What happened to Wayk Now?

Hello,

This was announced three weeks ago on our blog, you can have the details on https://blog.devolutions.net/2020/10/a-whole-new-wayk-the-future-of-wayk-now

Our whole site was revamped yesterday as is was our biggest release Day ever! RDM, DVLS, Wayk, we may have missed a few spots but we are working hard to rewire everything tight.

I will ask one of our support team to get back to you shortly with answers,

Best regards,

I figured it out, after updating RDM and our azure sql data source, its working now.
Only question is, what license do you need for the Wayk Bastion? Just a Wayk Client license per user?

Hello Daniel,

Exactly, you need one license of Wayk Client (previously Wayk Entreprise) per user that initiate the remoting. Wayk Bastion was free as Wayk Den, and remains so now.

For more information on Bastion, you can view our online help: https://docs.devolutions.net/wayk/bastion/getting-started.html, but some additional details are available on the Wayk Den GitHub : https://github.com/devolutions/WaykDen-ps#installation

You can also request a 90 days trial for Wayk Client here: https://wayk.devolutions.net/trial

Let us know if you need assistance configuring your Wayk Bastion, we would be happy to help.

Best regards,

Hello

Just to add something to what my colleagues already wrote:

When starting Wayk Now on our client, you get prompted with an update notification, but clicking that does absolutely nothing.

Apologies for the inconvenience - this was a regression in 2020.2.4 but is fixed for Wayk Agent as of this release (2020.3.0). Automated updates should work as expected, however.

Thanks and kind regards,

@Richard(s)

Can you please confirm that this is correct?

The free (for commercial use) Wayk Now! no longer exists? Its been replaced by Wayk Client (paid) however now you can now have unlimited Wayk Agents with unattended access?

So, you are swapping your licensing model from license per unattended device to license number of channels (aka Wayk Clients)?

I'd like to provide some feedback, i apologies if this comes off as negative, im not trying to be.

I evaluated Wayk Now a few months ago but the licensing per device vs the limited feature set made it far too expensive. We have around1500 agent devices needing unattended access by 15-20 clients, however only 3-4 active Clients at once. Many of the competing (more feature rich) products offer licensing based on the number of active channels (ie Wayk Clients) rather than the total number installed. In the example above it would cost us 20 x $149.00 = $2980 per year. The solution we purchased was less 1/3 of that price. Its also far more feature rich.

The separation of Wayk Client and Wayk Agent is good, however the old Wayk Now client could be configured to be a client or a server (agent).

The Wayk Client looks a bit unfinished, quite different from the UI used in RDM. It's also limited in what it can do. It needs a complete UI overall IMHO.

At this point I'm still asking myself why would i buy Wayk Client? Previously id recommended Wayk Now! to people i knew in small businesses that were looking for a simple free (for commercial use) adhoc remote support solution. However now that free version has gone im wondering why i would buy it?

There is Windows 10 QuickAssist, Comodo Remote Control, Mesh Central and a ton of other free commercial options available with similar or better feature sets for Wayk. If you are after a solution with commercial support then AnyDesk, TeamViewer, and several other big players offer the same thing for less.

So what does Wayk Client do that the others dont? Again, apologies if this comes off negatively but im just struggling to see why i would go down the route of buying Wayk, not just for my business but also for others.

Hi Jonathan,

First, thank you for using Wayk, and for taking the time to ask questions and provide feedback on the licensing model. We have a blog post coming up later today that should clarify the current and future Wayk licensing. Let me try to answer your questions specifically.

Q: The free (for commercial use) Wayk Now! no longer exists? Its been replaced by Wayk Client (paid) however now you can now have unlimited Wayk Agents with unattended access?

A: The short answer is yes, the long answer is no. Since we now require a Wayk Client license to use Wayk Bastion, including the "public" Wayk Bastion, the vast majority of usage needs to be licensed. The only exception is Wayk Client + Wayk Agent without a Wayk Bastion, but this type of usage is marginal and not aligned with our direction. The primary product is Wayk Bastion, making Wayk Client and Wayk Agent components that you use along with it, as secondary products. It wouldn't make much sense to promote the "Free" edition anymore given how limited it has become without Wayk Bastion.

Q: So, you are swapping your licensing model from license per unattended device to license number of channels (aka Wayk Clients)?

A: This question is puzzling me, since this was never the case. You can see the Wayk Client license as a "client access license" unlocking access to Wayk Client usage for one user or technician. In other words, we license access per user for Wayk Client, not by the number of channels, or number of unattended devices. Once a user is licensed for Wayk Client, we don't restrict the number of installations of the Wayk Client program, or the number of concurrent sessions, as long as it is being used by a licensed Wayk Client user. We don't do "floating" or "concurrent" connection licenses.

Q: I evaluated Wayk Now a few months ago but the licensing per device vs the limited feature set made it far too expensive. We have around1500 agent devices needing unattended access by 15-20 clients, however only 3-4 active Clients at once. Many of the competing (more feature rich) products offer licensing based on the number of active channels (ie Wayk Clients) rather than the total number installed. In the example above it would cost us 20 x $149.00 = $2980 per year. The solution we purchased was less 1/3 of that price. Its also far more feature rich.

A: If I understand correctly, you have a total 20 technicians, but about 5 (you said 3-4, let's make that 5) concurrent connections. With our per-user licensing model, you have to buy 20 Wayk Client licenses, hence 20x $149 = 2980 per year. Those 20 users are not limited in the number of concurrent connections, but you have to license them all. You say that the solution your purchased was 1/3 of that price (1000$) and more feature rich. How much licenses did you buy from that other product? Was it something like 5 concurrent licenses, 200$ each? Do you often hit your concurrent connection count ("channels") in practice, and is it a source of concern? Would offering a "Wayk Channel" license type meant to license concurrent connections rather than technician users, would it fix all the issues you see with our licensing, or would there be more changes needed?

Q: The separation of Wayk Client and Wayk Agent is good, however the old Wayk Now client could be configured to be a client or a server (agent).

A: You can see that our users were already making their own "Wayk Agent" by configuring Wayk Now in "server only mode", we just made it permanent by splitting Wayk Now into Wayk Client and Wayk agent.

Q: The Wayk Client looks a bit unfinished, quite different from the UI used in RDM. It's also limited in what it can do. It needs a complete UI overall IMHO.

A: We are aware that it currently looks like Wayk Now cut in half (that is literally what it is), but now that the "dangerous" part is done, we'll work towards making that look better.

Q: At this point I'm still asking myself why would i buy Wayk Client? Previously id recommended Wayk Now! to people i knew in small businesses that were looking for a simple free (for commercial use) adhoc remote support solution. However now that free version has gone im wondering why i would buy it?

A: I won't hide the fact that with the direction we are taking, Wayk Client is no longer appealing to people looking for a quick, ad-hoc, TeamViewer or AnyDesk alternative. As explained in "A Whole New Wayk: The Future of Wayk Den", we are moving towards serving the needs of Managed Service Providers (MSPs), but it remains a viable solution for SMBs as well. Probably the best way to explain it is that the company operating Wayk Bastion normally has a form of business relationship with the people they connect to: For MSPs, it means connecting to the customers they support. For SMBs, it means connecting to machines managed by the SMB, often used by their employees. This makes it less suitable for one-time usage.

Q: There is Windows 10 QuickAssist, Comodo Remote Control, Mesh Central and a ton of other free commercial options available with similar or better feature sets for Wayk. If you are after a solution with commercial support then AnyDesk, TeamViewer, and several other big players offer the same thing for less.

A: I agree, however, there is relatively little commercial offering for 100% self-hosted solutions like Wayk Bastion (aside from ISL Online, which despite its name, does offer it). We don't aim to beat TeamViewer or AnyDesk at what they do best, we are simply an alternative offering that suits a different audience.

Q: So what does Wayk Client do that the others dont? Again, apologies if this comes off negatively but im just struggling to see why i would go down the route of buying Wayk, not just for my business but also for others.

A: That's a perfectly valid question. I already mentioned that we are one of the few with a 100% self-hosted solution. SaaS products are great, but we have a lot of demand for the self-hosted product specifically, probably because it is largely underserved by the competition. We also try and make networking it as simple as possible to make zero-trust security possible by requiring *only outbound connectivity* to Wayk Bastion from Wayk Client and Wayk Agent. Not only we don't place trust in the network, you don't need to be in a specific network to connect, which means that the VPN is not a requirement. Last but not least, it may look like an obvious one, but here it is: Remote Desktop Manager integration. A lot of customers told us that if all we could do was to provide better integration for Wayk in RDM as opposed to a third-party product, they would switch in a heartbeat.

https://blog.devolutions.net/2020/10/a-whole-new-wayk-the-future-of-wayk-licensing
https://blog.devolutions.net/2020/10/a-whole-new-wayk-the-future-of-wayk-den
https://blog.devolutions.net/2020/10/a-whole-new-wayk-the-future-of-wayk-now

Best regards,

Firstly, thank you very much for taking your time to write a detailed explanation. Whenever there are big shake ups in a product its great to see a company communicating and answering questions about those changes.

Q: I evaluated Wayk Now a few months ago but the licensing per device vs the limited feature set made it far too expensive. We have around1500 agent devices needing unattended access by 15-20 clients, however only 3-4 active Clients at once. Many of the competing (more feature rich) products offer licensing based on the number of active channels (ie Wayk Clients) rather than the total number installed. In the example above it would cost us 20 x $149.00 = $2980 per year. The solution we purchased was less 1/3 of that price. Its also far more feature rich.

A: If I understand correctly, you have a total 20 technicians, but about 5 (you said 3-4, let's make that 5) concurrent connections. With our per-user licensing model, you have to buy 20 Wayk Client licenses, hence 20x $149 = 2980 per year. Those 20 users are not limited in the number of concurrent connections, but you have to license them all. You say that the solution your purchased was 1/3 of that price (1000$) and more feature rich. How much licenses did you buy from that other product? Was it something like 5 concurrent licenses, 200$ each? Do you often hit your concurrent connection count ("channels") in practice, and is it a source of concern? Would offering a "Wayk Channel" license type meant to license concurrent connections rather than technician users, would it fix all the issues you see with our licensing, or would there be more changes needed?

Thats correct, we purchased 5 licenses and have installed our 'Client' on 20 machines. We have yet to hit the limit of 5 concurrent sessions however our account manager advised that the service would allow us to temporarily use up to 20 concurrent sessions for short periods of time. If they saw us using more than the 5 concurrent sessions on a regular basis, they would notify us, and we would need purchase additional channels. This allows us to use the product without fear of suddenly been caught short.

For some context we are a global organisation with offices in thirty countries around the world. We have around 20 technicians in different time zones but only around a third of them working at any one time which is where the active channels become more of a benefit. The same principle applies to any large organisation which has shift patterns.

Personally, i think that you should offer a mix of licensing models, per named user, per enterprise, per device and per session/channel. These options would help bring an offering to the table for everyone.

Ill try and explain why.

Per named user is great for small IT/MSP companies (1-2 people) providing support for their customers. Its inexpensive and they can easily forecast their costs which is important in these times of economic uncertainty. Id also give them the self-hosted option as a one-off fee. It could be that their customers are nervous about 'cloud' services still.

Per enterprise, everything is unlimited. No client limits, no agent limits, no channel limits, and self-hosted options. Put a soft limit of something reasonable in the TOS like 20k devices. Site licenses don't work for many companies anymore, especially with Covid. All our staff are preparing to work from home indefinitely. I don't know of any company that could use a site license for any software anymore.

Per device, this works well as a bundle. LogMeIn use to or may still offer a product called Central. In there you could install the LogMeIn software on up to 200 machines (more machines for more money) and the license was only around $200-300 per year. You could have an unlimited number of Clients and concurrent sessions. This model worked very well for small business that had multiple people that needed to connect to different devices on a regular basis. We used to see this being used in the retail space quite often for the retail operations teams to login and assist people on the store computers. This wasnt technical support, more operational support for things like stock takes etc.

Per channel/session works well for business like mine. Lots of agents and several clients but not all running at once.

Free version. I would also bring back the old Wayk Now client just as it was before, keep it as it was, were you could install it (so that UAC wasn't an issue) or run the exe without admin right. Dont allow unattended access or connecting to a central management portal. All the big players in this space offer free versions some not for commercial use but most small MSPs/IT business don't worry about that too much. There is too much free competition not to offer this. AnyDesk, TeamViewer, ConnectWise, Comodo/ITarian Remote Control, Google Remote Desktop, MeshCentral, Ammyy Admin, Windows Quick Assist, and DWService to name a few.

Q: There is Windows 10 QuickAssist, Comodo Remote Control, Mesh Central and a ton of other free commercial options available with similar or better feature sets for Wayk. If you are after a solution with commercial support then AnyDesk, TeamViewer, and several other big players offer the same thing for less.

A: I agree, however, there is relatively little commercial offering for 100% self-hosted solutions like Wayk Bastion (aside from ISL Online, which despite its name, does offer it). We don't aim to beat TeamViewer or AnyDesk at what they do best, we are simply an alternative offering that suits a different audience.

There are still some big names that will do self-hosted options but don't always advertise it. AnyDesk will provide self-hosted option upon request, DWService, MeshCentral are free self-hosted and Goverlan and ConnectWise will all provide commercially supported self-hosted options.


You mention that you see this product being aimed now as MSP's now and less about adhoc support. Do you intend to build out RMM features in to the Wayk Agent? Most of the RMM platforms that ive used in the past have had a remote-control function built in the management agent. If this is just a pure remote support tool and isnt going to be targeting RMM functions, then are you not concerned that you are pricing yourself out of the market? I keep bring up competitors (sorry!) but there are products like Comodo ONE which provide an RMM, Remote Control, Service Desk, and Endpoint Security for next to nothing, the price is so low that if you buy additional services through them (Azure services etc) they will give you the solution for free.

jonathanwebb i do a simpler option (not really ideal but helps)
the is 2 of us in the company, me mainly and another lad who works for us when im struggling (part time)
we bought 1 licence for myself, then when i need help (busy day or im off ill) he just uses my user for the admin side and connects in!
since as stated above, devolutions dont limit the number of admin clients or concurrent connections, only admin users!
so in theory you could just buy one user and share that user between admins (its not ethical but it might help!)
this method wouldnt help however with LDAP, DOMAIN environments etc which again i understand for password sharing
also helps more if you have your own waykden server too!

jonathanwebb i do a simpler option (not really ideal but helps)
the is 2 of us in the company, me mainly and another lad who works for us when im struggling (part time)
we bought 1 licence for myself, then when i need help (busy day or im off ill) he just uses my user for the admin side and connects in!
since as stated above, devolutions dont limit the number of admin clients or concurrent connections, only admin users!
so in theory you could just buy one user and share that user between admins (its not ethical but it might help!)
this method wouldnt help however with LDAP, DOMAIN environments etc which again i understand for password sharing
also helps more if you have your own waykden server too!

Im afraid that would never work for us, any account sharing would result in immediate termination. You would benefit from a session/channel license agreement. Rather than breach the named agreement that you have you could have a client installed on both your computers that way.

the is only 2 computers the admin is installed on and they are both mine,
i just loan my spare computer to the other lad when he needs it (so technically not breaching anything)

as its the same with office 365 personal,
you can install the software on 5 of YOUR computers, which they are,
the fact the other family members uses my spare laptop from time to time is irrelevant

jonathanwebb i do a simpler option (not really ideal but helps)
the is 2 of us in the company, me mainly and another lad who works for us when im struggling (part time)
we bought 1 licence for myself, then when i need help (busy day or im off ill) he just uses my user for the admin side and connects in!
since as stated above, devolutions dont limit the number of admin clients or concurrent connections, only admin users!
so in theory you could just buy one user and share that user between admins (its not ethical but it might help!)
this method wouldnt help however with LDAP, DOMAIN environments etc which again i understand for password sharing
also helps more if you have your own waykden server too!

Im afraid that would never work for us, any account sharing would result in immediate termination. You would benefit from a session/channel license agreement. Rather than breach the named agreement that you have you could have a client installed on both your computers that way.

Thank you for explaining it, that's exactly what it is. With the current licensing model, Simon would actually need two Wayk Client licenses, as there are two separate users. We don't count the number of times you install Wayk Client, and how many concurrent connections you make, what matters is that each user has its own license.

I'll just pretend I didn't see what Simon wrote, but I can see why a concurrent or floating license model not tied to a specific user has its benefits, and why it makes it easier to share the access rights with other people, especially for cases where the "other people" only need it once in a while.

Hi Marc,
thanks for the ' i didnt see ' hehe
dont worry its already in the works for next years budget to buy another license hehe
love the wayknow!
Regards
Simon

Hi Jonathan, let me answer with comments on each section of your previous post.

Again, thank you for taking the time to provide such valuable feedback. I don't mind being compared with competitors that way, you are effectively saving a lot of research that should have been done anyway.

Per named user is great for small IT/MSP companies (1-2 people) providing support for their customers. Its inexpensive and they can easily forecast their costs which is important in these times of economic uncertainty. Id also give them the self-hosted option as a one-off fee. It could be that their customers are nervous about 'cloud' services still.

For a very small amount of users, we see that many would rather use cloud services instead, mostly because a self-hosted solution looks overkill to them. However, the hesitation lies mostly in the cost/benefit analysis of deploying your own server when you only need it for 1-2 people. As soon as that number grows, it is no longer a problem.

As for the one-off fee, do you mean a perpetual license? All Wayk licensing is subscription-based, and will remain so, as we expect users to stay reasonably up to date with the software. Even then, for 2 technicians, Wayk Bastion costs 298$ (2x 149$) per year, which is dirt cheap when compared to self-hosted solutions that easily charge several thousands just for the server.

Possibly the most reasonable licensing option I could find for these cases is ISL online with a special self-hosted server license that costs $990, with the following:

• Small businesses
• Unlimited users
• 1 simultaneous sessions
• Deployed on 1 server
• Valid for lifetime

If you know of other products with similar offerings, I would be glad to look into them for comparison. If we try to make it comparable with two Wayk Client licenses, it looks like 3 years of subscription licensing would come close to this one-off fee for the ISL online server license.

Per enterprise, everything is unlimited. No client limits, no agent limits, no channel limits, and self-hosted options. Put a soft limit of something reasonable in the TOS like 20k devices. Site licenses don't work for many companies anymore, especially with Covid. All our staff are preparing to work from home indefinitely. I don't know of any company that could use a site license for any software anymore.

I think we can reasonably cover those use cases with our Site, Country and Global unlimited licensing. They come at a much higher price, but that's usually when money is no longer an issue and you just don't want to count licenses anymore. All you want is the software with all restrictions lifted for a given price.

As for your interpretation of the site license in the context of working from home, you'll be glad to learn that it's not black and white like that. What matters is that users are associated to one given site, even if they are not physically present on that site, such as when working from home. That's like asking what is your primary place of residence, except the answer is your primary work site.

Per device, this works well as a bundle. LogMeIn use to or may still offer a product called Central. In there you could install the LogMeIn software on up to 200 machines (more machines for more money) and the license was only around $200-300 per year. You could have an unlimited number of Clients and concurrent sessions. This model worked very well for small business that had multiple people that needed to connect to different devices on a regular basis. We used to see this being used in the retail space quite often for the retail operations teams to login and assist people on the store computers. This wasn't technical support, more operational support for things like stock takes etc.

I think the important part is "We used to see this being used in the retail space quite often for the retail operations teams to login and assist people on the store computers". If I understand correctly, per-device licensing works best in cases where the devices are used in "kiosk mode" meant to be operated by store managers or staff. However, our current licensing model already has unlimited devices, so your point is about how to license the users making connections. Do I understand correctly that in this context, the retail operations team has to connect to other such kiosks to assist other staff? It makes sense if any staff (or just store managers) would have to connect at any time. In most cases, are these kiosks really point of sale systems?

Per channel/session works well for business like mine. Lots of agents and several clients but not all running at once.

I'm not against it, but I still get the feeling that the core issue is with the total price for the number of users. With users in different time zones, this reminds me of time sharing. Let's say we do provide such a channel/concurrent/floating licensing option, the first thing we would have to do is make it more expensive than the per-user pricing. Floating licenses in general are between 2x and 3x more expensive than their user license counterparts. One other thing I didn't explicitly mention is that we allow use license re-assignment (you literally just point and click in Wayk Bastion, nothing that involves contacting our support). Some named license options don't allow re-assignment, such that you waste licenses when staff quits the team, this is not our case. I would like to know what you think of the two following ideas:

1) A Wayk Channel license, priced at 2.5x times the Wayk Client license, making it $375 per year as opposed to $150. Would it be too much? If we offer both options, we absolutely have to make it more expensive than the user license.

2) Wayk Client license time sharing: exactly the same as when you many people buy the same beach house in some nice place, to share the amount of time they spend there. I'm throwing the idea out there, maybe we could allow assigning licenses to given users for specific hours of the day, or even for given days, with no overlap possible.

3) Wayk Client bulk pricing options: what if you could buy Wayk Client user licenses in bulk, at a reduced unit price? For instance, 10 Wayk Client licenses for $1000 instead of $1500? I agree that for a given range of users, our licensing can be more expensive, I wonder if we couldn't solve the issue with bulk pricing options instead.

Free version. I would also bring back the old Wayk Now client just as it was before, keep it as it was, were you could install it (so that UAC wasn't an issue) or run the exe without admin right. Dont allow unattended access or connecting to a central management portal. All the big players in this space offer free versions some not for commercial use but most small MSPs/IT business don't worry about that too much. There is too much free competition not to offer this. AnyDesk, TeamViewer, ConnectWise, Comodo/ITarian Remote Control, Google Remote Desktop, MeshCentral, Ammyy Admin, Windows Quick Assist, and DWService to name a few.

Do you think a Free version without the cloud services would still make sense? The biggest issue we faced was a constant increase of the usage of the "public" Wayk Bastion, while all our efforts are on the self-hosted product. Offering a free version of Wayk Client + Wayk Agent without Wayk Bastion costs us nothing, but it isn't very appealing when the primary product is Wayk Bastion. The reality is we'd like to come back and offer a SaaS version of the real Wayk Bastion product with everything included, but it won't come anytime soon given the amount of work we have for the self-hosted product. In the end, it was more of a matter of resource allocation than anything. Including the public Wayk Bastion in the Free offering was a huge burden that prevented us from making progress in other areas where customers eagerly expect us to ship features, which is why we took that decision.

Best regards,

Hi Marc,

ill put my 2 pence worth in again if i may?

a monthly licensing method would be amazing!
or even a monthly licensing with say a min 12months (ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD) would be amazing!

the issue i have at the moment is purchasing myself a license is fine as i use it day in day out
but for our clients, some clients aren't always with us for 12 months to cover the cost of buying a license for 1 year

i.e we say to a client its $150 for 12 months per user (no profit to us) they say we cant pay that in one go for 3 members of staff (150x3=450)
so they normally say to us, do u do monthly billing? we have to sadly so NO because we would have to pay the $150 x 3 out right ourselves first!
before we can then assign the licenses to them, just for them to then leave us supporting them after 6 months, and we are left with 3x6 months license which we cant do nothing with

BUT if there was a monthly option say $15 per month per user (15x3x12=180) you would make money but it would also allow us to buy the license on a month by month basic!

i think this would also help other business in the same kinda boat...

its not busy one month due to say school holidays, so the support team would only need 2 users,
BUT after school holidays when everyones back in office, the support team would need 5 users

Regards

Simon

the issue i have at the moment is purchasing myself a license is fine as i use it day in day out
but for our clients, some clients aren't always with us for 12 months to cover the cost of buying a license for 1 year

When you say clients, do you really mean customers that you, as a support technician, actively support through some form of agreement? If this is the case, then yes, you do absorb the risk of having no business later in the year after having paid for a full year license. But honestly, are you really supporting only one customer at once, meaning that if your contract with said customer ends you literally have no use for a Wayk Client license any more? As long as you still have a use for your Wayk Client license, your money is not wasted, it is just part of what you need to buy for your regular business operations.

i.e we say to a client its $150 for 12 months per user (no profit to us) they say we cant pay that in one go for 3 members of staff (150x3=450)
so they normally say to us, do u do monthly billing? we have to sadly so NO because we would have to pay the $150 x 3 out right ourselves first!
before we can then assign the licenses to them, just for them to then leave us supporting them after 6 months, and we are left with 3x6 months license which we cant do nothing with

Are you buying Wayk Client licenses for the customers that you support, or are you buying Wayk Client licenses for yourself and your staff? You seem to be using them interchangeably, which is why I am having trouble following you.

If what you really mean, is that you wish to sell to your customers the same type of access provided by a Wayk Client license, inside the Wayk Bastion that you manage, then I would say this is something we might look into offering as a special Wayk Tenant license when it comes out.

When discussing with MSPs, we discovered that in many cases, the vast majority of their customers do not need Wayk Client access. However, some customers do ask for it, which is where it could be interesting to provide a Wayk Tenant license that includes Wayk Client access rights limited to that tenant or customer.

In other words, rather than buy Wayk Client licenses that are targeting technician users, we could include the same access rights for a given customer. You would buy one for reach customer that needs it, and bill them the amount of that license.

As long as your contract with them in a yearly basis, you can easily just divide the yearly cost over 12 months and bill them monthly. We'll see if it's worth making an exception for this use case specifically and offer monthly subscription, depending on how frequent monthly terms are in the industry as opposed to yearly terms for such contracts.

Best regards,

Hi Marc,

my business is very unique in the sense, its under an umbrella company,
so our company is owned by a big company, but our company supports/helps/monitors the big company and the other companys under the bug company

as for the remote support side of things, we dont also just so supports for the other companys, we also support random customers/companys who have issues
like hardware shop, private hospital, etc...

we can also get random clients asking for help with stuff and we bill them

but what we are also trying to do if offer the remote support servers using our own servers and wayknow

so in a sense we use the remote support ourselves to help the others company's out,
but then also the other companys do ask from time to time if they could control there computers as well, like we do for there support
so the idea if monthly licenses would be amazing, as it allows us to say to customers/companys, you can pay X amount a month for x amount of people to control there companys from anywhere, or buy 1 license as a generic user (COMPANY1USER, COMPANY2USER, etc) and this allows them to control any of there computers

i hope this has cleared up a bit of confusion

regards

Simon

okay so chaos now question is what and how does it all go especially with the public bastion? as we often enough help people spontaneously who are not "managed" in a specific way so wouldnt have the wayk installed as server or whatever, and these would result in 2 problems:

1) apparently there is no exe download anymore so I would need to guide users through an english-language setup which obviously isnt ideal
2) if the plan is to ax the public bastion in the long game, it would get even more chaos, as I would need to guide the people through the english software to set the thing to german and then enter a specific url into the bastion field, or guide them through the english software to do that. as most people are either old, or bad in english or illiterate in technology or any combination of these, this gets very hard very fast, like even on the english software it's easy enough to go through the download, 6 digits and permission prompt thing.

all of this might get this rather crazy tbh.

I'm very disappointed about Wayk Now free dismission, I don't understand.... Ok, it's not your primary business, but probably it was better to maintain also a free stand-alone version......

Regards.

okay so chaos now question is what and how does it all go especially with the public bastion? as we often enough help people spontaneously who are not "managed" in a specific way so wouldnt have the wayk installed as server or whatever, and these would result in 2 problems:

1) apparently there is no exe download anymore so I would need to guide users through an english-language setup which obviously isnt ideal
2) if the plan is to ax the public bastion in the long game, it would get even more chaos, as I would need to guide the people through the english software to set the thing to german and then enter a specific url into the bastion field, or guide them through the english software to do that. as most people are either old, or bad in english or illiterate in technology or any combination of these, this gets very hard very fast, like even on the english software it's easy enough to go through the download, 6 digits and permission prompt thing.

all of this might get this rather crazy tbh.

We are aware that this change of direction may not please everyone. However, your comment is mostly about the installer not being available in German. We do plan on bringing back the standalone executable, but mostly as a one-click installation package used to bootstrap the installation of the agent, such that you won't need to guide users through the process. As for the public Wayk Bastion, we didn't pull the plug on it, we simply made it mandatory to have a Wayk Client license in order to use it. I'm sorry you are unhappy with the change, and we would perfectly understand if you decide to switch to a different product.

I'm very disappointed about Wayk Now free dismission, I don't understand.... Ok, it's not your primary business, but probably it was better to maintain also a free stand-alone version......

As long as you are a paying customer, these changes should not affect you in any way. We took that decision so we could limit the amount of resources spent on maintaining the public Wayk Bastion service before things got out of hand (usage kept growing steadily). Now, we are free to focus on the real product, Wayk Bastion, which can only be good news to paying customers that need us to ship features they've been waiting for.

A free service is great, but not when it comes at the expense of being unable to put the time and resources needed on the paid product. If I had a magic wand to make the public Wayk Bastion service free without having to spend time and money on it, we would have kept it. I understand this can be disappointing to some users.

We are aware that this change of direction may not please everyone. However, your comment is mostly about the installer not being available in German. We do plan on bringing back the standalone executable,

nice

but mostly as a one-click installation package used to bootstrap the installation of the agent, such that you won't need to guide users through the process.

okay that is both good and sad as it obviously means that wayk would stay on the machine which isnt always nice.

As for the public Wayk Bastion, we didn't pull the plug on it

which I didnt accuse you of. I said "plan" and "in the long game".
The blog post clearly indicates a shift of focus considering headlines like

"Making Private Wayk Den Deployments the New Norm"

and I have seen enough focus shifts with SaaS stuff to have an idea where this likely is going, I wont say it will definitely happen but I consider it highly likely that this would happen someday, and I wouldnt even be surprised if nobody knows yet.

we simply made it mandatory to have a Wayk Client license in order to use it. I'm sorry you are unhappy with the change, and we would perfectly understand if you decide to switch to a different product.

sure. while it doesnt affect me directly yet as I have a license my colleagues cant just also use wayk with the ppl on public den that way obviously (private den obviously not, now that corona mode is off) which was kinda helpful.

I think wayk has a lot of things that are better than most (like licensing unlimited connections to users without being overly expensive, or even the free plan back then which worked pretty solidly) but sadly it is still a diamond in the rough especially when updating automatically is anything except predictable and manually needs admin perms (and sometimes doesnt work either) or just unexplained connection problems, it sometimes feels more like a beta rather than an established remote solution that has been going on for years.

one idea I might have to replace the free plan tho might be maybe a less expensive plan with less features to cover users with less needs and/or money to be able to use wayk but with a reduced feature set, here ) have the table from webarchive with the old free, a "mini" proposal and obviously the enterprise plan.

basically take all that was free add wayk den for obvious reasons and maybe depending on what numbers you can crunch, unattended too.

basically instead of just axing free offering a compromise might make it a lot less annoying to users or even companies where not everyone needs the full feature set.

also talking about all that den stuff, how about making an enroll-URI/URL/whatever so people can just click that in the browser while wayk is running and can hop into the den quicker without needing to re-create the installer or going through needing to pull out a spelling alphabet for the URLs (while not for den URLs, I have been through that a few times, it's NOT fun)

Hi My1

okay that is both good and sad as it obviously means that wayk would stay on the machine which isnt always nice.

The whole point is that it stays on the machine afterwards, which is why it *bootstraps* an installation, automatically changes the configuration and registers the machine. This is for cases where an MSP doesn't already manage the target machine with something like Microsoft Intune, otherwise they would use the .msi installer and custom msi options instead of a custom executable. It is not sad, it is like that on purpose.

and I have seen enough focus shifts with SaaS stuff to have an idea where this likely is going, I wont say it will definitely happen but I consider it highly likely that this would happen someday, and I wouldnt even be surprised if nobody knows yet.

I'm not sure what you are suggesting, but we are effectively moving *away* from a SaaS model, since Wayk Bastion is a self-hosted product (with the exception of the public Wayk Bastion). Many people are happy with the public Wayk Bastion, but it doesn't have the vast majority of features offered in the self-hosted Wayk Bastion product. We don't exclude the possibility of coming back with a better Wayk SaaS in the future, but it won't be the focus for the time being, as we put our energy on the self-hosted product.

sure. while it doesnt affect me directly yet as I have a license my colleagues cant just also use wayk with the ppl on public den that way obviously (private den obviously not, now that corona mode is off) which was kinda helpful.

Can you please stick to what affects you, not what other people *might* find helpful? We have shown our colours: we target MSPs. While the product remains suitable for SMBs, we are definitely no longer targeting free, easy, ad hoc remote assistance like TeamViewer. We don't hide that fact, in fact, I've said it many times already. I know a free remote assistance tool that always works with a free service is great, but this is no longer our goal. Maybe take a look at AnyDesk, they are a good TeamViewer alternative, if this is what you are looking for.

I think wayk has a lot of things that are better than most (like licensing unlimited connections to users without being overly expensive, or even the free plan back then which worked pretty solidly) but sadly it is still a diamond in the rough especially when updating automatically is anything except predictable and manually needs admin perms (and sometimes doesnt work either) or just unexplained connection problems, it sometimes feels more like a beta rather than an established remote solution that has been going on for years.

Read that again, you may find it can come off as a bit rude for many reasons.

Best regards,

@Marc-Andre

I start by saying that i don think that my1 is trying to be rude, just voicing their concerns over the changes and trying to provide some feedback.

People that used Wayk Now (like me) were confused at what happened to the product line, even after reading the blog post I wasnt that clear hence the reason i can to the forums. Removing the old functionality and then changing the name in only a few places just muddies the waters. Given that the product has taken such a change of direction do you not think it would be better rebranding it without using the Wayk name?

For example, I noticed that the Wayk Now iOS app was updated and renamed Wayk Client, however all the app branding is Wayk Now still, and the screen shots still imply that it's for adhoc remote support.

Thanks

Hi Jonathan,

I noticed that the Wayk Now iOS app was updated and renamed Wayk Client, however all the app branding is Wayk Now still, and the screen shots still imply that it's for adhoc remote support.

We are aware of this, it will be fixed in a future release. As you can understand, rebranding a product is no small thing.

Best regards,

Hi My1

okay that is both good and sad as it obviously means that wayk would stay on the machine which isnt always nice.

The whole point is that it stays on the machine afterwards, which is why it *bootstraps* an installation, automatically changes the configuration and registers the machine. This is for cases where an MSP doesn't already manage the target machine with something like Microsoft Intune, otherwise they would use the .msi installer and custom msi options instead of a custom executable. It is not sad, it is like that on purpose.

okay, in management scenarios this makes sense, really sad you are axing the easy remote scenario.

and I have seen enough focus shifts with SaaS stuff to have an idea where this likely is going, I wont say it will definitely happen but I consider it highly likely that this would happen someday, and I wouldnt even be surprised if nobody knows yet.

I'm not sure what you are suggesting, but we are effectively moving *away* from a SaaS model, since Wayk Bastion is a self-hosted product (with the exception of the public Wayk Bastion). Many people are happy with the public Wayk Bastion, but it doesn't have the vast majority of features offered in the self-hosted Wayk Bastion product. We don't exclude the possibility of coming back with a better Wayk SaaS in the future, but it won't be the focus for the time being, as we put our energy on the self-hosted product.

I was using them as a comparison, because these are the most plentiful. the idea is just that when companies shift focus a bit, chances are usually that this shift becomes a hard shift later down the road, at least from what I have seen so far.

sure. while it doesnt affect me directly yet as I have a license my colleagues cant just also use wayk with the ppl on public den that way obviously (private den obviously not, now that corona mode is off) which was kinda helpful.

Can you please stick to what affects you, not what other people *might* find helpful? We have shown our colours: we target MSPs. While the product remains suitable for SMBs, we are definitely no longer targeting free, easy, ad hoc remote assistance like TeamViewer. We don't hide that fact, in fact, I've said it many times already. I know a free remote assistance tool that always works with a free service is great, but this is no longer our goal. Maybe take a look at AnyDesk, they are a good TeamViewer alternative, if this is what you are looking for.

just because it doesnt affect me directly as a person doesnt mean it doesnt affect my work environment. as I said colleagues are affected by this making it harder to justify using wayk in our company. also no idea what MSP means in this context, so cant judge on that. but we are (or at least currently mostly I am) not just quick-remoting but also managing computers of some customers, and what makes wayk nice is that it offers or rather offered both in one nice tool.

Also Anydesk is missing out quite a bit compared to wayk, for starters the idea of self hosting was what immediately pivoted us towards wayk, because it is obviously better to run on premise for sensitive things like remote controlling people's computers with important personal or company data.

also offering multi.connection for each user without having to pay 600 dollars a year for a triplepack (which is many units of overkill), or even worse, paying crazy amounts for each individual concurrent connection, which makes managing, checking on and/or updating multiple machines at once a real breeze with wayk (provided you have a large enough screen, XD)

Also if i remember correctly last time I tried anydesk it half-installed itself (autostart, shortcuts etc) on my linux laptop, which is not something I would see as overly trustworthy.

Wayk on the other hand before this change had no big problems other than needing a bit of polish but being a really well-made software to both quickhelp and manage computers.

I mean from a perspective of what wayk was designed and supposed to do, it was basically perfect, and fit perfectly into the niche of things we want. It did provide things other solutions didnt provide which made wayk unique, like with wayk changing into a more or less pure management solution, I am just gonna ask bluntly (becuase I have no idea): aren't there other solutions for that out there as well? what will make wayk stand out and be unique among them? You need to be unique to compete after all or people are just gonna go after the established names.

I think wayk has a lot of things that are better than most (like licensing unlimited connections to users without being overly expensive, or even the free plan back then which worked pretty solidly) but sadly it is still a diamond in the rough especially when updating automatically is anything except predictable and manually needs admin perms (and sometimes doesnt work either) or just unexplained connection problems, it sometimes feels more like a beta rather than an established remote solution that has been going on for years.

Read that again, you may find it can come off as a bit rude for many reasons.

why does calling wayk a diamond in the rough for being in many things better than the others but (at least as far as it feels to me) clearly needing some polish rude? When wayk needs to work but doesnt and especially when one cant get an explanation from the software easily or at all (including the issue of needing to involve people who basically have only ever used word in their life to get logs out) it isnt ideal. I am not saying wayk is bad in particular, but it needs polish.

especially regressions on updates are not really fun when the people who run the server side cant fix the issue themselves due to lacking the admin permissions (what we are supposed to use when stuff the needs admin happens)

sorry if I come off as rude, I am really not trying to be rude or anything, but maybe the combination of having asperger and english not being my native language makes it easier to come off as rude.

Hi My1,

I know you mean well, but when you look at the total amount of interventions you have made on our forums, you would realize that the vast majority of demands in the past year have been made by a minority of very vocal users that include you. Saying that we are a diamond in the rough and that the product is very inexpensive are not rude things to say, saying that the product feels more like a beta rather than an established remote desktop solution when we've worked really hard to satisfy your demands is.

Now if by reading this your first reaction is to think that we haven't done enough to satisfy your demands, please refrain from saying so, because we have definitely done more than our fair share just to please you in the past year. Other customers have a right to have their voice heard without being so vocal on the forum, you have to leave space for others.

I want people reading this to understand that the forum is just one of the multiple communication channels we offer: there are support tickets, support chat conversations, email, conference calls, etc. All these conversations are private by nature and therefore invisible to most, but they outnumber the number of forum threads. The decisions we took regarding the product direction are actually more of a clarification than a change: most of our customers fall into the category of MSPs and SMBs, and we decided to focus on MSPs.

What really sealed the deal for us was what we learned during the 6-month free period of Wayk Bastion by talking to customers. We've already alluded to it in our blog post about the future Wayk Den / Wayk Bastion. The reality is that if you consider the feedback from all customers, not only those using the forum, you would come to the same conclusion we have. This is one of the downsides of public forums: it can give a distorted view of what matters to the majority of customers, since they are only used by a relatively small portion of users.

We are listening to our users, which is why we stand behind our decision, and look forward to the future: a whole new Wayk awaits!

Best regards,