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KACE Desktop Authority vs ManageEngine Endpoint Central comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

KACE Desktop Authority
Ranking in Client Desktop Management
3rd
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
Ranking in Client Desktop Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (4th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Client Desktop Management category, the mindshare of KACE Desktop Authority is 5.4%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ManageEngine Endpoint Central is 40.0%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Client Desktop Management
 

Featured Reviews

DW
Saves me time and effort when adding and subtracting drives, and Premier Support handles updates
Desktop Authority is nice for us because we can pass out all of our drive mappings and our printers, throughout the office and the shop. Our environment is a very big place because we're a steel fabricator. We don't fabricate steel racks for your kitchen. We're fabricating steel buildings and beams for highrises. We're sitting on a few acres of property, so it's nice to be able to deploy and fix things without always having to walk everywhere or physically go to a machine to map a drive. It's easier to use than doing it in Windows Active Directory, which I never have loved at all. One of the benefits is time savings. If we make a change to a job and I want to pull a drive off of a set of computers, I can do it without having to leave my desk. Before we started using the solution, I would have had to go to every machine. That was a much more cumbersome way of handling it. That is one way it does save me time, probably a few hours every month. I don't have to mess around with something that I can do by opening up Desktop Authority. I can make a few changes, apply those changes, and I'm done in a matter of a few minutes. In the old days, I would have had to go outside, to every machine and every computer. We have jobs that run anywhere from two months to two years. We did a lot of steel for the Rams' stadium, SoFi Stadium in California. That job is still going and it's four years in. But at some point, we're going to want to shut that job down, and we'll shut that particular drive off of the network. And that's the advantage. I can individually go in and say, "Okay, we're done fabricating steel for this job. The shop doesn't need to see this information anymore," and I can pull it away from them really easily with this software. That's one of the things that is a huge benefit for me. That's where it's saving me time.
Gabriel Clement - PeerSpot reviewer
Good for patch server management
For Endpoint Central, as an end-user system, we set automatic deployment from Friday. If, for any reason, there are instances that are missed, we check every day from 07:00 AM to 05:00 PM. We don't need to submit automatic deployment, so it's still part of my deployment process. We set up a test server. Once we are okay with the patch that they need to test, they approve it, and then it applies to production. We used Microsoft. So, for asset processing reports and things like that, we had to move to ManageEngine. They changed the name to Endpoint Central. So, it's like that in terms of being much better and having more functionality as a product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If we make a change to a job and I want to pull a drive off of a set of computers, I can do it without having to leave my desk. Before we started using the solution, I would have had to go to every machine. That was a much more cumbersome way of handling it."
"The solution is stable."
"The initial setup process is good."
"The reporting tool is very good."
"What I like best about this product is that I can log on to every PC, very easily, and chat with the user via the chat feature."
"It's a complete product that allows you to remote troubleshoot, has an inventory of systems."
"The patch management aspect of the solution is the most valuable part for us."
"The ability to patch my servers and endpoints is the most important for me. However, this feature is more pronounced in ManageEngine Desktop Central."
"The stability is great."
 

Cons

"It would be nice if it were a little easier to maneuver around the patch management. I would like to use that more, but it got very cumbersome and complicated when I tried to use it in the past. I haven't used that much since then."
"The team I've currently got is not using it particularly well, due to the fact that they don't know how to use it particularly well. They've not done any training and so on."
"ManageEngine should support various browser features, including those that address browser limitations."
"Its licensing should be improved."
"Improvement should be done as per customer requirements."
"The team should work on improving the stability, particularly with massive patches deployment, clients are not 100% getting patches and the information provided by the system does not help; more detailed report would be very useful."
"Each of their products is an independent product, and they don't have anything to do with each other. It is a suite of packages. They all run independently, and they all are a little different because they were acquired differently. They could standardize their portfolio."
"Improvement of the chats on the web communication through the WAN would be helpful."
"The solution lacks some configuration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost was a big factor when we made the decision to go with it. It wasn't very expensive, and it's not even very expensive now. I pay less than $500 a year for it."
"The pricing is very low, compared to other products. Compared to Intune or SCCM, it's much less. I can say it's a good product for less of a price."
"We had perpetual licenses. The cost was around 36,000, and then you'd have the yearly maintenance fee of 2,000 or 3,000."
"Affordable for any customer."
"There is a freeware version of the solution available as long as you do not breach the number of licenses and users that are dictated."
"Could provide more services on the standard license"
"Compared to other products, ManageEngine Endpoint Central is a very cheap solution."
"The pricing is average."
"The price is moderate."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. What I like most about ManageEngine is that I can log on to every PC very easily a...
What do you like most about ManageEngine Endpoint Central?
Well, what we like is that it catch actually a lot of features constantly upgrading. So all the three maybe there there were some features as the tenant on the earliest version. Now it's it's almos...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ManageEngine Desktop Central, Desktop Central, ManageEngine Desktop Management MSP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elevion
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Strathallan School, BMI Healthcare, Comercial Kywi, First Priority Federal Credit Union, Gerab National Enterprises
Find out what your peers are saying about ManageEngine, Broadcom, Quest Software and others in Client Desktop Management. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.