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Clarity CA vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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

Clarity CA
Ranking in Client Desktop Management
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KACE Systems Management App...
Ranking in Client Desktop Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Compliance (7th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (11th), Patch Management (9th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Client Desktop Management category, the mindshare of Clarity CA is 10.8%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is 12.3%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Client Desktop Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)12.3%
Clarity CA10.8%
Other76.9%
Client Desktop Management
 

Featured Reviews

TN
Solution center consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Multipurpose and useful for managing projects and resources; easy to integrate with other systems, and has a knowledgeable technical support team
I support Clarity CA, but I'm on the administrator side rather than the end-user side. My company has a partnership with Clarity CA. Clarity CA is deployed on-premises in my company, but I have a customer who deployed the solution on the cloud. Deploying the solution requires two or three resources. For ongoing support, it depends on how many people use Clarity CA. A minimum of three or four resources would be enough to support the solution, particularly two LIFF developers and one administrator. My advice to people looking into implementing Clarity CA is to make sure there's a team who'll support it, otherwise, you have to look into a Broadcom partner that can provide you with a service support deal. This way, you don't have to deal with the many administrative and maintenance responsibilities that go with Clarity CA as that could be a hassle. You have to be ready by having a team who will support the solution. My rating for Clarity CA is nine out of ten. Its interface is getting better. It has everything you need in terms of program or project management. The solution works for any organization. It's stable, flexible, and has been around for a long time. You can do a lot with Clarity CA, and that gives you a little bit of power.
AdityaJain - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Administrator at EbixCash
Centralized software deployment has simplified endpoint control but needs stronger security alerts
What I like best about KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is that it allows pushing custom-made applications to all computers that have KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) endpoint installed. This makes it easier for the organization to push patches and updates. If I need to push EDR updates, I can use KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), as it automatically updates the EDR on that endpoint, and that is a great feature. Overall, KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) helps streamline my processes by allowing me to check the uptime and downtime of machines, whether they are connected to the internet or not, and how long a machine has been switched off. I can also gather hardware details and software inventory from it. I can show a live demonstration if a video conference can be arranged. Incident resolution capabilities with KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) have improved operational efficiency for system administrators, as it makes it easier to track machines with KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), gather their IP addresses, and push several updates, patches, or software deployments at once. I can design compliances as per my requirements, such as ensuring passwords are reset after 45 days.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is also really easy to use; you just schedule a job and create a package of software, and everything just works."
"My organization has benefited from Clarity CA because everyone can do project staffing through it, people in the organization can staff projects by looking at the resources and skills before staffing, change requests can also be done in Clarity CA, and through it you can have an overall view of each project and how a project is doing, so it helped improve my organization."
"To me, the most valuable feature of Clarity CA is the timesheet. It's the only feature I use because I just support the tool, and I just enter time on it. Others use Clarity CA for other purposes, such as resource management, project management, scheduling, and financials. The tool also has a fairly simple integration with other systems, so at the moment, it's working fine. I also like that you can write your own code in Clarity CA, and you can make changes to it based on your needs."
"It also does patch management. At the moment, I'm rolling out a new feature update, 20.8.2, and it's a great challenge because we have to deploy it to 1,200 computers in the home office. We want to do it without interrupting production, but KACE is reliable and it's easy to adapt it to my needs for how and when to deploy the feature update."
"The ability to push an image to a machine, wake that image up, and just blast a new image to a computer without even having to touch it, and then push the software to that machine, just made things so much more convenient for us and so much more efficient than having to go find that machine, pull that machine out, take it back to the shop, and repair it from there."
"There is one place for a lot of different things. If somebody has a problem with their computer, they will put in a ticket. From there, we will know who it is and the assets assigned to them, because there is one place to go look for what we are talking about and with whom we are talking. Just having one place for everything is really convenient. For example, we are able to deploy software to hundreds of computers. We don't need to go to each individual device."
"We're able to deploy software and push out fixes to endpoints faster than ever."
"The big pros of Quest KACE Systems Management are its simple interface, and simple, direct management. It's very easy to maintain and manage the device, and it's easy to get it up and running. You can have it up and running in an hour..."
"With KACE, we were able to have a simplification of the software deployment management with more granularity and flexibility."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to monitor updates—the software versions—on machines so that we can keep everything compliant."
"My primary use case of this solution is to help us obtain accreditation in the UK of Cyber Essentials Plus, a program sponsored by the UK government which encourages UK companies to obtain a certain level of cyber-security within their cyber environment."
 

Cons

"What could be improved in Clarity CA is its UI, but I know the Clarity team is working on a new UI, so I'm expecting its UI to get better. The software also has too many functions, so it would be good if the functions or features could be split up, rather than needing to buy the whole Clarity CA package, when you'll only use a few of its functions. This increases the cost of the software, so that's another area for improvement. How Clarity CA is marketed could also be improved."
"Technical support is good, when they get back to you. I usually have to use Google, though, because sometimes we have to meet deadlines and don't have the time to wait for them to get back to us."
"Imaging becomes a problem when you start to try to go beyond doing more than thirty or forty machines at a time. We initially tried to do that virtually and it just, it wouldn't work."
"Sometimes the information is not as real time as it's supposed to be."
"There should be a mini toolbox, like the competitors of KACE have, with the small features for KACE administrators."
"The initial setup was complex. It is a Linux-based virtual server, where the customer cannot get into the back-end, so you can only follow their prompts. Then, there are specific things that have to be done in their implementation and upgrade phases that have to be done in a certain order or steps. If you don't get those steps right, the system doesn't work. I think that either simplifying that process or providing really good step-by-step documentation would be helpful."
"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."
"Paying for the product should come with full and extended training anytime it is needed."
"The only hiccups we had were some power issues, where the box was a little under-powered early on."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's fairly expensive to use Clarity CA. There's a yearly license fee for the solution based on the users, and there's a one-time implementation fee as well."
"The pricing is great. It's billed annually and it's very reasonable."
"The pricing and licensing are good. It's worth it."
"Some of the other solutions were just astronomical in price compared with KACE and didn't necessarily have the ease of use either. So, we chose Quest KACE for its easy-to-use features and cost."
"The pricing and licensing are absolutely fair."
"The cost of KACE has been relatively low compared to other systems. Even if those systems have the same cost, they do not do as much of the third-party patching that KACE natively does."
"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."
"Based on other solutions that we had implemented, its pricing seems to be quite competitive. It is not inexpensive, but it is also not more expensive than any other solution. They have the standard licensing fees and support fees."
"We pay annually for technical support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
10%
Construction Company
9%
Non Profit
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?
In terms of cost-effectiveness, considering a situation where I want to deploy KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) for just pushing updates, it is completely fine. However, apart from that, I d...
What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?
For improvements in KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), I would want to see it become a standalone software agent. I am curious about why it does not offer EDR functionality. Additionally, the...
What is your primary use case for Quest KACE Systems Management?
I have deployed KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) around 230 plus PCs, and I use it to push Windows updates and scripts. I have designed various scripts for tasks such as password resets afte...
 

Also Known As

Client Automation, CA Client Manager, CA Client Automation
Dell KACE Systems Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

First Horizon National Corporation, Olympus, Petroleum Company of Trinidad and Tobago LimitedŒ _Petrotrinî, Racing and Wagering Western Australia
Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
Find out what your peers are saying about Clarity CA vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,588 professionals have used our research since 2012.