- David Anderson's Homepage - https://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/da -

Free alternative to TeamViewer (remote desktop admin)

Someone I was doing some work for wanted me to log in to their desktop via TeamViewer – free remote desktop software. The great thing about TeamViewer is that it allows you to work through firewalls (NAT), which traditional VNC products (RealVNC, TigerVNC, etc.) cannot do.

The problem: TeamViewer is only free for trial purposes. As the cheapest version is $700, there was no way I could honestly say I was using it as a trial – I’m in no position to pay that kind of money!

A quick Google brought the answer: Ammyy Admin – http://www.ammyy.com [1]. It works through a firewall and is free for all users as long as you do not use it for more than 15 hours a month. After that the prices are not bad – you can take out a monthly subscription ($19 when I looked) and the person on the other side can use the free version or as long as they like. It worked plenty fast enough for me on a 3G connection.