Is Splashtop remote Desktop secure?

Splashtop Business Pro is an economical, but ambitious, alternative to pricierremote access softwarelike our Editors' Choice apps, TeamViewer and GoToMyPC. When we last looked at Splashtop, the app mostly impressed us with its low price. However, the latest version is impressive for its range of features and elegant design, even if it still has a way to go to match the higher-priced competition.

I tested Splashtop's Business Access Pro, a plan that costs $99 per year per user (or $8.25 per month), for one to three users. The per user price goes down by 20 percent when you go up to four or more users. Each user in this plan can access up to ten remote computers. A Business Access Solo plan, for one user only, costs $60 per year (or $5 per month) and lets you access only two computers, with significantly fewer features, as I'll describe below.

Like most remote access services, Splashtop offers a bewildering menu of options. The Business Access Pro plan should have everything that most business users need. If, for example, you want multiple users to access your machine at the same time, add a Splashtop Classroom account, designed for education, but usable by any business, with subscriptions starting at $29.99 per year with shared access from three devices. A free Splashtop Personal account lets you access other machines on your home network, and you can buy an Anywhere Access Pack ($4.99 per month or $16.99 per year) that lets you access remote machines from anywhere on the internet.

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The Splashtop Business Access Pro plan offers 256-bit encrypted sessions with all standard remote access features plus some important extras: a chat window, file transfer, a shared clipboard, local printing of remote files, and access from mobile devices. You also get advanced features like the ability to restart the remote machine in safe mode when you're troubleshooting someone else's machine. You can only access Windows and macOS systems, but you can access them from just about anything, including iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and any platform that can run the Chrome browser. Older versions made you use an file-manager-style window for transferring files between computers, but the latest version lets you drag and drop files between desktops, and the feature works on both Windows and macOS systems.

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Recent updates to Splashtop have given it a far more elegant design than earlier versions had, and many of the same advanced conveniences found in LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, orTeamViewer. Even with the latest version, though, I sometimes encountered a minor glitch where Splashtop popped up an error message saying it couldn't connect to the remote machinebut then connected correctly when I tried again a few seconds later. I couldn't see any pattern in this, but it occurred more than once.

Why Get Remote Access Software?

A remote access app lets you run a computer located across the room or across the world as if you were sitting in front of its keyboard and screen. You connect to the remote machine using the app, and thenuntil you click the mouse outside the remote access windoweverything you type and every move you make with the mouse gets sent to the remote machine. This gives you access to your own home or office desktop while traveling with your laptop, or you can send out an invitation to someone else that lets them access your machine.

Almost all of these remote access apps also let you perform other tasks, such copying files back and forth between the local machine you're really sitting in front of and the remote one, or copying text or graphics to the clipboard on one machine and pasting it on the other. You can generally even open a chat window so you can talk with someone sitting in front of the remote machine. Some remote access software also lets you make video recordings of what happens on the remote screen. Some can use the remote screen like a whiteboard, for things like drawing lines and arrows.

if you access a desktop computer from Splashtop Business running on an iPad or Android device, you can run a full-featured whiteboard, complete with screen recording and spotlight features, using the device's touch screen for drawing and writing. This is a terrific feature, but Splashtop hasn't implemented ityeton platforms other than iPad and Android. TeamViewer has whiteboard capability for macOS and Windows platforms.

How It Works

LikeVNC Connect, Splashtop uses two separate apps: a server app called Splashtop Streamer installed on the machine you want to log into and a central control app called Splashtop Business, which you install on machines you want to view from. I prefer a single integrated app like that used by TeamViewer, because I use my systems interchangeably as both local and remote machines, but the separate-app method makes sense if you'll be using remote access software to run other people's machines for tech support or demos and you don't want to confuse your remote users with menu items they can't use. You can also log in to your Splashtop account through any web browser and connect to remote machines, view logs, or set options.

Splashtop's control center app consists of a well-designed main menu that lists your remote machines, each with icons that let you connect to the remote machines, open a file-transfer menu, open a chat window with the remote user, or perform actions like rebooting the remote machine in normal or safe mode. When you connect to a remote machine, its desktop appears in your local machine in a window with an elegant, simple toolbar that lets you disconnect, open a file-transfer menu, or click Ctrl-Alt-Delete on the remote machine and log out or restart from the remote's Ctrl-Alt-Delete menu. A Record button lets you record the remote screen session, and the resulting video is saved on your local machine. It took me a while to figure out that the recorded videos get stored in a Splashtop Business folder in my Documents folder, and I had to visit Splashtop's web site to find that out. It would be nice if the app itself made this more clear.

The Business Solo version doesn't provide chat, remote wake or reboot, desktop sharing, session recording, and some other features built into the Pro version. The Pro version also gives you more flexibility when connecting to a remote machine using multiple monitors. With the Pro version, you can view each remote monitor on a separate monitor on your local system or view all the remote monitors in a single window at the same time. With the Solo version, you can view one remote monitor at a time.

Security Settings

I'm impressed with Splashtop's flexible and mostly convenient security settings. As with other remote access software, Splashtop requires you to authenticate each new device you try to access by sending you an e-mail with an authentication link. Advanced security options are accessible only in the Splashtop Streamer app installed on remote machines, so the owner of the remote machine has full control over whether or not you can get access.

For example, the Streamer app lets the remote user decide whether the Streamer will launch automatically, whether to require a Windows login or a special security code when connecting, or whether the person trying to access your machine needs to request permission in a dialog box. By default, Splashtop doesn't require you to enter a password when you connect to a remote machine, because it assumes that you own the remote machine. You'll probably want to change this default if you're giving another user access to your machine and not simply connecting between two machines that both belong to you.

Splashtop warns you if you try to use its viewer to connect to your own computer, but it doesn't block you from doing so. If you do, the viewer displays an endless series of images of your screen receding into the distance, with no way to stop it except by shutting off the viewer. As far as I can tell, the only thing you can accomplish with this is a mildly psychedelic experience, and it might be better if Splashtop didn't let you connect to your own machine at all.

Low-Cost Remote Access With Problems

The most annoying problem I found with Splashtop occurred when I installed its Streamer app on my Mac. The installer added a third-party extension called Soundflower, used for routing audio between applications, and the result was that the dropdown menu of the Mac's speaker icon listed two separate instances of Soundflower, in addition to the output devices that I actually use, like the Mac's internal speakers, my TV, and my Bluetooth speakers. It was annoying enough to see a menu cluttered up with items that I have no reason to choose, but it was even more annoying to find that Splashtop's uninstaller app left Soundflower in place, complete with those two useless items in the speaker menu.

Splashtop's website has a support page explaining how to get rid of Soundflower, but unless you realize that Splashtop installed it in the first place, you may never find that page. One commenter on that page reported that Splashtop's version of Soundflower caused conflicts with another app. Splashtop plans to use a new audio-capture system for Mac installs starting with a major new release due by early 2020. Until then, I would be cautious before installing Splashtop on a Mac.

Except for this Mac-related annoyance, Splashtop is appealing both for its economical pricing and its impressive feature set, complete with screen recording and drag-and-drop file transfer. I like the way its tablet apps implement a whiteboard feature for (temporarily) marking up a remote desktop for demos or tech support, but I wish the same feature was available when connecting from Windows, macOS, or smartphones. When the whiteboard feature finally arrives on the desktop versions, and when Splashtop stops installing intrusive audio software on the Mac, it may well deserve to join GoToMyPC and TeamViewer as an Editors' Choice for this software category. If you don't need a whiteboard and you're not using a Mac, then Splashtop is worth a try.

Splashtop Business Pro

3.5

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Free 7-Day Trial at Splashtop

Per User, Per Month, Starts at $8.25

Pros

• Low cost
• Extensive features, including chat and screen recording
• Easy-to-understand security options
• Drag-and-drop file transfers
• Connects from almost any platform, including phones, tablets, and anything that runs Chrome

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Cons

• Whiteboard feature available only on iPad or Android
• Some rare connection problems in our testing
• Installs an intrusive audio extension on the Mac

The Bottom Line

Splashtop Business Pro is a worthy, low-priced alternative remote-access app, with an elegant interface and a strong feature set.