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ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs N-able N-central comparison

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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

ManageEngine Endpoint Central
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Client Desktop Management (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (5th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
N-able N-central
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. ManageEngine Endpoint Central is designed for Client Desktop Management and holds a mindshare of 17.3%, down 26.6% compared to last year.
N-able N-central, on the other hand, focuses on Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM), holds 5.3% mindshare, down 8.3% since last year.
Client Desktop Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ManageEngine Endpoint Central17.3%
Symantec Client Management Suite14.2%
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)12.1%
Other56.4%
Client Desktop Management
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
N-able N-central5.3%
Kaseya VSA9.7%
NinjaOne9.4%
Other75.6%
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1908987 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ict Manager at a transportation company with 201-500 employees
Centralized endpoint management has improved patching, software deployment, and asset control
ManageEngine Endpoint Central is what I am personally working with and using, along with the Service Desk, which is another tool we use. We have been working with ManageEngine Endpoint Central for four years or more. The customizable packages in software deployment are very positive; you can apply different policies for the package that you are going to deploy. This is something we are still using and working with. ManageEngine has a very large portfolio of products. There is some functionality that is not managed from ManageEngine Endpoint Central, but you can find that functionality in another module of ManageEngine's portfolio.
Dimitri V G - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Manager Fiber & Backhaul Solutions Center & South at Telenet BVBA
Maximizing operational efficiency with comprehensive monitoring and automation capabilities
There are areas in N-able N-central that could be improved. We always started it from the basic purpose of monitoring hardware, where vendors such as HP and Dell try to sell their own services which monitor and provide a dashboard, which is their logic. They want to make their own recurring revenue on that. We notice that SNMP has had a good run and still sometimes is used, but it's becoming an issue to maintain the same capabilities because HP makes it unreliable or even removes certain features that we used to be able to validate redundant array of independent disks. Our service that has been running for 15-20 years suddenly is not working anymore because HP decided in generation 10 plus and above, or generation 10 hardware in servers, storage controllers particularly, they just didn't put the SNMP OIDs anymore. We are now following that market change or business change in hardware monitoring and the future is Redfish, REST API, IPMI type of monitoring with the REST API and Redfish being most common. We have to do the effort ourselves because Enable is not really strategically going there because I assume there's not much money to make to improve that or to convince customers to start with their product. That issue could be better if they would be more prepared for that change and give us customers more tools, preconfigured, pre-available custom services for Redfish, REST API, where we just have to put a few items username, password and address and some dots and commas, but that we don't have to reinvent the wheel, which we are doing at the moment. We are using HP iLO commandlets and REST APIs for Aruba. Dell is making it very hard to monitor their hardware. If it has an iDRAC, I can manage it and monitor it, but if it's something that's less common or due to the portfolio, they have done a good job at not exposing information about health. We would just want to have a red or a green dot that indicates if this device is healthy or not healthy. Since nobody's investing in SNMP because it's a liability in security, they should invest in making a REST API and preferably also do the work on making it easy to pull or push information. That's something that the industry in general and Enable in particular could do a significant job to help us monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is easy."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Honestly, I have to say all features together have become the Swiss army knife of desktop management. They all work hand in hand. Software deployment saves an unbelievable amount of time installing an application on hundreds of computers."
"ManageEngine has improved my organization because right now we can actually monitor and find out which software products are installed on each desktop, and we can then figure out which ones have to get patched and so forth."
"Its value is large because I could free up that person's time to do other work."
"Overall, given the capabilities of Desktop Central, it is one of the best endpoint management solutions and it can cater to most of the operating systems in a client's environment, through a single portal."
"Identification of gaps and filling the gaps with updates are most valuable. We are able to identify known updates or missing updates and then update."
"Desktop Central has improved these organizations and this is why it has been repeated multiple times at multiple organizations. If something works and is getting better it is worth repeating."
"N-able N-central is an easy tool to implement with customers."
"The most valuable features of N-central are its ease of deployment and ease of use."
"The solution's service is good."
"It's a very robust product. They're continuing to invest and put new enhancements into the product. They're very open about what their roadmap is, which is very good for us because then as a business, we can plan."
"I like the remote connectivity, reporting suite, and patch management module."
"The support is at a good level. So normally, we can always get to a solution when we are stuck with some monitoring problems that we encounter."
"N-able N-central is very scalable."
"The transition to N-able N-central was very smooth; we were confident that our migration would not affect any operations, and it was easy to migrate our clients into the new solutions."
 

Cons

"ManageEngine Desktop Central should keep up with some of the features that other major vendors are providing, such as Microsoft."
"I would like to have the option to install the agent remotely. When we change a PC, we have to uninstall the agent and then re-install it on the new one, and it is a difficult procedure."
"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."
"Often I had issues with user configurations."
"Technical support could be better. They should increase their hours of availability so that they are easier to reach and it's more convenient for us."
"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."
"Not many things are needed for improvement, everything seems to be great as it is. One thing that would be good to have would be the ability to add MDM to a tablet running Android 5.0 using the EMM Token Enrollment. If we wanted to add MDM to an older tablet, we just have to go the "long route" to get it added."
"The support team needs work, I have waited months for an answer to some of our requests."
"The support from our direct team is very good, but the support from their day-to-day ongoing help desk isn't that good. They have still got some work to do on that, but they have been focusing on that a lot over the last number of years. So, it has gotten a lot better than it was."
"There is room for improvement in the development of custom monitoring services."
"At this moment, we encounter stability issues with N-able N-central from time to time."
"The integration with other applications could be better."
"The solution's overall integration should be improved."
"N-central has limited mobile device management (MDM) support, specifically for Android devices. This limitation affected a deal with a client who had numerous Android devices to manage. It would be beneficial if N-central could expand its MDM support to include Android devices."
"It was previously expensive and tedious to manage different licenses."
"Involving AI in the platform could improve it further."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay about $250 a year for our license."
"The licensing is very easy to understand and pricing is right for what you get."
"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 product is cheap."
"The pricing of the product is not bad compared to the other similar solutions in the market."
"Compared to other products, ManageEngine Endpoint Central is a very cheap solution."
"The price is moderate."
"The solution is very affordable."
"N-able N-central is not an expensive solution."
"The pricing and licensing are average, almost six out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise35
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ManageEngine Endpoint Central?
I would rate the pricing as seven; it is quite expensive from my point of view for ManageEngine Endpoint Central.
What needs improvement with ManageEngine Endpoint Central?
It would be great to see some additional options within ManageEngine Endpoint Central. A better monitoring tool to analyze network traffic related to patch management would be something good to see...
What needs improvement with N-able N-central?
The MSP part of N-able N-central has evolved over the years. They have been trying to move from professional or network server and desktop licensing to make it more comprehensive. With professional...
What is your primary use case for N-able N-central?
We have been dealing with Enable EDR and N-able N-central, which is a management center. It's the NOC solution that we are currently running our asset management on. We are managing tasks in that e...
What advice do you have for others considering N-able N-central?
There's a new node for N-able N-central which they have addressed. Our outstanding items include reviewing our pricing and partnership level, which can provide additional benefits when we exceed 10...
 

Also Known As

ManageEngine Desktop Central, Desktop Central, ManageEngine Desktop Management MSP
SolarWinds N-central, SolarWinds MSP N-central
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Strathallan School, BMI Healthcare, Comercial Kywi, First Priority Federal Credit Union, Gerab National Enterprises
Premier Technology Solutions
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