In the Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) world, there is no shortage of products, but the number of truly free and open-source options is vanishingly small. Most platforms follow the same pattern: a cloud-first service, a recurring monthly fee, and a free plan that feels more like bait than a real solution. NetLock RMM breaks this mould. It is self-hosted, cross-platform, scriptable, and entirely open-source, making it a rare find for IT professionals who value both control and transparency.
The project is the work of a solo developer based in Germany, who is currently receiving public funding from the German government to help push it forward. This is not just a personal experiment uploaded to GitHub — it is already a polished product with real-world usability. You can explore it at netlockrmm.com or dive straight into the code on GitHub. For those who have tried other modern tools like Level.io or Action1, NetLock RMM offers something they simply cannot: complete sovereignty over both the server and the agents.
Cloud-only RMM platforms have undeniable appeal. They are quick to set up, require no infrastructure maintenance, and are often backed by well-funded teams. However, they also come with significant trade-offs. When you rely on a vendor’s infrastructure, you are also accepting vendor lock-in. If the company changes its pricing model, gets acquired, or simply shuts down, you could find yourself scrambling to migrate your entire management stack. There are also privacy concerns. With a cloud service, every metric, script, and credential passes through someone else’s servers. For organisations in regulated industries or for privacy-conscious sysadmins, that alone can be a deal-breaker. And while uptime is usually good, when the vendor’s service goes down, your access and visibility vanish along with it. NetLock RMM sidesteps all of these issues by keeping every byte of data and every control channel under your direct control.
One of the most refreshing things about NetLock RMM is that its free plan is genuinely useful. It supports up to twenty-five devices without limiting the core features. This makes it an ideal tool for lab environments where you want to test scripts, experiment with monitoring, and evaluate automation workflows. It is equally well-suited for personal use, such as helping family members with their computers, whether they are running Windows, macOS, or Linux. Because the system can be hosted fully behind a reverse proxy with only port 443 exposed, there is also the intriguing possibility of running it entirely behind a Cloudflare Tunnel. In theory — and this still needs full testing — that would make it possible to operate a self-hosted RMM without exposing it directly to the internet and without renting a VPS at all. For small-scale users or those who prefer to keep everything on-premises, that is a very attractive proposition.
For teams that grow beyond the free limit, the paid tiers are simple and predictable. At fifty euros per month, you can manage unlimited devices while keeping everything self-hosted. For sixty euros per month, you get the same unlimited capacity but with hosting handled by NetLock, removing the need to maintain your own server. Compared to other open-source RMMs like Tactical RMM, the pricing is competitive and the onboarding process is arguably smoother.
NetLock RMM offers far more than the basics. The web console is clean and modern, supporting multiple tenants, location-based organisation, and granular role-based permissions for administrators. Notifications can be sent through a variety of channels, including email, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, and ntfy.sh, making it easy to integrate with existing workflows. Remote access capabilities are broad. You can manage processes and services, open interactive shells in PowerShell, Bash, or Zsh, transfer files in both directions, and even control desktops where supported. Monitoring is equally flexible, with the ability to trigger alerts based on CPU or RAM usage, disk thresholds, Windows Event Log entries, or the output of custom scripts. Because the agents support all three major operating systems, mixed environments are handled without awkward workarounds. Security has clearly been a design priority. Optional code signing of executables reduces the chance of tampering and helps avoid false positives from antivirus software. Two-factor authentication is available for all accounts, and the agent-server handshake is designed so that only agents from your own installation can connect.
Installing NetLock RMM is far less painful than many self-hosted platforms. The developer provides a Docker-based installation script that allows the service to run on a VPS or local machine in minutes, even alongside other containerised services. For those comfortable with Docker, this makes it trivial to get a functional system up and running. There is, however, a small caveat. The current install script assumes a certain level of technical familiarity, which means that less experienced users might take closer to thirty minutes rather than the “under ten minutes” that seasoned admins could manage. The good news is that someone has already submitted a pull request on GitHub to smooth out this issue, so installation should soon be even more straightforward. Once deployed, the onboarding process is intuitive. You log into the web console, generate an installer for your chosen operating system, deploy the agent, and you are ready to begin monitoring and automating. There are no unnecessary hoops to jump through and no hidden dependencies to install.
For IT professionals who place a premium on security, NetLock RMM has clear advantages. All agent communication stays within your own infrastructure. If you host it locally, nothing leaves your network except what you allow. By placing the server behind a reverse proxy, you can integrate it with your existing security stack, whether that means standard TLS termination, Web Application Firewalls, or Cloudflare’s tunnel service. This architecture not only reduces exposure but also makes compliance easier for organisations bound by data residency rules.
What makes NetLock RMM so compelling is not just its feature set or its pricing, but the fact that it fills a genuine gap in the market. For years, the choice has been between expensive commercial RMMs with cloud lock-in or self-hosted tools that feel like abandoned side projects. NetLock RMM shows that you can have a professional-grade, open-source, and self-hosted RMM without sacrificing usability or modern conveniences. For small MSPs, internal IT teams, or even individual sysadmins with a handful of machines to care for, it offers a balance of control, flexibility, and long-term stability that is hard to find elsewhere. And for those who have appreciated the automation power of Level.io or the hands-off simplicity of Action1 but wished for something entirely under their own control, this might be the answer.
With active development, an engaged community, and a roadmap that is already showing refinement, NetLock RMM is one of the few RMMs in 2025 that can truly claim to deliver both freedom and functionality — without making you choose between them.