Automox Reviews

We use Automox for patch management, software distribution, and to implement security controls. Any time we have to connect to a machine and run an automated process, we use Automox. The solution gives us complete visibility for any laptop, desktop, or server in our environment regardless of where they are located. Automox gives us the tools for writing scripts to see even more if we need to.

We use the Automox worklets to create and automate customized tasks across endpoints all the time. We love going in and using the worklets to find solutions for common day to day stuff. Sometimes it's a worklet that we run on one machine, and sometimes it's a worklet that needs to be run on every machine in the environment. We use them all the time.

One example is when we had an old antivirus that was on all our machines and we had a new antivirus that we needed to apply to the machines. So we created a worklet script that in one step removed the old antivirus. It was complicated because it had to check many buttons to guarantee that the old antivirus was removed and install the new antivirus, and then give us a report at the end that it was installed securely and effectively. So it was a complicated and long worklet, but it was very effective.

Automox has improved our organization in the security sense. We created a worklet that allows us to harden a machine after an employee leaves. So the scenario is, for example, that we terminate an employee in the middle of a workday, maybe on a Wednesday at noon. We don't want that employee to log back into his machine or to extract data or to do anything dangerous. Automox gives us the ability to create tools so that we can make some changes inside that laptop. This way the person cannot log in as usual. And just by virtue of having an agent on the machine from Automox, with creativity from us or the user base, we can get some great things done.

Automox has saved us on multiple tasks at least 10 to 15 hours a week. There are times when I don't even know how we would have done some of the things that we do today without Automox. I can't even put that into time, but just having Automox at our fingertips has enabled us to do stuff so much quicker, so much easier.

The flexibility in creating tools to make changes on remote machines is most valuable to me. The reporting feature is also fantastic because on any given day I can bring up a list of machines that don't have patches, for example. Or I can bring up a list of machines that are in my environment on a certain day. The solution helps me with not only my own role, and what I look for internally myself, but it also helps during audits. I can go in and look at the number of machines in there, and their owners and timelines. It certainly helps tell a story for anything that IT requires.

Being a cloud-native platform was one of the features and reasons we went with Automox. Having machines that are hosted in a particular facility is limited in a lot of cases to VPNs and subject to slowness and outages.

Automated patching has helped us to a great degree to know that patches will happen regardless of whether we jump in or not. And it's a positive feature.

I'm not sure about areas of room for improvement. Basically, just improving the product or building more features into the product will help us. For example, asset management would be a great feature to add to Automox. We would run easier scripts or more out of the box scripts that would help us in audits. It's not a defect in the product. It's just that the product is so strong that I think Automox could add even greater functionality. They're doing it every day and they're adding features all the time. It's just that you start dreaming about all the things you could do with Automox and asset management is one of the things that really resonates with us.

We've been using Automox for a little over two years now.

Scalability works fine, and all the scalability is in the cloud with Automox. They make it easy to do this. As they've grown, it's become obvious that it's easier to do it. Initially, when we bought the product, it was a little challenging as they were growing while we were growing. Yet they provided the tools to be able to scale, as needed, very effectively.

I can't give you exact numbers, because it changes on a daily basis, but we are monitoring thousands of endpoints. We have end-user endpoints that are probably in the 1500 and above position. And we have server nodes that are probably close to thousands.

At this stage, we've 100% adopted the solution so we don't have plans to increase our usage. There's not a computer server of ours that hasn't gotten the agent and is not fully implemented into the Automox way of thinking. As we bring clients online for new hires, they have the Automox agent ready to be deployed in the scripts. The minute the person has his machine and is using it, he's Automox ready.

I would rate Automox technical support as really excellent. There were times when we needed them. We haven't always gotten the answer back immediately because they've misunderstood what we said or something has happened. Yet the quality of the people answering our questions, and the attentiveness to our business, is way beyond what we get with comparable tools and products from much bigger companies. We're really, really happy with the support we get from Automox.

Before Automox, we used a home grown solution. It's something that we put together ourselves that wasn't ideal for a growing company.

It takes a little bit of time to ramp up and understand how the Automox tool works and how effective it can be. So once you put a few days of moving through the system and understanding it, the solution becomes very easy to use.

The solution setup is straightforward. We have some intelligent people who were involved in the patching process, who understand Active Directory, who understand the patching process and understand internally our users and how they work. All along the way, AutoMox was excellent in providing us with all the help and resources we needed to understand how to do stuff. They were there for our questions and suggestions as we hit roadblocks, and to try and figure out different ways of doing things. They were instrumental in getting us up and running very quickly.

I think it took us two or three weeks to get comfortable with how we had set it up and to start not only pushing out the first patches, but also to try and run different software packages and do different things with it. We didn't exclusively dedicate time to AutoMox. We jumped in and out for a period of two weeks while emailing support at AutoMox on maybe one or two questions. We were up and running very, very quickly.

Being a small company, we realized that we needed a product that would do the work. Our implementation was essentially just to look at what we had existing in our patch rollout tool prior to AutoMox, and to get AutoMox side-by-side with this tool and copy over dates, times, groups. This way we could get the patches rolled out whilst at the same time, we're looking at our software management tool. The team had no trouble setting up policies with Automox.

We have seen a return on our investment. Number one, fewer man hours are spent trying to understand how to roll out patches. Number two is reporting. You can go inside Automox and get reports to see exactly what you have. 

The visibility, far beyond patching, allows us to see which machines have what sort of software installed, or which users are using old hardware. The old hardware is all available inside so you can go in and say, "Show me everybody who's using this particular model of a laptop, which is four to five years old." You can plan to reach out to these people in good time and get them swapped out with newer hardware. So the list of things is endless. It's just really up to the user to be creative in how they use it.

Automox just charges us a set amount per user, per month, for using the product. That is very important to us. Because it's a cloud-native solution, you're saving on the cost of hosting an on-premises solution on your servers.

We looked at some solutions that were similar yet they were hosted on site. Being a cloud native platform was a reason we ultimately chose Automox. Not having an appliance in our environment was very positive. Not having to pay for the bandwidth and the power of that appliance in our environment was positive.

We did a brief proof of concept with Automox and it worked well, so we were already sold by the time we had seen the demo. We understood the pricing and we understood all the other features that they'd shown us. The demo was important, but our minds were already made up. We liked what we saw.

We looked at an IBM solution, but I can't remember the name of the solution. We also looked at another third party solution that I can't remember the name of either. The IBM solution was extremely costly. It required $250,000 in upfront money, and a lot of learning. It even required that we had onsite hardware. The other solution that we looked at was semi-cloud-based and it also required a lot of capital investment into the product. The beauty of Automox is that there is no upfront money. There is no server that needs to be installed in your environment. The pricing is all based upon what you use and everything is in the cloud. It works much better than the other solutions that we evaluated.

Cross-platform patch management is very important because we have a diverse environment and need the flexibility of one tool that can do everything. We automate our patching via Automox and also manage it manually. We have automation set up that runs once a month on a certain date. Then we go in and discuss elements of the business that would stop us giving certain patches to people on a certain day. So automation is in place, but we do sit down and have a hard think every month about whether the date that we're planning to roll out the patches works or if there are any changes that we need to make prior to the patch roll out.

The solution provides patch management from a single console across Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It gives us the ability to manage all our endpoints for patching in a single pane of glass with advanced features that enable us to turn on, turn off, change days, and change the criteria for how patches are delivered to certain groups of machines. The patch management console requires an owner, a person who will be dedicated to managing patching going forward. Once that person is trained, they become a master in how to do it. So it's not the most simple thing if you want to use advanced features, but it's very effective in helping you see everything that you need to patch at your fingertips and to edit it easier.

Automox works quickly to do its job and it will try to find machines that are turned on to implement workloads or patches. Sometimes if you want something done you're at the mercy of people having their machines turned on. The beauty is that even if a machine is not on and it only comes online later in the day or a week later, Automox realizes that this machine is missing worklets, patches, tools, or software, and installs them after the fact.

Automox has downtime when they provide maintenance, but they keep it to off-business hours. So it rarely impacts businesses who are using it. There were times in the past, when they realized that they were close to capacity, and they asked for feedback on how things were working. Then they made changes with some downtime to facilitate being a better product and this is completely understandable. Being in the software business ourselves, and hosting solutions for customers, we realize that sometimes you can do 95% of your maintenance off-hours, as we do. But sometimes, you need to impact the business day in the event that there are large changes that need to be made.

I would say go try and buy. You don't have to make a huge capital investment to try out the solution and see if it fits your environment. They're a great company to work with on multiple levels because their product works. It's efficient, easy to implement and consistently delivers. Don't be afraid to reach out to them with any questions. They work like a company in 2021 should. They're very attentive to their customers for everything from billing to technical support, to all sorts of interactions. Automox has very modern day thinking.

We use Automox as part of one of our product offerings, our server management, where we use it for patch management.

As concerns the Atlantic.Net side, when we're selling to the marketplace, we sell mostly public cloud with dedicated hosts, or cloud VMs. We also sell hybrid cloud and private cloud, as well as co-location when that unique need arises.

Obviously, with so many servers out there, our clients are very big into compliance, examples being HIPAA, PCI, NIST, ISO certifications and the like. We need to be able to provide patch management and that's how we utilize Automox. That's what got us started looking for this back in 2017. We needed something as our in-house solution was not working very well in terms of what we wanted: visibility and up-to-date patching. At that point, we decided to explore new open source options versus what is out there for purchase. 

This is how we stumbled across Automox and started using it with our clients. We never truly made this kind of functionality into a formal offering before settling on Automox. It was more on an urgent-need basis. But, once we adopted Automox, we made it a formalized offering.

The biggest improvement to our organization is the man-hours it saves us. One of the reasons we shied away from selling these kinds of things in a formal product, prior to Automox, is simply that it would have taken two or three dedicated people just to do updates — and that was before we really started it. We had some formal things for Windows in place, but because we've had so many different product offerings for operating systems, not just Windows, it was really tough to have everything covered under one solution, especially an open-source solution.

The savings in man-hours alone, in switching from that to Automox, means Automox has paid for itself. While I do not have exact figures, since then we've been patch managing five to seven times the number of servers. There's no way we would've been able to do that and still keep it cost-effective. How much time do we save? It depends on the load, since there is always that spike, given that Microsoft comes out with a new patch on Tuesdays. Not taking that into account, we probably spend about an hour a day, per person, meaning roughly five hours a week. That comes out to about 20 hours a month doing patch management through Automox, where in the past it was a full-time job for about two people.

Since we have scaled—and all the more so because in security compliance you have to test the updates, and do other things as well—we've probably saved hundreds of hours a month, at least. This amounts to significant savings.

The most valuable feature is probably the interface. Obviously, the work they do behind the scenes is important, such as: making sure that all the patches are there and making sure that everything is explained, such as what requires a reboot and what does not. It saves us on much legwork by removing all that manual processing from our side. From our point of view, the interface is clearly super simple to use, super simple to get up and running. It also makes it very easy to digest the data.

When I look at the dashboard, I can see how many are scheduled for updates, how many are already fully up to date, and how many need attention. I can see if there are any exceptions that my people put in for the customer. It's one of those things where it's really easy for everyone to be on the same page.

I can go to the Control Panel and I can create different organizations. This way, not everything has to be under one single interface and account. We can split it out as we see fit. That was something that we wanted. While it was not a big deal, it is nice that I can now go in and see a customer who has 400 VMs with us in a single pane of glass. I can click and see where they stand, as opposed to having to go through thousands all mixed together.

We would like to see additional detailed reporting for Service providers like us. We had to build our own reports via their APIs to meet our needs.

I have been using the product since June 2017.

Other than when maintenance is being performed, we have had no issues with the stability of the product, no downtime.

The scalability has been great, especially now that we can segment out large customers. 

We have significant plans for integrating it into our cloud portal. We can start with just the patching, which is what we are undertaking at present, and progress to offer it as a self-service model in our cloud portal.

We have had no complaints about the technical support. We've used it twice in almost four years now and have had no issues, and no complaints from our side. It's been great.

Prior to using Automox, we utilized open source and a Microsoft solution together. We would not consider the Microsoft solution to be a direct competitor of Automox. It was used solely for patching Windows systems, and the open source was used only for patching Linux-based systems.

There were a host of reasons that we decided to switch from this approach to utilizing Automox. The old systems were cumbersome, very hard to understand and to train on. They involved a long learning curve. Also, you were very limited in what you could and could not manage. You were very limited in terms of scheduling or the updates that you wanted to apply. For certain OS’s, even with the open source solution, you could not patch Windows and you could not patch certain Linux flavors with it. Just that issue alone left us asking ourselves how we could offer a full-fledged product without even being able to do all the OS’s that we offer.

That is when we started looking at a real system to replace it. We were not set on going with a cloud-native solution, but this being in the cloud reduced, by two VMs, what we would have had to manage, update, monitor and the like. That made life that much easier for my people.

We did make use of Automox's free trial prior to using it, which we considered extremely important. You may get promised the world concerning tech solutions, just to discover that they often do not properly work. A sales representative may promise you the world and then not carry through. We actually got an extension on the trial because we were not yet ready. We then ended up paying for just one endpoint on a server. We were getting a little delayed. Once everyone received the approval from everyone buying in, we proceeded to push it live. If they still make available a free trial, definitely use it, because it makes life a lot easier.

We required four staff in total for the deployment, involving two engineers who did the actual work, and two decision-makers. I found the initial setup of Automax very straightforward, very easy. My tech level is that I know what I'm talking about. I can kind of navigate pretty well, definitely not day-in and day-out, as I'm not in systems anymore due to my position. But, even if you told me to set it up today for a smaller-medium sized business that has 50 VMs, I could probably knock it out and do so without having too many headaches. That includes setting up policies, the VMs, and the hosts, and having everything set up and reporting back and making certain that we are hitting the criteria we set out to achieve. That is all pretty easy thanks to the interface. 

Regarding the length of time of the initial deployment, we did not rush with the testing. We had a trial and then we asked for another trial because we got pulled away due to what was going on with our customers and other systems. Once we decided to move forward with it, it took less than a week. This did not involve pushing very hard to get it done. It was more the case that my people had the time.

For our implementation strategy, we matched it up. The hardest part involved defining how we wished to put customers in at the time. That was before we had the ability to split them out into different segments. We had to figure out how to match what our other systems do, such as: customer number, customer name, and the relevant service policy. This is because some customers only want critical updates and some want all updates. Other customers want no updates to ever be applied. They just want to be notified of them and then they can update the patches themselves. We went in there, took our customer feedback and made it fit our needs.

We did not work with any third-party integrator or a consultant to help out with the deployment. I had experience because I'm actually the person in charge of our Salesforce and its development. With Salesforce, you definitely need the help of a consultant no matter what. You can get away with a simple deployment of Salesforce. Once you start getting deeper into CPQ and the like, that this is where the devs come in. With this, there's no need for them. It's very simple to deploy. We have two people maintaining it.

While I cannot supply you with specific numbers, the savings in man-hours alone has been a great ROI on the use of Automox. On the flip side, as we are heavily involved in the security compliance sector, we have to take into account HIPAA, PCI, SOC and the like. We need an offering for auto-patching. Whether or not the customer actually opts for it, the ability to provide him with the option at least gets us in the arena to bid on the deal. If we didn't have that as an offering, then we would have lost a lot more deals over the years.

The pricing and licensing costs have been great for us. We got in early and then they had a little price rise. Overall for the price that they charge now, you get your money's worth on it.

For us, they had no additional costs beyond their standard licensing price. I don't know if they do setup now but we did all our own setting up and deployment. It solely involved licensing costs for each endpoint.

My advice to others who are evaluating or thinking of implementing Automox is to give it a shot. If a free trial is still available, definitely use it, because it makes life a lot easier.

We did evaluate other options although I do not recall which ones off the top of my head. Most of them were not just patching solutions. They were a lot of other things too, and we did not need those extra pieces.

There are other differences between the other solutions and Automox, in terms of pros and cons. When it comes to solutions, we want to try to do open source first. We are very big on open source, our entire cloud platform having been built from the ground up by our development team. When comparing Automox to the open source solutions, we were finding many gaps where, perhaps, the open source could not support all the OS’s that we wanted to support, or which involved much more manual labor, or involved delays in the patches being made available in the appropriate amount of time. There were a number of reasons that, once we started examining everything, it made much more sense to go with Automox.

I recently asked my team about which areas of the product have room for improvement and for the moment we don't have any complaints, something I find anomalous. When I hear that from my techs and engineers, it’s always a great thing.

We're not heavy into the Worklets yet, so those may have room for improvement, as they are something new for Automox and for us. But overall, when it comes to patch management, the dashboard, ease of use, and the ease with which data is digested, have been great for us.

We're not trying to push what Automox is for. We use it for patch management as its key task and it's been fantastic for that. There have been no complaints by us so far.

Our staff who access it include systems administrators and systems engineers. Across our organization, we have around ten people who access it at least once per month. There is not a lot that needs to go into this. I haven't really had to do much work with it altogether during the past year or two. We really only need one or two guys in here, depending on whether Microsoft or, perhaps, Ubuntu drops a large patch. The amount of manual labor required of an employee is very limited, which is nice.

The biggest lesson that we have learned from using Automox is that as a managed service provider, it gives us a lot of insights into what our customers want. There are many customers who come in and state that they want everything patched up and up to date. Then, there are those who are the complete opposite. Most of our customers fall somewhere in the middle. Many of them do not have a proper understanding of why things need to be patched. But this has been very interesting because once we went live, we started getting feedback from our customers and this gave us insight into other areas that our customers consider to be important.

The cloud-native aspect of the solution was not very important to us. We considered it to be a "take it or leave it" feature. Retrospectively, it is a great feature to have. It saves us from worrying about the servers or about updating Automox. So it does, in retrospect, make a lot of sense to go cloud native because we don't have to worry about it. We have had no issues, no downtime issues with Automox. There are no complaints in that regard. While being cloud native was not a key feature at the time, looking back it’s pretty nice not to have to worry about it.

The solution provides us all the visibility we need, although we do not actually manage laptops. We only deal with what's inside data center walls. We actually use it for our employees’ desktops and then on the server side. It gives us complete visibility.

While we don't have any macOS on here, the patch management definitely covers Windows, Linux, and even Unix. We love the overall patch management abilities. It's the main driver of why we adopted Automox, and it has definitely stood up to the test of time.

It is absolutely important to us that it provides a cross-platform patch management across Windows and Linux endpoints. This was one of the driving factors and among the decision-making criteria for us. We already had two different patch management systems in the past, one of which could only handle Windows, the other only Linux. We were looking to try to unify that. It was such a pain since we were forced to bounce from one to the other. One of our older solutions capped out on how old an OS could be, since we have some customers who simply cannot move an application off an older OS. With Automox, the gamut is covered. That's what we want, that single pane of glass for patch management.

For the moment, we do not use the product for automation of patching. While it is definitely in our R&D pipeline to adapt it, we do not yet have it automated. They have the playbooks and they seemed very interesting to me. I'm just waiting for some R&D time on our side so that it may be integrated.

My people have been using Automox's Worklets for simpler tasks or those that are not overly complex. We're waiting to get these into our cloud portal. For the moment, we are making some use of them. We feel it is pretty important that Worklets enables us to enforce tasks across any managed endpoints. Especially in light of some of the vulnerabilities over the past two years, we want to enforce that our customers update. While we do not force updates, we want to make certain that the updates are covered and are applied in a reasonable amount of time. There are some delays with clients. Consequently, this capability of follow up and notification, should it still be waiting, is very important to us. We’re using some of the Worklets from the community, which is really nice. One of them involves getting Windows Update events, and that is great because it's part of troubleshooting.

I've never had a complaint with Automox's speed. None of my people have had a complaint. We are satisfied with it. 

While my technical level is not that of an engineer, I can set up VMware, Windows, and Hyper-V environments. I can do the basics and follow instructions. This solution was super easy. We just installed it on a server during the original testing and then had it phone home and that was simple.

We do not yet make use of it for API functionality, but this is something that we are looking into. It's part of our R&D plans to be able to push it from the cloud portal for customers. My people have already used it internally, but it's not yet for our clients.

We use it for patch management. It is used for patching servers and workstations.

We're using the web version.

Its flexibility is most valuable.

It should have integrated workstation access. So, there should be a remote desktop feature.

We dealt with it for a couple of months.

It has been pretty stable.

It should be easy. We're probably going the opposite way. We're not going to be doing much scaling up. If anything, we'll be scaling down.

There are three people who use this solution. They are from desktop support and server infrastructure.

I never had to contact them other than during the implementation.

It wasn't complex at all.

Its licensing for a year was nine grand. There was no additional fee.

It is a flexible solution that does a majority of the tasks. The only thing it really doesn't do is Mac, which is something that Jamf Pro does, but it is not necessary.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.