Splsahtop is a Remote Desktop service. Remote Desktop services like Splashtop work differently from the VPN. With the VPN, the user is bypassing their office machine and connecting directly to the server. If we set up VPN access for a user’s home computer, we will need to install our anti-virus on each user’s home machine. This is to make sure that users do not infect the server if their home computers contain malware or viruses. Our pricing for stand-alone anti-virus is $5 per user per month.
There is also a
one-time license cost of $50 plus tax for each VPN license. This is to purchase
the license from SonicWall, the firewall manufacturer.
For users that
have work laptops, they can bring the laptop home and we can set up VPN access
on the work laptop. This is actually the preferred way to do it. This is usually
not practical for users that have desktop computers at work, but we have no
objection if users want to bring their towers home and connect them to their
monitors (checking monitor compatibility first, of course).
The labor to
set up VPN access for each user would be billable time. It generally takes between
20 to 30 minutes per user.
[Can delete next paragraph. For users who might try to open large files over VPN-
The VPN actually opens server files on your home workstation.
So if you are opening large files such as Quickbooks files, the VPN will be slower
than a remote desktop service. Using remote desktop, the file is only being opened on the office side, not
on your home workstation. Tasks such as generating a report will take the same
amount of time whether you are sitting in front of the office computer or accessing
the computer via remote desktop. The amount of time it takes has to do with the size
of the report, the size of the Quickbooks file, and the speed to access the
file over the local network in the office. All of these things are different for
the office QB setup then they would be for a home user’s Quickbooks setup where
the QB file is usually on the same workstation and much smaller in size. So for
QB usage, you are better off with a remote desktop service.
If you still feel that QB is slower than it should be, we can create a ticket and look into that specific issue.
Please let me know if you’d like to move forward with VPN setup and for how many users and I’ll send a quote.