So... AIT is going to be extra now?
I got this banner today when I logged in. AIT was the #1 factor in my recommendation to my company, and their subsequent approval to sign up and use it company-wide. To see that it will be a paid add on next month will greatly diminish my leadership's view of Atera, and make them think it was a bait and switch.
Please tell me that this isn't the case. I hope that I am misreading the information available. That it is features beyond that advertised as of March. Please tell me that we won't, unless we pay more, be losing some of the functionality we use already as Design Partners.
The Copilot AI Capabilities page does list AI script generation, ticket sentiment, and ticket reply capabilities, so I am worried that it will all be lumped together to mean no more AIT without an extra fee.
Either way, how much will the paid add-on for Copilot be?
Comments
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Here is the listing of the add-ons, but it doesn't specify the Copilot cost:
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This is so wrong! Your telling me all the development for the last year will now be locked behind a paywall? And all new features (because atera doesn't want to develop anything without AI, their words not mine) are going to be extra now too? Time to start looking for a new product, I guess. This is such a slap in the face to the Atera customers. No one asked for AI. Atera won't develop new features without it. This is such a shitty decision on Atera's part.
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Heya @iectechbrian
Thanks for the genuine feedback, I'd like to clarify a bit and address your questions.
Until recently, Atera's AI capabilities were available as "beta" features for early access during a testing period. Now that the product has matured and is ready for launch, we are introducing a pricing structure to reflect its value. You mentioned the Copilot capabilities page - Please note that the Copilot package is an all-inclusive offering—features cannot be selected individually.
If you're interested in learning more about the pricing of Copilot, you can click and follow the link from the app banner, and a dedicated Customer Success Manager or Atera Account Manager will get in touch. This goes for others reading this thread as well.
I hope your leadership trust your choice in Atera, as we strive to to provide you with the best tools for your IT needs while as we continue to develop the product to enhance your work.
There's much more coming up, you mentioned that AIT was the #1 factor in recommending Atera - and your ROI and improved efficiency will certainly make Copilot a worthwhile add-on which your leadership can appreciate.2 -
I don't understand why you should pay for Copilot when GPT-4o is free.
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Saying this was a beta option when every ad for atera touted the reason to switch was to use the Included AI features is a stretch. Why cant Atera just come out and say they want more money? I'm getting tired of this! First the price jumped 15 percent after 2 months of joining, then I'm told simple things like SSO are locked behind the highest tier, now all the included ai features are going away as soon as my agreement ends. I switched to atera to avoid a 15 percent increase to my agreement on connectwise, but they never took features away and made me pay to get them back. This whole move is starting to feel like one big mistake.
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All of the advertising we saw too was all about the AIT features as the main thing, not an extra option to be paid separately.
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Please do not include me on any Beta features that are going to be a paid upgrade at a later date. Anything in that category should require an opt-in with a clear disclaimer that this may be turned into a paid addon in the future.
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What AI was behind the previous "AI Beta" It looks like this new AI is a completely different 3rd party package. My bigger concern is if we are opting in to training this AI with our customer information with anything you feed it.
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Heya,
That's a great question, I'd like to elaborate on it!
Action AI™️ is a fusion of Azure OpenAI and Atera's proprietary technology. This cutting-edge architecture provides the intelligence that drives Copilot. Action AI™️ gives you the next-generation capabilities needed to drive exceptional results.
What does that mean?
Azure OpenAI provides Atera access to integrate into our own service. This allowing us to deploy within Atera's ActionAI™️, as a secured and private instance on Azure. This is crucial in handling sensitive data, as is the demand in IT services.
Last but not least, this is not an end-user free service, but rather an enterprise-grade premium one.The Copilot is integrated into your IT management platform directly empowering your work on an all-in-one platform.
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Hey,
While we believe AIT is an integral future of IT work, we are also committed to all areas that enhance IT work.
We are continuously developing our core product and working to expand, improve and add new capabilities.Namely, the following features are just several of the features we will deliver over time. It's important to note that not all features in the list will be available for all plans:
- Enterprise-grade:
Enhanced audit logs which allow your organization to research incidents, and reach compliance frameworks (GDPR, HIPAA). More details will be added such as script, software and command names. Bulk actions on multiple devices are also planned.
Permissions for multiple technicians will allow you to specify device, script and folder accessibility. - RMM improvements:
The device console was recreated and allows personalized view using drag-and-drop. This structure allows access to device data, overview, hardware and more.
Later on we will add an agent activity log, to examine device action history.
The console will also be able to monitor any value from a device with a script based custom field. - IT Automation:
Allows patching, software installations, programmed reboots and more.
This is planned to be expanded to take time zones into consideration.
Profile OS will make configurations easier, attaching an automation profile per operating system type.
Automation Sequence Management will make sure actions happen in the right sequence. - Private software depository:
This allows you to maintain the versions of the software that you prefer, be sure that it passed your software security audit, and that it is ready to be installed on devices. - Ticket Queues:
Expanded abilities to: Create groups of technicians, assign tickets to technician groups, filter by ticket queues, assign automation rules to ticket queues and new dashboard widget to monitor ticket queues
There were more items brought up during the session and further items during the Q&A starting at the 24:04 mark , it’s worth a rewatch!
Our roadmap is in final tweaking and you’ll be able to see features in a more convenient way soon.1 - Enterprise-grade:
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How do we get rid of the constant ADs with Copilot, AI and any other useless junk and upsell from our interface?
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@gilgi I think this statement needs some more discussion:
I don't see the benefit of a paid subscription to this. Everything the Atera AI does now I can do with chatgpt with a $20 a month subscription or now free with gpt4o. Typically, when you see pricing like this:
It means if you have to ask, then you can't afford it. If it's more than $20 a month, what's the point? Okay, the features are built in, but I think they don't do anything remarkable or worth more than $20 a month—at least not right now.
The real issue with this is that the atera per tech pricing has gone up, and now advertised features are being locked behind a paywall. This was advertised in a way that most definitely did not seem like something that would turn into a paid add-on feature.
How much of the following will be locked behind a separate add-on subscription?
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Update on where I am at with the AI features:
I just heard back from an account rep on the AI pricing. My company is on the monthly plan, and have to remain that way for now unfortunately. The account rep told me that the AI features cannot be added to any monthly subscription, only annual ones.
She said that if I switch to an annual subscription in the next 2 weeks that the AI will be included for 1 year, but they can't offer it to me currently on the monthly plan.
This unfortunately is a huge blow. The AI features help me a ton as a one-man IT department and have made my work significantly better. I have loved Atera and have been singing it's praises to the whole company the last few months.
I still love Atera, but feel like I am being put into a hard place. I worry that my company's administrators will see this switch as a bait-and-switch, and will not be happy with Atera, especially where we can't switch to annual right now. (I sure wish we could.)
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@tanderson Discussing is exactly why I'm here.
And on that matter, I'm new in Atera and need more time to double check features and such (that's why my responding is a bit slow, appologies), I don't want to say things that are technically incorrect, however I do understand what you and others in the thread say and it's all being communicated back for senior eyes to review as well.
Will respond to the other bits in a separate reply, but this point was important for me and y'all taking time to word your thoughts is valuable and appreciated.2 -
Hey,
If you are referring to the in-app instances, you should be able to dismiss them. Could you give more info if you're talking about something else?
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This is the same thing they did with the Network Discovery. The first year I had Atera is was included in my package, when I renewed and added additional admins I noticed that it was no longer included. It eventually got added back in because I made a stink about it, but I think I will take a long hard look for alternatives come renewal time..
3 -
Hey all,
I would like to leave my few words here too :)
Pricing
I somehow was expecting that the prices would be an extra. Whoever has played with Azure and AI before knows how quick you can burn your money.
I am pretty sure Atera has specific contracts with Microsoft but it would not be free of charge.
Therefore I like the way of making it available as Addon instead of increasing the general price per package.What I personally do not like is the "hidden price structure"
I have to contact sales to get an offer. Why is this process needed? Do different customer get a different offer?
And if yes, why? Is it better to jump in now or wait till prices decrease?Why I believe you got the people in the community against you
Well, this is the official way of providing feedback and complaining.
The full last year was about integrating AI, automatization etc. It "looked like" this is the only development taking place.
Therefore it "looks like" we are paying for a software out of 2022/2023 with an increase of costs which came on top but not functionality - except you pay extra for AIT.From business side of view I would say all your decisions are somehow understandable but the way of communication to the customer could be better.
You have set some expectations which cannot be fulfilled anymore.Matthias
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I just signed up 3 months ago and the AI features was a big selling point during the whole sales process. Now we are making this a paid add on? Why was this not mentioned up front? I have enjoyed Atera as whole so far, but taking away a key advertised feature just 3 months in is definitely not okay.
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Has anyone else contacted sales to get pricing? How has it gone?
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I am a one-man internal IT dept on a yearly (1st year right now), have a call with my account manager scheduled for next week. I really like the AI scripting integration, but can't see my execs approving a monthly charge when I can use ChatGPT for free (I'm not even going to try to sell them on it tbh).
I like the scripting integration but it's not nearly enough to justify any additional cost for us. I have yet to use the ticketing summarization features since I don't need them, but I can see a bigger team\MSP using this a lot. I could see the AI troubleshooting being helpful for an L1 tech, but I am not going to be using those either.
I agree with some of the other comments in the thread that this seems like a real bait and switch. I never understood these to be a "beta feature" when I signed up, but could have misread something.
I can understand that the Autopilot features are going to be paid as there is a lot more attention and IOPS involved in allowing users to access the chatbot features, but I only support about 100 machines and I likely won't be using Autopilot at all for a while at least since I don't see it improving my workload at all currently. That said, I also don't want to see Atera switch over to a per-user\computer pricing as that would kill it for us also.
Hoping my AM has good news next week, will likely depend on if I am going to be looking for a new RMM next year…
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Atera should focus less on useless fluff and more on improving performance and removing ADs to upsell everywhere on the platform. The UI is a lot slower than it used to be and I believe we've been with Atera 4 or 5 years now. While I do value improvements, focus on making things better not just adding more and more features while leaving previous unfixed items by the wayside.
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Yeah i agree, the Co-Pilot element has not been helpful at all it's poor at writing scripts, generating articles and replies it needs a lot more work and like wise GPT4o is now free although limited responses, it should be included in the costs until it improves it's usefulness.
It's becoming a pain when everything is now a paid add-on when the core product is struggling in some places. For example i went to use the command prompt tool and it doesn't keep up and it types random letters.
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That's exactly what you should do 👌
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No, Copilot is Atera’s closed environment, proprietary tech thanks to both Azure OpenAI and our own architecture.
Here’s the relevant bit from our Responsible AI information page:Your usage has no impact on the public model. Your inputs, outputs, embeddings, and knowledge base (KB) content are inaccessible to other customers, and they are not used to train Atera or Azure OpenAI’s AI algorithms or any Microsoft or third-party products.
This is also included in our ToS which we abide by.0 -
Thanks for the input.
We find that hands-on testing of new features is a helpful way for techs to check out usability according to their specific requirements which we mark with ‘beta’ tags to indicate they are still new and some hiccups should be expected. The feedback helps us improve the features according to the use-cases and requests presented to us.
We are continuously improving and developing the core platform, with several key features highlighted in my previous reply to tanderson.1 -
How do we opt out of the AIT? Will all of the copilot icons disappear when the paid option is activated? How does that affect scheduling tickets, since the copilot option replaced manual creation of future tickets. Thank you
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Hey, I've asked your CSM to reach out, the last sentence especially could be a bug we can hopefully squash!
The UI is already there for you to explore and Copilot is already utilized successfully by thousands of IT-techs as Copilot constantly improved.
I understand your experience was still sub-optimal, but also offer to keep trying it, especially in this exploration period.0 -
The current scheduler you have will remain open for all users and is not part of the Copilot bundle.0 -
You seem to have missed my point. I am a paying customer. It should be clear what I am paying for. Most software platforms I see offer beta access as an option, not a requirement. Anything that shows up in the interface I am paying for should be part of the package I pay for, not an addon that will be yanked back if I don't pony up.
Just because using your customers to test your software makes it easier for you doesn't mean it's right. You can spin it any way you like, but the fact is we were given features and encouraged to integrate them into our workflows and now the same features are being yanked back behind a paywall.
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To clarify, opt in/out is one of the points taken from this discussion thread, wasn't missed.
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