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N-able N-central vs Spiceworks 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

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) (6th)
Spiceworks
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (14th), IT Asset Management (10th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (43rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. N-able N-central is designed for Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) and holds a mindshare of 6.0%, down 10.1% compared to last year.
Spiceworks, on the other hand, focuses on IT Infrastructure Monitoring, holds 0.7% mindshare, up 0.4% since last year.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
N-able N-central6.0%
Kaseya VSA13.5%
NinjaOne10.4%
Other70.1%
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Spiceworks0.7%
Zabbix5.1%
Datadog3.7%
Other90.5%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Q&A Highlights

SK
Technical Solutions Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Nov 01, 2017
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Rohit Samel - PeerSpot reviewer
Account Manager Enterprise Sales at Navdeep Technologies Pvt.Ltd
Cloud storage with no hardware needed and great comprehensive reports
The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally. It is a fully software-based solution, eliminating the need for investment in hardware. We have the capability to create reports as needed. It is good software to use, as there were no incidents where I needed to contact technical support. Additionally, it is free software.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"N-able N-central is very scalable."
"N-able N-central is an easy tool to implement with customers."
"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 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."
"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 has numerous good features. The asset tracking capability is powerful, allowing you to track hardware and software on devices connected to your network. The remote control is smooth, securely enabling remote access to servers and routers. It can be integrated with ticketing systems and other tools like CrowdStrike and N-able EDR for comprehensive network monitoring and security. The automation feature is handy, allowing you to schedule tasks, respond to system triggers, and automate problem resolution, such as handling disk space issues automatically."
"The solution's service is good."
"Customer Service: Spiceworks support is only surpassed by the baristas at Starbucks."
"The ROI is high as we only divert one small VM server that needs little maintenance and is worry free."
"We have taken this from a central location and expanded our reach over 8 different companies with around 1000 devices all reporting to one location, and I have had no issues and do not foresee any as we continue to expand and install SpiceWorks at our remaining customers."
"The customization of the service desk; we set it up for use by different departments that had specific tracking needs and were able to meet those needs."
"It’s fantastic because its free to use and easy to set-up in house, but it’s quite sluggish on the administrator end, but considering its free you cannot complain."
"Ticketing works really well."
"Tracking common issues has been improved."
"It lets us know whether devices are getting out of date and tracked warranties. Spiceworks also gave me visibility in terms of what software was installed on each device and its status."
 

Cons

"N-able N-central could improve the remote access, my technicians have complained about it. They have used other free tools instead to compensate, such as TeamViewer. Additionally, when using remote access on the web, it is lacking reports."
"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."
"It was previously expensive and tedious to manage different licenses."
"Involving AI in the platform could improve it further."
"The industry has moved towards Redfish for out-of-band and in-band monitoring, yet N-able N-central still relies on older protocols like SNMP."
"There is room for improvement in the development of custom monitoring services."
"The integration with other applications could be better."
"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."
"Since Spiceworks is a free tool, it's not very scriptable or customizable."
"I think troubleshooting errors became the most frustrating part since it is free; you can’t complain."
"The devices keep showing offline in the dashboard, but when we check it, it's already online."
"Deployment is easy but getting the full details on every networked component can be a challenge."
"Yes, too many. We tried it on a VM, but we had to reboot every 2 days."
"Only issue was with scalability. After some time, as the back-end DB grew bigger, the solution started to perform slower."
"The social and collaborative tools, such as integration to LYNC, Yammer, or equivalents."
"I would like to see more information when drilling down into access permissions, assignments management, or tagging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"N-able N-central is not an expensive solution."
"The pricing and licensing are average, almost six out of ten."
"The product is free! Get it now."
"It might be about $300 annually for a bigger company. If you pay annually, it's better and cheaper."
"Seeing that it is a low-cost solution, I would advise you to go ahead with Spiceworks and experiment with it to see if you can get things working properly, especially if you currently don't have any existing service desk software in place."
"It's free."
"The tool is cheap."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Answers from the Community

SK
Technical Solutions Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Nov 1, 2017
Nov 1, 2017
Unfortunately pricing is never that simple with each product having a multi-tiered offering. Also with vastly different feature sets between vendor products it can be impossible to make side-by-side comparisons. Before even looking at pricing or referring to the good book of Gartner you should put together a list of: 1. Everyday tasks at a functional level 2. How your team perform them today ...
2 out of 9 answers
it_user719895 - PeerSpot reviewer
Diretor de Sistemas de Informação at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Oct 30, 2017
You are comparing 3 different products. Solarwinds play in the major league of NMS. Spiceworks is adware and plays in the minor league. Airwatch is an MDM/MAM product. What is your goal?
it_user357969 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Partner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Oct 30, 2017
Agree with Antonio. Plus, if you’re talking about client desktop management, I think you might be missing better players.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What needs improvement with Spiceworks?
I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment, however, I can provide feedback later. Currently, there do not seem to be any issues.
What is your primary use case for Spiceworks?
If our customers need backup support, we can work with them and provide it. Whatever solution the customer requires, we will ensure it is provided.
What advice do you have for others considering Spiceworks?
It performs its intended functions. We may use it, but perhaps not for ourselves, but for our customers, potentially with Channel Partners. Whenever we are posting any query or reply on a ticket, i...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds N-central, SolarWinds MSP N-central
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Premier Technology Solutions
Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino
Find out what your peers are saying about NinjaOne, Kaseya, TeamViewer and others in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM). Updated: June 2026.
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