Helios vs ConnectWise: the whole stack, or the whole stack you use

Nobody chooses ConnectWise because it is simple. They choose it because it does everything, and for a large MSP with people to run it that is a real argument. The question worth asking is whether you are buying capability you will use, or capability you will pay to have configured.

Written with respect. We ran an MSP on several of the products we compare, we rate them, and without them Helios would not exist. These pages are here because buyers deserve the numbers, not because we want a fight.

Every step above is the platform as it runs today; the same fix is on the Tickets page of the live demo.

What ConnectWise does well

ConnectWise has the widest product catalogue in this market: PSA, RMM, ScreenConnect, security services, documentation and a very large integration list, plus IT Nation, a user community with its own events. If your MSP has unusual processes, ConnectWise will almost certainly bend to fit them, and at several hundred seats that flexibility earns its keep.

What to look at closely before you buy

• You will not see a price. Everything is quote-only and scoped to your seat count and module mix. Public reporting puts PSA around $25 to $35 per user per month, and MSPs running PSA and RMM together commonly describe $150 to $200 or more per technician per month before Automate or security add-ons (last verified July 2026). Get the all-in number in writing.
• Implementation is a project, not an afternoon. Budget for onboarding time and quite possibly paid consulting. That cost is real even though it does not appear on the subscription line.
• Module sprawl. Automate is a separate licence from RMM, which is separate from PSA. Work out exactly which products you need before comparing anything, because the name covers several of them.

How Helios is different

Helios is one product with one price, published on the website, and every feature is on every plan. There is no module matrix to decode and nothing to configure for weeks before it does useful work: you sign up, send one installer per client, and devices appear in seconds. Helio then works the queue rather than sitting in it, investigating alerts on the machine itself, fixing what your guardrails allow, and answering routine tickets. And sign-in is enterprise-grade on every plan (Microsoft Entra SSO, passkeys, TOTP), not a security upsell.

ConnectWise has more modules in it. Contract billing is no longer on that list, because Helios bills recurring contracts and pushes invoices into Xero or QuickBooks. Projects and procurement are in ConnectWise and not in Helios; quoting is in both.

Where ConnectWise is the better pick

If you are big enough to have someone whose job includes owning the tooling, and you need procurement and projects in the same system as your tickets, ConnectWise is built for exactly that and Helios is not. If you are a small team who would end up using a fraction of it while paying to have the rest configured, the maths stops working, and that is the gap Helios is built for.

The parts that rarely make a feature grid

Comparisons and price lists tend to stop at monitoring, patching and tickets. Helios has kept shipping, every feature lands on every plan, and this is the part that usually gets left out:

• Client billing that closes the loop. Recurring contracts (flat, per-device or per-seat), an included-hours retainer that nets against logged time, and the finished invoice pushed into Xero or QuickBooks or exported as CSV.
• The kit that will never take an agent. Nominate a machine already running the agent as a site relay and act on the switches, firewalls, NAS boxes and printers around it over SSH. A target only appears if that relay is what discovered it, every command waits for a human, and the password is fetched at the moment it runs and written to the audit trail.
• Network discovery that names things. Agents map each client's network and identify what they find by vendor and type, so new hardware on a client site is flagged the day it appears.
• Replacement dates without a spreadsheet. Machines report their own age from the BIOS date, so Helios can tell you what is due for replacement against a service-life policy you set, per client.
• Reporting built for the review, not the dashboard. A custom report builder, SLA reporting, Microsoft 365 licence-cost reporting, and a day-one baseline per client that stores the numbers, so a quarterly review can prove what actually moved.
• Quotes the client accepts from the portal. Price a piece of work, send it, and the client accepts or declines it signed in to the portal or from the link in the email. Monthly lines go straight onto their contract, one-off lines onto that month's invoice, and every decision is on the record.
• Approvals on your phone. Helios installs as an app from the browser and pushes a fix waiting for approval, a critical alert or an escalation to your phone, each opening the page it is about. Every kind can be switched off per person.
• Everything is addressable. A published REST API, a credential vault with an audit trail, custom fields on clients and devices, and standing rules that limit what Helio may do on its own: block an action or require a human to approve it, scoped to one client, a device group, a device type or a single machine, and to a class of action or one named fix.

What the add-ons cost

Common questions

Is Helios a good alternative to ConnectWise?

For a small team, often yes. ConnectWise has more modules than Helios, and a lot of that breadth needs configuring and paying for whether you use it or not. Helios is one product, one published price, every feature included, and useful the same afternoon you sign up.

What does ConnectWise cost compared to Helios?

ConnectWise is quote only. Public reporting puts PSA at roughly $25 to $35 per user per month, and MSPs running PSA and RMM together commonly describe $150 to $200 or more per technician per month before Automate or security add-ons. Helios is £4 a device on the Launch tier for 5 to 25 devices, then £99, £199 or £399 a month for the whole company with unlimited technician seats, published on the pricing page.

What does ConnectWise do that Helios does not?

Projects, procurement and very deep workflow customisation. Helios quotes, does time tracking and recurring contracts through to an invoice in Xero or QuickBooks, so contract billing is no longer on that list, but it does not do rate cards or collect payment. If projects and procurement are central to how you run, those modules are the reason to stay.

What does ConnectWise actually cost?

Short answer: it depends on your endpoint count and your term, and the headline rate is rarely the number on the invoice. The full breakdown lives on its own page rather than here, with the published rates, the buyer-reported quotes, the add-ons and the contract terms each labelled and dated: see ConnectWise pricing.

Is there a free alternative to ConnectWise?

Yes, and free rather than a trial. Action1 is free for the first 200 endpoints with no feature limits, Level is free for the first 10 endpoints, ManageEngine Endpoint Central is free for up to 25 endpoints, and NetLock RMM is a free Community Edition for up to 25 endpoints (checked September 2026). Helios is not one of them: there is a 14 day trial that takes no card, then a 4 pound per device Launch tier from 5 to 25 devices. If a zero bill is the requirement, one of those is your answer and we would rather tell you than waste your trial.

Is there an open source alternative to ConnectWise?

Tactical RMM is the only open source project built for the MSP job specifically: monitoring, alerting, scripting and patching, with remote access from an embedded MeshCentral. MeshCentral on its own is Apache 2.0 and widely used, but it is remote access only, with no monitoring, patching or scripting. NetLock RMM is open core under AGPL with a free tier to 25 endpoints. The honest caveat is that RMM means four things running together and almost nothing in open source does all four, so price in the hosting, the upgrades and the hours. Helios is not open source.

What is the best ConnectWise alternative for a small MSP?

It depends which axis is hurting. If it is the bill growing with every endpoint, look at flat or per technician pricing. If it is the service desk living in a second product, look at something that has one built in. If it is the contract, check the term and the notice period before the feature list, because that is the part you cannot undo. Helios was built for one to ten technician teams that want the whole job in one bill, which is a fit for some of those and not all of them.

Competitor details on this page were last verified in July 2026 from public pricing pages, announcements and review sites, and may have changed since. They are provided in good faith for comparison; always confirm current pricing and features with the vendor. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. Spotted something out of date? Email hello@heliosmsp.io and we will fix it.