Datto Remote Monitoring and Management vs Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) comparison

Datto Remote Monitoring and Management vs. Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

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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

Datto Remote Monitoring and...

Ranking in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)

7th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Quest KACE Systems Manageme...

Ranking in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)

15th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Client Desktop Management (6th), Endpoint Compliance (7th), Patch Management (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) category, the mindshare of Datto Remote Monitoring and Management is 7.8%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is 1.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)

Featured Reviews

Dario Caraponale

Founder at Strong security brasil

It's very easy to implement and create policies

Implementation for our first customer took about a week. The console is cloud-based, while we install agents on customer desktops and laptops, both on-premises and remote. Maintenance seems quite easy so far. I can set up alerts for anything happening in the tool, so my technical staff don't need to monitor the console constantly.

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Scott Tweed

Windows Engineer at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We support nine different nonprofits, and the billing took the manager three or four days working on spreadsheets. When I finished automating everything with Datto, we cut everything down to a couple of hours. That's a substantial cost savings on the billing side."

"AEM support is great for Macs."

"It has a single pane of glass, and it integrates well with other software."

"The remote tool is nice. If a user needs assistance, I don't have to tell the user to do anything. I just ask the user if I can remote in, and 30 seconds later, I have remoted in. It has been really handy."

"The project management and task management features work well. It's a decent product in that regard."

"The tool's main valuable features are its ease of use and intuitive console. It's very easy to implement and create policies. I don't need highly technical staff to manage the tool, which is a big advantage."

"I also like how Datto integrates seamlessly with the Autotask ticketing system."

"The alerting system helps us determine what are high level alerts, and what are alerts which can wait for a day or two. We catch RAID failures, hot servers, bad drives (or predicted failures on drives), etc."

More Datto Remote Monitoring and Management pros

"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 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."

"The initial setup is relatively easy."

"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."

"There is ease of use, and its pricing was a driving factor."

"I can reach people now that I couldn't have reached previously. We are saving about 25 percent in time."

"With KACE, we were able to have a simplification of the software deployment management with more granularity and flexibility."

"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. This just made things so much more convenient for us and so much more efficient."

More Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) pros

Cons

"The main challenge was implementing patch management for software that was not in the tool's standard library or catalog."

"Be prepared to spend a lot of time on conversions if you have a lot of clients."

"The only area where I see room for improvement is the ability to delay the application of patches for a set number of days."

"I would like the ability to remotely manage configuration and settings on individual units. Some organizations have a certain device configuration that needs to be consistent across all computers. For example, if we have computers that cannot go to sleep or hibernate because they're being accessed remotely, we need to be able to quickly configure those computers to not hibernate. With Datto, there is no easy and/or direct way to accomplish this. I can't create a group called No Hibernate and drag all those computers to that group so that they do not go into hibernation. There is no easy way to put in a policy or a procedure like that. It's still back to going to each computer and doing it by hand, which is what I'm trying to get away from. I want to automate and simplify as much as possible. I write code and scripts to do most of my work anyways. The intention is to get away from me having to be so hands-on."

"The CRM capabilities are not very good. It's clunky and could work a lot better than it does. There are no marketing add-ins, for example."

"They have a tab to provide information about the type of hardware the computers have. One thing they don't specify is what model of hard drive the computers have. Identification of storage models would be nice."

"My most significant criticism is Datto is a complex product that takes a while to understand, but that could be said of almost any solution at the same level. It depends on where you're starting from. You have to rework all your workflows, and it's some heavy lifting if you want to get it right."

"The actual setup and the automation of their product are horrific. When you buy it, there is nothing out of the box. You have to custom design it for everything you want it to do. You pay for implementation, but they don't really do a whole lot to help you get it going. I know it does a lot more than what ours is set up to do, which is frustrating. When I've demoed other systems, their setup is so much better. When you pay for their setup, there is so much more, whereas I just feel like we didn't get a very good setup."

More Datto Remote Monitoring and Management cons

"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."

"The customization of the interface needs improvement for things like end user tickets. While the functionality is good, some of that UI stuff does need improvement."

"They could make the booting solution easier for different things, e.g., easier to insert drivers. They could make it easier to create a new image and put it onto the server. Those would be some nice solutions. They could make it so that somebody who has no knowledge at all can do it. That would be really nice. Because every time, until I get it memorized, I still need to go back to the training, the manual, or Google it to figure it out again. If they would make it a lot easier, to where a nine-year-old could do it, that would be really cool. If they made it easier, I could have more people managing the images on the server, instead of just one or two people."

"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."

"Paying for the product should come with full and extended training anytime it is needed."

"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."

"I would sure like them to be able to copy and paste out of OneNote. That drives me nuts. You can't copy from OneNote into KACE."

"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."

More Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license typically depends on the number of endpoints. On the RMM side, I think we're paying around $2,250 per endpoint. Then there is also a license per user and tech, so that comes out to about a hundred bucks per tech, give or take."

"It goes by how many endpoints you have. It is about $3,000 a month for us. If we can't figure it out ourselves and need additional help to set it up, we would have to pay for that."

"AEM is a lot more scalable as you just pay per agent instead of having to purchase expensive licenses."

"It fluctuates on the number of computers you have. Depending on the number of computers you have, it can fluctuate anywhere between $5 to $10 per computer per month, which is not too bad. I am not aware of any additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee. It was one flat rate per device."

"Regarding pricing, Kaseya sells it as part of a bundle called Kaseya 360. This package includes several tools, such as EDR, ransomware protection, and more. Considering the bundle, the price is reasonable. However, where I am in Brazil, the high dollar rate and taxes make it not cheap for mid-sized companies. Still, it's competitively priced compared to similar tools."

"We had to pay out some overtime for a few problematic sites. Sites on domain networks are incredibly easy to install. We learned a few tricks that streamlined the process, but in the beginning, it was a bit tedious."

"The product is reasonably priced."

"Licensing is very straightforward. They don't overcomplicate it. This is not a Cisco product where you have to have 30 different licenses just to open the box. It's pretty much set-and-forget. You pay an annual license... The cost is in the mid to upper range, but the ROI exceeds the outside cost, especially once you've had the system for a while."

"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."

"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."

"We buy consulting fees from Software Factory, then we pay extra for it."

"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."

"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."

More Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Retailer

Government

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Datto Remote Monitoring and Management?

We are still on the learning curve with the solution, so I can't point out many specific areas for improvement yet.

What advice do you have for others considering Datto Remote Monitoring and Management?

The main challenge was implementing patch management for software that was not in the tool's standard library or catalog. We overcame this by working with their technical support; now, we know how ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Datto Remote Monitoring and Management?

Regarding pricing, Kaseya sells it as part of a bundle called Kaseya 360. This package includes several tools, such as EDR, ransomware protection, and more. Considering the bundle, the price is rea...

What do you like most about Quest KACE Systems Management?

My company had bought some new machines. We used the tool to do some basic settings to ship every machine the same way and undertake the Windows deployment. We did the scripted installation. The to...

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.

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Product Reports

Datto Remote Monitoring and Management

Download Datto Remote Monitoring and Management product report

Datto Remote Monitoring and Management report

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Download Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) product report

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) report

Also Known As

Autotask EM, Autotask Endpoint Management, Datto RMM

Dell KACE Systems Management

Overview

Autotask Endpoint Management is everything you need from an RMM solution, and it is all managed On Autotask’s customizable dashboards.

datto

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance is a comprehensive tool for managing IT endpoints. It facilitates asset management, software distribution, and endpoint tracking while offering remote access capabilities and a centralized help desk.

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance is designed for organizations that need efficient endpoint management. It offers a range of features like inventory tracking, automated patch management, and ticketing. By integrating with remote access tools such as Bomgar, Quest KACE helps reduce manual tasks involved in managing software updates and system deployments. Although it faces challenges in scalability and requires improvements in integration and reporting, it remains a versatile choice for asset tracking and endpoint administration.

What are Quest KACE SMA's key features?

Asset Management: Streamline the organization and tracking of physical and virtual assets.
Remote Access: Integrates with Bomgar for secure, remote troubleshooting and management.
Software Distribution: Deploy applications across devices efficiently without physical intervention.
Centralized Endpoint Management: Manage endpoints from a centralized console to ensure compliance and optimization.
Automated Patch Management: Schedule and deploy patches to maintain system security and performance.
Help Desk: Integrated ticketing system for tracking and resolving user issues.
Scripting and Reporting: Enhance administrative tasks through automated scripts and detailed reports.

What benefits should users consider?

Improved Productivity: Reduces manual interference with automated deployments and updates.
Labor Savings: Minimizes labor requirements with efficient remote management tools.
Integrated Reporting: Provides actionable insights through comprehensive reports to optimize IT operation.
User-Friendly Interface: Boosts effectiveness due to its intuitive, easy-to-navigate design.

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance is implemented across industries for managing IT assets and endpoints, particularly where remote management and compliance are critical. It's employed in healthcare, education, and government sectors for efficient patch management, inventory control, and software deployment, aiding organizations in managing security accreditations and centralizing help desk operations.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

Wessex Networks, Base2, Valiant Technology, Technology Services Group, TechGuru

Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King

Datto Remote Monitoring and Management vs. Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)