RDCMan is a tool for managing multiple remote desktops. This technology allows for a client's computer to be accessed by the host computer from a different location.
As an IT systems administrator or manager, it’s important to have the appropriate tools at your disposal to get your work done efficiently and accurately. Remote desktop connection tools are a key piece of the puzzle because they help you with troubleshooting and help you quickly resolve end-user issues.
Manually managing remote connections eats up time you could be spending on higher priority tasks. Using a remote desktop connection manager allows you to focus on more important things. My top choices are SolarWinds® Dameware® Remote Support [DRS] for on-premises use and SolarWinds Dameware Remote Everywhere [DRE] for use in the cloud. Read on to learn more about the best remote desktop connection managers or click on the links below to jump ahead to each tool review.
What Is a Remote Desktop Connection Manager?
A remote desktop connection manager is used to manage remote desktop administration for the different connections and sessions you have. Typical enterprises have multiple Remote Desktop Protocol [RDP] sessions per day and managing these manually means having to repeatedly enter your credentials. Logging in and keeping track of these sessions can become tiresome even without having to make SSH or Telnet connections for troubleshooting.
A remote desktop connection manager or RDP client consolidates your connections in one place, so you don’t have to log in to numerous remote connection sessions per day.
Best Remote Desktop Connection Managers
There are several good remote desktop connection managers available today. Here are my top five.
1. SolarWinds Dameware Remote Support
One of my top choices for a remote desktop connection manager, Dameware Remote Support, is a high-quality remote administration software designed to help you provide efficient end-user support when something goes wrong.
DRS supports multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and it comes with several utilities to help with remote control and troubleshooting. First, it can connect either through a LAN or over the internet. This facilitates troubleshooting through distributed networks and gives you the ability to fix a problem even when the LAN is having issues. Second, you can use DRS to stop, start, or reboot processes and services. Additionally, you can use it to copy and delete files and view and clear event logs.
DRS also provides you with several direct system tools and TCP utilities, allowing you to remotely troubleshoot without having to launch a full remote session. This helps keep productivity disruptions to a minimum while the problem is resolved.
DRS provides numerous Active Directory and user account management tools to manage and set up your Active Directory users, groups, and domains. In addition, you can remotely edit policies, reset passwords, and unlock accounts.
You can also centrally manage who has access to DRS itself and set up login processes, so you don’t have to re-enter credentials every time. With multi-factor authentication, DRS is a safe way to manage remote access troubleshooting within your IT environment.
You can download a free trial of Dameware Remote Support for up to 14 days.
2. SolarWinds Dameware Remote Everywhere
My other top choice is Dameware Remote Everywhere, another tool offered by SolarWinds. DRE provides many of the same features as DRS but is specifically designed for a cloud environment. It also provides a few extra features, such as remote connection to mobile devices, live chat and connection for troubleshooting [including VoIP and videoconferencing], and support for Android and iOS devices.
Otherwise, it’s essentially the same tool. It’s sold as an annual license—with included product support—for use in a cloud setting. Additionally, the tool integrates with SolarWinds Service Desk to provide a complete service and troubleshooting approach.
Like Dameware Remote Support, you can access a free trial of Dameware Remote Everywhere for 14 days.
3. Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Manager [RDCMan]
Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Manager [RDCMan] is useful for establishing regular remote connections. Like other tools, it can save login credentials, so you don’t need to enter your credentials every time you want to create a remote connection.
RDCMan also supports connections between virtual machines and consoles, allows you to establish smart groups, and gives you the ability to import servers from a text file. This tool is useful for supporting RDP connections, but it cannot support other protocols for a broader range of remote connections. It’s essentially an RDP client, and other tools are much broader in terms of their protocol offerings.
You can download RDCMan for free through the Microsoft website.
4. Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager
With this remote desktop manager, you can automatically launch and consolidate connections in one centralized window. You can also save your login credentials with “one-click” connections, making it easier to manage multiple remote sessions.
Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager makes it possible to share your remote sessions with your team members and manage and control other users’ access to accounts. With secure password vaults and two-factor authentication, this tool takes a secure approach to remote desktop connection management.
A free trial of the Enterprise Edition is available.
5. mRemoteNG
mRemoteNG is an open-source software designed to serve as a centralized tool for managing remote connections. It allows you to see your remote connections in an interface relying on a tabbing system, and it supports several protocols for establishing remote connections, including RDP, VNC, ICA, SSH, Telnet, HTTP/HTTPS, rlogin, and raw socket connections.
This free tool is light on features. As such, it’s best suited for home users and IT staff in a small business without the budget for a professional tool.
How to Choose the Best Remote Desktop Connection Manager Tool
When considering the right remote desktop manager for your business, think about the size of the company and the kind of problems you’re trying to solve. If you’re a small or midsized business or you want to play around with remote desktop connection management, a free tool may be enough. However, large companies will need a premium tool with a broader range of features to support complex and distributed troubleshooting.
For IT professionals looking for an on-premises solution, I recommend Dameware Remote Support. For a cloud system, my pick is Dameware Remote Everywhere. These and other premium tools offer free trials, which can help you choose the right tool for your business.
Remote Desktop Connection Managers are very handy pieces of software. They give you a single point from where you can access your saved remote connections. This means that you don’t have to keep a disparate list of your servers somewhere else.
If you need to connect remotely to multiple machines, then this is the kind of software that will make your working life so much easier. So, with that in mind we thought we would review 5 of the best remote desktop connection managers.
Here is our list of the best Remote Desktop connection managers:
- DameWare Mini Remote Control – FREE TRIAL Connect to Windows, macOS, and Linux with this utility that has an integrated chat facility. Runs on Windows and Windows Server
- Syxsense Manage – FREE TRIAL This bundle of remote management tools includes a remote desktop function. This is a SaaS platform.
- Remote Desktop Connection Manager [RDCMan] Skip this tool, which is no longer available and left on this list in order to let you know to look elsewhere.
- mRemoteNG A free tool that offers a tabbed interface to allow multiple connections to be managed simultaneously. Available for Windows and Windows Server.
- Royal TS An outer manager that collects the services of other remote desktop systems, such as TeamViewer. Available for Windows and Windows Server.
- Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager A desktop manager that is great for standards compliance because it includes strong security plus activity logging. Available for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.
We will look at the different features that make each application good, as well as some of the short comings that you might want to avoid. Each of these apps will have their own special areas where they excel, and we will find the best apps for the job for you.
Let’s get started and see what’s happening in the world of remote desktop connection managers and which ones we like the most.
Here's Best Remote Desktop Connection Managers:
1. DameWare Mini Remote Control – FREE TRIAL
DameWare Mini Remote Control lets users store large lists of computers that can be connected to quickly. It uses TLS 1.2 which increases safety and security. TLS follows the PCI and HIPAA standards for data security standards.
DMRC allows you to connect to different operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. You can chat with the operators and users on the other end of the connection so that you can relay information and instructions to them, and they can provide feedback so that you know what is happening on their end.
You can share screens and share files directly from within the application as well. IF you need to restart the server or computer that you are connected to then DMRC is able to send those commands remotely.
The application integrates with Active Directory so that you can connect to specific resources.
Pricing: 30 Day Free Trial, Download Below!
Download: //www.solarwinds.com/dameware-mini-remote-control/registration
2. Syxsense Manage – FREE TRIAL
Syxsense Manage is a cloud-based platform that offers a package of management tools for4 endpoints on a remote network. Also, the package can run your remote LAN – all networks are remote to this system. It is possible to manage multiple networks from one account with this service.
Among the many facilities built into Syxsense Manage, you will find a remote desktop service. This can be used by technicians to access one of the endpoints that are under management. The package starts the management of a site when you download an agent program onto one of its hosts. As well as searching the network for devices and creating a software inventory, this agent facilitates access for the remote desktop system.
The remote desktop service is just one of the tools in the package that will help technicians to access endpoints. The system will monitor devices running Windows, macOS, and Linux. The technician can access any of these at the command line level and also through the remote desktop. It is possible to start up and shut down each of the registered endpoints through this service.
The console for Syxsense Manage is hosted in the cloud and accessed from anywhere through any standard Web browser. The service is charged on a subscription with an annual fee. You can assess this service by accessing a 14-day free trial.
Pricing: Free trial registration and download initiates the quote process.
Download: //www.syxsense.com/start-a-free-trial-of-syxsense
3. Remote Desktop Connection Manager [RDCMan]
RDCMan is a simple connection manager that gives you a single source that you can call upon to complete your remote desktop tasks throughout the day. It is quite an old application now, so the styling and general layout is a little bare when compared to commercial products. There is a certain simplicity to the way that it works that might appeal to some people though. It is worth noting that this tool is getting on a bit, as it was last updated in November of 2014.
RDCMan is a Microsoft application, so it works very well in windows environments where you need to connect to Windows servers and computers. The interface allows you to save computers in a dropdown list, as well as a snapshot view that shows the last thing you did on that computer.
All of these features add up to a highly functional remote desktop tool but without the bells and whistles that some other modern remote desktop connection managers provide, such as SSH, VNC or other popular Remote Desktop methods. Version 2.7.1406.0 introduced new features like Virtual Machine Connect to Console support, Smart Groups and support for credential encryption with certificates. Remote Action support for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are also included in this release.
Pricing: RDCMan is a free tool from Microsoft, and can be downloaded from below!
Download:RDCMan is no longer available due to a Vulnerability that was found – we'll however keep this here for reference and if Microsoft does decide to patch and release it again.
4. mRemoteNG
mRemoteNG is an interesting open source project that resulted from a fork from the main project – mRemote. mRemoteNG sought to add more functionality and a different interface than the original, and they have succeeded in many ways.
The application itself is very easy and intuitive to use, and it gives its users a central location from which they can run all of the remote commands that they need to execute during the course of the day.
Where mRemoteNG really shines as a valuable tool is in the multiple protocol support that it offers. Users can connect via RDP, VNC, ICA, SSH, Telnet, HTTP/HTTPS, rlogin and Raw Socket. The latest stable release is dated April 12 2019 as of time of writing, and is available to download for free from the download link here.
The website itself offers support, documentation and posts from the developer. There is also a Source Code section where you can download the code and modify it yourself if you are that way inclined.
The ability to save your most common machines, combined with the various different connection methods aside from remote desktop connection offer most users more than enough functionality to make this a great option for using the various different remote computers.
Pricing: This application is free to use and install.
Download://mremoteng.org/download
5. RoyalTS
RoyalTS is a comprehensive remote management solution with tons of options. RoyalTS used Remote Desktop Protocol, VNC and SSH based terminal connectivity. You also have the ability to use S/FTP and web-based connection methods too.
Perhaps one of the most useful features is the centralized credential management system. This allows you and your team to keep your passwords safe without you needing to know what it is when logging onto a system. The result is a seamless list of machines that you can connect to in an instant without having to consult your password lists.
There are also command Task and Key Sequence Tasks that are a form of automation. This makes basic and repetitive tasks an automatic process that doesn’t require any effort on your part.
Security is taken care of via and SSH-based tunnelling protocol that gives you a secure gateway that can’t be intercepted easily by an outside party. This is integrated into the application so security is literally baked in, and makes it very secure.
If you have to use TeamViewer to connect to a specific server, then RoyalTS has you covered there too. You can manage your TeamViewer sessions and connect to TeamViewer equipped computers if you can’t connect through traditional RDP methods.
Lastly, there is the dynamic folders feature. It gives you access to commonly used files and allows you to copy them to remote machines without having to set up advanced file sharing applications on the target machines.
Pricing: RoyalTS comes in 2 flavors. The Lite version is free and offers up to 10 simultaneous connections and 10 sets of credentials to be stored. Otherwise a single user license costs €39,00 which is a once off fee.
Download: //www.royalapplications.com/ts/win/features
6. Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager
Like most modern software products, Devolutions comes with a Free Edition and an Enterprise edition. Each of these versions have their own sets of features that are available. The free edition is still a fully-fledged remote desktop manager with remote connection management, password management, and permission to use it in a personal and enterprise capacity.
The enterprise version gives additional features such as Sahred Database and Vaults, role-based access control, two factor authentication for increased security, and access to audit and report information.
Other useful Remote Desktop Manager features include things like automatically being able to launch connections. This makes it possible to launch highly secure connections with privileged credentials.
There are additional protocols that are supported including RDP, SSH, VPMs, Web based control, VNC, Telnet, ICA/HDX, ARD, TeamViewer, ConnectWise Control and LogMeIn.
If you have a larger team then you can share your session information with them.
Pricing: If you opt for an enterprise license then you can get a quote from here.
Download: //remotedesktopmanager.com/
What is the Final Verdict?
Choosing the right software for the job that you need to get done is always going to be tricky. There are many options out there, and hopefully this list of applications has helped you to look at the way that you connect and get the job done when remotely working on systems such as servers and desktops.
Related Post: Best SSH Clients For Windows