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Clarity CA vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 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

Clarity CA
Ranking in Client Desktop Management
5th
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
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Compliance (8th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (12th), Patch Management (10th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Client Desktop Management category, the mindshare of Clarity CA is 8.1%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is 6.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Client Desktop Management
 

Featured Reviews

TN
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.
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

"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."
"Using Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), we have been able to manage three times the amount of machines as other groups while having half the staff, which has positively impacted our organization."
"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."
"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."
"There is ease of use, and its pricing was a driving factor."
"Using this solution saves us lots of time, especially when it comes to performing updates."
"This product made the job easy to do without having to go put hands on the machines."
"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."
"We use the Systems Deployment appliance. It's our bread and butter. It is every machine that gets imaged here in this building and out through the whole state goes through the SDA. We rely on it completely. There is no manual process of getting a laptop out of a box, plugging it up, turning it on, and waiting for Windows to start. If you were to go to Best Buy and buy a brand new laptop, you spend the next two to three hours just setting it up. We don't do that. We get a laptop, plug it into the network, connect it to the SDA, and within about three clicks, we're done."
 

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."
"It is a little bit difficult to use the license compliances because you need to decide when you are using the software catalog if you are using it with their license compliance or the normal software part. Under the inventory, you can use software as a menu link or software catalog. Most of my specialist software is not in the software catalog. When I try to import them, in my license compliances overview, there are cryptic names for this software that I have to import. That is not very good for the reports that I use. When I take them to my bosses, they see cryptic names of software that they don't understand. It would be much better for me if I could use software and the software catalog as well for the license compliances."
"I still need better communication about which processes are really due and which processes are currently being processed. According to the initial setup service provider, there is still no real management or overview on KACE where you can really see 100 percent of what is going on as well as what is going to be processed next and whether I can influence the overall process. It could really help me if I knew, e.g. exactly in 10 minutes my colleague will be supplied with this or that software. I haven't found this yet. If they could add this, that would be cool. It is still missing and I haven't yet found something like this."
"There may be a good reason why some things are not easily able to be done, yet it needs work to compete with some of the other ticketing systems out there now."
"There should be a mini toolbox, like the competitors of KACE have, with the small features for KACE administrators. That would make their lives easier. If you are troubleshooting a specific endpoint, remote control is available as is Wake-on-LAN. But if you want to execute some commands, you have to use a third-party tool, the PS tool. If they would integrate those small things, it would make KACE more powerful."
"Its dashboard needs improvement. Currently, there is no way to modify the dashboard. There should be more flexibility so that we can create views according to our use case."
"It took a little bit of time to figure out how to use the KACE Service Desk. I like the way that I'm able to customize it. But when it comes to how our techs are able to use it, it's not as functional as our current solution, which is BMC FootPrints Service Desk."
"It could be designed a little bit more intuitively in terms of administration."
"There is always room for improvement. However, the system does most of what we need at this moment."
 

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 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."
"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."
"Its pricing model is good for what it offers. Nobody here gives me a hard time about renewing the contract every year. It might be a little cost prohibitive for a smaller company who has to stand up a virtual environment as well as have virtual environment licensing and the hardware. If you have a smaller environment, it might be cost prohibitive. If you only have a couple of hundred computers, you might be more willing to do those manually. In our environment, the cost savings of having KACE far outweigh the licensing costs. We are okay with its pricing model."
"It may be more expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"The pricing and licensing are good. It's worth it."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
University
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is that, hands down, it beat all of the others in simplicity and pricing.
What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?
I wish Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) would have a top-down approach since we use orgs; currently, we have to go into each org to deploy applications when we need them all across the...
What is your primary use case for Quest KACE Systems Management?
My main use case for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is to deploy applications and maintain security, and we use it day-to-day to handle those tasks. With Quest KACE Systems Managemen...
 

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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.