
The licence shape is the constraint
Put this in your PoC
Run one after-hours unattended session and one attended session through the same tool; confirm MFA is enforced on every technician account.
Simultaneity and recording are the constraint
Put this in your PoC
Simulate peak: all technicians connect at once and note where the tool refuses. Pull last month’s session list for one technician in under a minute.
Policy, SSO and evidence are the constraint
Put this in your PoC
Ask for the event log of one session end to end — approval, credential, recording — and the retention policy in writing.
Technicians install a new console in an afternoon. The unattended agents on every server, kiosk and home PC are the project — and the old ones are a standing backdoor until removed.
Technician consoles
Install, SSO, retrain on the new workflow. Days, not weeks.
Unattended agents
Deploy the new agent through the UEM / RMM, verify reach, then remove the old from every machine — and revoke the old accounts. The part that gets skipped.
Recordings and session history
Stay with the old service; central recordings have a retention clock. Export what policy or a regulator may ask for before the contract ends.
Integrations
Ticketing, RMM and identity integrations are rebuilt; a remote tool embedded in an RMM comes with the RMM and leaves with it.
Agent removal and account revocation hours for your estate: [TechBag to confirm] — TechBag scopes it from your unattended endpoint count and deployment tooling.
What you may already hold, the same support desk priced three ways at three sizes in USD and INR, and what the licence line leaves out.
Remote control is the most-bundled capability in IT. Four places it may already be.
If the RMM you pay for already covers the sessions you run, a second tool needs an audit reason — and we will say when it doesn’t.
Monthly licence cost from published list prices, annual terms, INR at ≈₹83/$ for scale. Peak simultaneous sessions are an assumption — about a third of technicians — because concurrent licensing depends on it; your real peak is [TechBag to confirm]. Where a published tier caps users below the desk size, the line is left blank rather than guessed.
per month · licence only
per month · licence only
per month · licence only
Basis of each line
Read the shape, not the ranking: concurrent licensing stays flat while named seats climb with headcount; tiered bundles (AnyDesk, TeamViewer) are cheapest until the desk outgrows the tier, then jump. The remote-work lines — Splashtop Business Access at $6 ≈ ₹498–$13 ≈ ₹1,079 per user — are a different purchase and are not in the grid. Mobile add-ons (Rescue $37.5 ≈ ₹3,113 per seat, Resolve $20 ≈ ₹1,660) and Tensor / BeyondTrust quotes sit outside it.
TechBag gives INR pricing, GST, PO cycle, minimums and tier-matched quotes. The INR above is conversion for scale; the tier-matched INR quote — with your real peak concurrency counted — is ours.
The price gap between rung 1 and rung 4 is the gap between a session and evidence. Buying rung 4 for a five-person desk is waste; buying rung 1 for a bank is a finding. Decide the rung before the vendor, then the grid above is short.
Mobile support (Rescue, Resolve), extra concurrent channels (TeamViewer), the next user tier (AnyDesk), cloud recording where the plan does not include it (Splashtop). Price the desk you will run in month six, not the one in the trial.
Every unattended agent is standing access. Removing the previous tool’s agents and revoking its accounts is people-hours that nobody budgets — it sits in the switching-cost section, and for your estate the hours are [TechBag to confirm].
Documented vendor behaviour, cross-checked against TechBag engagements before any is presented as a case. Most of these cost nothing to avoid and a great deal to discover.
Consumer-tier licences used commercially
TeamViewer’s free version blocks sessions when it detects business-use patterns; AnyDesk’s free tier is personal use only. The helpdesk that ‘just used the free one’ loses access mid-ticket.
Concurrent-session limits discovered mid-incident
TeamViewer Premium carries one concurrent channel; AnyDesk tiers cap simultaneous sessions; concurrent-technician plans cap by seat. Peak load arrives during the outage, which is when the ceiling shows.
No audit trail when a regulator asks
Local recordings on technician laptops, or none. A disputed session, an insurer’s question or a BFSI audit needs a central, attributable record — rung 2 at least, rung 4 for privileged work.
Unattended agents outlive the technician
Host agents, Jump agents and streamers keep working after the person leaves unless accounts and agents are revoked. Offboarding is part of the tool, not HR’s problem.
MFA not enforced on the remote tool
The remote-access account is the most valuable credential in the company; the category’s worst breaches were reused passwords. Enforce MFA and SSO on day one, on every tier that supports it.
The wrong mode
Attended-only for a server estate; a per-technician support licence bought for 200 staff working from home. Both work in the demo and fail on the invoice or the first after-hours call.
Paying twice
The RMM already bundled Splashtop; a second remote tool was bought for the same sessions. Only audit, approval or vendor access justify the second contract.
Support tool stretched into privileged access
Vendors into production through a generic session: no approval, password shared in chat, recording optional. That is a privileged-access purchase — BeyondTrust’s domain — however the session looks.
Vendor-neutral. No gated content.