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Automox vs Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Automox
Ranking in Patch Management
18th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (52nd), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (60th), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (20th)
Quest KACE Systems Manageme...
Ranking in Patch Management
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Client Desktop Management (3rd), Endpoint Compliance (8th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (12th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Patch Management category, the mindshare of Automox is 3.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is 4.4%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Patch Management
 

Featured Reviews

Jack Leung - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and deploy agents but needs more stability
We just need to deploy the agent to the endpoints. We don't need to set up anything. For a single agent, it takes one or two minutes. However, we deployed globally, and you need to take into consideration the time it will take to deploy across each endpoint. It's very simple to deploy. We had three or four engineers take care of the implementation.
Scott Tweed - PeerSpot reviewer
Low maintenance, reliable, and easy to create packages
I like how when you click on the device, it shows you everything that has changed as well as the software versioning. I am really enjoying the inventory aspect of it. The deployment process for both deploying and creating a package is straightforward. I believe the inventory in KACE is superior to SCCM's. I know with SCCM I could do things like remote console into machines via the agent's remote console, but that is not a feature that is provided in KACE. I know that at least in the Systems Management Appliance, I can't get to it. I'm not sure how distribution works, with distribution points. I'm not sure if KACE has that feature. You could use an SCCM to set up distribution points at remote sites so that they don't have to download patches or software from across the country. If you have a DP or something similar, they could pull it down.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's super easy to use and we haven't found anything easier."
"The biggest improvement to our organization involves the reduction in its man hours... We've probably saved hundreds of hours."
"Coming from prior solutions that were a lot more effort, Automox's patch management abilities are transformational. When I took over patching at my company, they were using on-premise architecture to patch. As the workforce shifted from being in the office into their home offices, I was able to lift and shift with no effort other than deploying the new agent out into the environment."
"Among the most valuable features are its ease of use and the Worklets. Both of them are time-savers. Worklets enable us to customize things for a given environment. It's something like when Apple lets other people create applications. Other peoples' Worklets can be used in our environment and in our customers' environments. That saves a lot of time, and it's really cool."
"It's easy to deploy agents to endpoints."
"The flexibility in creating tools to make changes on remote machines is most valuable to me. The reporting feature is also fantastic because on any given day I can bring up a list of machines that don't have patches, for example. Or I can bring up a list of machines that are in my environment on a certain day. The solution helps me with not only my own role, and what I look for internally myself, but it also helps during audits. I can go in and look at the number of machines in there, and their owners and timelines. It certainly helps tell a story for anything that IT requires."
"Its flexibility is most valuable."
"They've been adding some new features lately, which I'm not nearly as familiar with, but the ability to just deploy patches and exempt certain machines from certain patches is helpful. For instance, for our servers, we may not want to roll out zero-day patches. We are able to exempt those and make sure that they don't get those policies. We've got certain servers that have to run a particular version of Java, and being able to exempt those servers from receiving Java updates is pretty fantastic."
"The ability to build scripts right on the deployment center itself, as well as building groups that take those scripts/task chains has been absolutely invaluable and one of the most important parts of my whole environment."
"With KACE, we were able to have a simplification of the software deployment management with more granularity and flexibility."
"This solution makes it easy to control assets and upgrade all types of software."
"The scripting part increases IT productivity because of the specialized software in our environments for students' courses. You need to use software which is not programmed by developers. A lot of software for building houses or other things is developed by normal guys, who do not have much skill in programming. When you need to install this type of software, it is very difficult. You have to install registry keys, etc. For that, it is very good to use the scripting part of this solution. So, you can automate this part as well."
"When vulnerabilities are exploited so much, it is nice to be able to quickly detect or deploy what is needed within our off-work hours or during work hours without a reboot."
"Patching is definitely the most valuable feature. It gives us good, centralized software, which comes in very handy since we are doing 400 servers at a time. It enables us to manage all the servers, and to deal with the application team regarding reboots and scheduling."
"The single pane of glass for managing devices is helpful because it allows me to perform updates and control things without having to disturb the doctors or nurses."
"It is excellent in terms of updating and configuring everything the way we need. For anything more complex, we do professional service engagements, and they're exceptional. For anything less complex, we just need to ask questions. Their support division is extremely good too."
 

Cons

"We would like to see additional detailed reporting for Service providers like us. We had to build our own reports via their APIs to meet our needs."
"The biggest area they need to fix, without a doubt, is the ability to copy and sync profiles and worklets between all of the organizations you manage, and the ability to have top-level user access control across all of the companies that you manage."
"When we bring on a new client, we need to go into that client and manually set up my account, my chief engineer's account, three technicians' accounts, and a billing person's account all over again, which is annoying. We have probably up to 15 or 16 of our clients on Automox now. For every single one of those, we have had to go in and set this up. Then, if anything changes, we have to remember to go to Automox and change it 15 or 16 times. So, we just want inheritable permissions, and that is it. We have talked to them about this, and they are like, "Yeah, we hear a lot of complaints about it." I am thinking, "Guys, I have been complaining about this for a year and a half. When are you going to do it?" It must be some tricky thing or not an easy fix, because I can only assume if it were easy, then they would have done it by now."
"Asset management would be a great feature to add to Automox. We would run easier scripts or more out of the box scripts that would help us in audits. \"
"They need to improve the automation features."
"As concerns the patching concepts, there's a bit of a learning curve in terms of working out how Automox wants you to work within the console, not only splitting up everything into groups, but then having the various policies assigned."
"It should have integrated workstation access. So, there should be a remote desktop feature."
"There should be better inventory capabilities. Right now, they only allow you to have insight into software out-of-the-box. It would be nice to also extend that into custom inventory that can be modified and managed by the practitioner."
"The solution needs to have the ability to push out managed feature updates from Microsoft in a more seamless way."
"One of the complications is that they don't have 24/7 support, and they're also not in our time zone... Sometimes, no matter how critical my application is, if my production server is down I won't be able to connect with anybody till 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time."
"The KACE Go Mobile App crashes a lot, and it always has. I would love to see that get fixed because it's very convenient when it does work properly, but most of the time it does not."
"The only pain point I have is with their salespeople. They call too often. They're too aggressive in trying to upsell. We know what we need, and we know if we want to expand. I don't mind quarterly calls from them, but sometimes, it is weekly. They need to get their sales team under control. The main goal of their support people and professional services is to make sure they deliver the service, and they deliver it well, whereas their salespeople are so interested in making a sale that they're wasting my time."
"We'd love to see support for larger dependencies in the scripting feature."
"The software asset management functionality is an area that needs to be improved. It could be more automated because when connections need to be made, such as when I connected Adobe and my malware removed, the process was pretty much manual."
"There is always room for improvement. However, the system does most of what we need at this moment."
"The K1000 doesn't communicate well with some clients without SMB. There are some issues with getting things to image correctly because they rely on SMB, and SMB is a protocol that is being removed due to security reasons. Organizations are trying to rely less and less on SMB. I know Quest is aware of it. They've talked about having a new version that wouldn't rely on SMB for connection to the clients, but they haven't gotten there yet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licensing for a year was nine grand. There was no additional fee."
"We're doing it annually directly through Automox. It is per endpoint. It is $2 and some change per endpoint, but I believe the cost is right around $28,000. Everything is covered in this fee."
"The pricing and licensing costs have been great for us... My advice to others who are evaluating or thinking of implementing Automox is to give it a shot. If a free trial is still available, definitely use it, because it makes life a lot easier."
"For all these software tools, it is usually a subscription model. There is a monthly charge that we need to pass along to our clients because we are doing all this for their benefit. It is only a couple of bucks a month per computer, and that is a low enough price point where our clients, without exception, have accepted it, and said, "This is great. We will pay that. It sounds like a worthwhile thing.""
"We are on the premium licensing, which is the one that has the API capability that we use."
"Automox just charges us a set amount per user, per month, for using the product. That is very important to us. Because it's a cloud-native solution, you're saving on the cost of hosting an on-premises solution on your servers."
"The cost is very reasonable compared to the competition."
"There are no additional costs in addition to the extended licensing fees with Automox. You get your support and your per endpoint license with what you purchased."
"Their pricing is per end-point device. There is an initial cost for the license for the server, which is pretty low, and then there is a per end-point device license, which is also fairly low. So, the pricing is still reasonable."
"It may be more expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"n terms of pricing and licensing, my advice is that you need to assess what you need and then look at what they offer. It's easy to get caught up in the things that you want, but don't really need."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing is great. It's billed annually and it's very reasonable."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"We are a university. So, we have a very good price for the system. I think the price for the system is worth it because of the security patch management. The security patch management is very important for us. The price is very good for KACE SMA, the functionality you get, and the patch management."
"It was a very attractive price. This is a huge feature of this product. If you would "credit score" this product versus others out there on the market, this one has a very attractive price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?
The pricing is in the middle range of the market, not too expensive but not the cheapest either.
What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?
The user interface needs improvement as customers have mentioned they do not like the interface since it is not an SMA-based interface and lacks a manual configuration option.
What is your primary use case for Quest KACE Systems Management?
The main use cases for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance are touch management, software and hardware inventory, and software delivery.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Dell KACE Systems Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
Find out what your peers are saying about Automox vs. Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,957 professionals have used our research since 2012.