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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (4th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Client Desktop Management category, the mindshare of KACE Desktop Authority is 5.4%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ManageEngine Endpoint Central is 37.4%, down from 41.3% compared to the previous year. 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.
Charles A - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective vulnerability, desktop, and patch management
We are using ManageEngine Endpoint Central primarily for desktop management. It allows us to deploy patches, manage antivirus, control endpoints like DLP, and more The most valuable feature to me is the vulnerability management. It also has effective patch management capabilities. The main issue…

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 centralized control of all of our Windows hardware that this solution offers has been most valuable to our organization."
"In terms of technical capability, it is doing very well. It is doing better than other industry products. It is at a place where we can compare it with Microsoft products. Its scalability is also good."
"The most valuable features of ManageEngine Endpoint Central are patch management and remote access and management."
"The dashboard has been very useful."
"Very good, functional solution for endpoint management."
"ManageEngine Desktop Central's most valuable features are remote desktop control and image management. We can send things out from the desk here, it is a very good tool for us."
"The most valuable feature to me is the vulnerability management."
"Page management and ADA integrations are the most valuable features of ManageEngine Endpoint Central."
 

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 pricing could be a bit better."
"There are times when we have a particular software installed in our system, but we do not receive patches for it from Endpoint Central."
"The Deployment scheduler needs updating to support various methods for deployment."
"The solution lacks some configuration."
"I would like to see them include the ability to find out the network usage but I believe that might be a feature of it already."
"We are looking for a complete solution for patch management with central management and the cloud which ManageEngine Endpoint Central does not provide."
"Many features in Desktop Central are licensed separately. It would be more convenient if they could organize these tools into a single package."
"I would like to see them come out with a SaaS version of the product in the future."
 

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 of the product is not bad compared to the other similar solutions in the market."
"Affordable for any customer."
"The product is cheap."
"The price is moderate."
"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."
"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."
"The product is not costly. The product is properly priced, especially for SMBs."
"The price could be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ManageEngine Endpoint Central?
The pricing is cheaper compared to other MDM products, but I don't remember the exact details.
 

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: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.