BMC Helix Client Management vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) comparison

BMC Helix and Quest Software are both solutions in the Endpoint Compliance category. BMC Helix is ranked #6 with an average rating of 9.0, while Quest Software is ranked #7 with an average rating of 10.0. BMC Helix holds a 8.1% mindshare in EC, compared to Quest Software’s 7.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of BMC Helix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

BMC Helix Client Management

Read 7 BMC Helix Client Management reviews

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161 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

KACE Systems Management App...

Read 39 KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) reviews

3,096 Views
217 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

BMC Helix Client Management

KACE Systems Management App...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 7, 2025

KACE Systems Management Appliance and BMC Helix Client Management are major players in endpoint management solutions. KACE seems to hold an advantage due to its integration with Bomgar and efficient asset and license management.

Features: KACE Systems Management Appliance is favored for its integration with Bomgar, enabling remote imaging and software deployment. This solution offers asset and license management and provides a single pane of glass approach for managing patching and imaging processes. BMC Helix Client Management is notable for its robust remote control functionality, supporting a variety of endpoint environments, and includes comprehensive inventory, compliance, and patch management features.

Room for Improvement: KACE users report scalability issues in environments with over 10,000 devices, and desire improved integration with third-party tools, better patch management, and more intuitive reporting. BMC Helix could enhance its vulnerability assessment features and agent reliability, as well as expand its mobile device management capability, particularly for Android devices.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: KACE offers flexible deployment options, including on-premises and cloud solutions, and is praised for its responsive and knowledgeable customer support. BMC Helix provides both on-premises and public cloud deployment, with generally positive feedback on technical support, though improvements in availability hours are suggested.

Pricing and ROI: KACE's pricing model is device-based and provides good value with options for additional savings through technical support, yielding significant ROI in productivity. BMC Helix offers endpoint-based pricing, delivering affordability and performance value, with flexible feature licensing that suits various organizational needs.

To learn more, read our detailed BMC Helix Client Management vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

BMC Helix Client Management vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

February 2026

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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

BMC Helix Client Management

Ranking in Endpoint Compliance

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Mobile Device Management (MDM) (7th)

KACE Systems Management App...

Ranking in Endpoint Compliance

7th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Client Desktop Management (3rd), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (11th), Patch Management (9th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Endpoint Compliance category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Client Management is 8.1%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is 7.2%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Endpoint Compliance Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
BMC Helix Client Management	8.1%
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)	7.2%
Other	84.7%

Endpoint Compliance

Featured Reviews

Cristian Testa

Presales Manager Product Manager - Latin America Region at tdi

A stable solution that allows you to manage IT clients from receipt to retirement

The initial setup is straightforward and easy to use, but you need to understand the different functionalities and modules. The console version and the Hub application are different, and you need some knowledge to make the process easier. Deployment typically takes about two months. You start with the initial setup and then continue with operations. The deployment process is straightforward. The master installation takes about thirty minutes. After that, you deploy different relays to discover the endpoints and create the credentials and sources to install the agents. Once the agent is installed on an endpoint, you can manage it as needed. The first step is always the installation. BMC Client Management can be deployed both on cloud and on-premises. After the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increased need for remote solutions, so we have customers using both models. In BMC Client Management, I'd rate the initial setup as an eight out of ten.

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Michael Huffman

Server Administrator III at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

Reliability and adaptability enable efficient application deployment and security management

The best features Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) offers include the scripting function, which stands out to me because I can find specific needs and deploy the applications based on those needs. There was a time when scripting really saved me time by allowing me to find specific registry entries and modify them to patch security vulnerabilities. Scripting has saved us hundreds of hours over the years when patching these vulnerabilities compared to how we did it before. I really enjoy the security features that are enabled to deploy Microsoft and other vendor patches, which stand out to me as key functionalities.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The support from BMC Client Management is very good."

"The most valuable features of the solution are patch management and software license management."

"It's a scalable solution. We have deployed it for customers using 3000 nodes to those using 300,000 nodes."

"The inventory and patch management tools are very valuable."

"The most valuable features of the solution are its patching capabilities and the help it offers when it comes to use cases, like prompting for the reboot after a certain period of time."

"One feature I like, that was especially valuable during the pandemic, is remote control. Remote control grants administrators and support personnel access to the laptops and PCs of employees (who might be working from home) in order to fix any issues that come up as and when they come up, even without having to wait for a support request."

"BMC Client Management is a stable solution and one of the best in the market. It allows me to manage all recipe endpoints, including iOS, Android, Linux, Unix, and Windows, all within the same solution."

"The service desk can be configured and customized to better serve our environment."

"Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten."

"The initial setup is relatively easy."

"My company had bought some new machines. We used the tool to do some basic settings to ship every machine the same way and undertake the Windows deployment. We did the scripted installation. The tool helped us deploy custom software for specific departments. We also did Windows updates with the product."

"The most valuable feature of KACE is the mass package deployment. There are a lot of endpoint management solutions in the market. The way KACE responds is with the installation management feature, which is done in a very intelligent way, as well as scripting. It's wow. It's really wow. On top of that, there is a mass undeployment feature as well."

"When vulnerabilities are exploited so much, it is nice to be able to quickly detect or deploy what is needed within our off-work hours or during work hours without a reboot."

"We have our KACE agent deployed on all of our workstations and servers, and it provides us with reports on the hardware and software inventory for those."

"I am impressed by the service desk ticketing and asset management."

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) pros

Cons

"BMC Client Management could improve in the area of integration."

"In BMC Client Management, I would like to see more features for executing commands remotely. For example, with SAP, there isn't the capability to execute all the commands available in the console. The latest version includes more endpoints, but they do not cover everything the operations team needs. Additionally, I think improving the hierarchy for managing endpoints is crucial. Extending the endpoint capabilities would be highly beneficial."

"The on-premises version of BMC Client Management has powerful remote control functionality and decent compliance features, but these features both rely on the discovery tool in order to gain a complete set of insights about the endpoint's environment. Now, BMC's discovery solution depends on having an agent installed in each endpoint and sometimes the agent doesn't work properly, making it difficult to get an accurate understanding of the environment (including special topologies) even with BMC's discovery tool."

"The solution does not offer the functionality of remote access to users."

"It would be good if BMC Client Management can perform vulnerability assessment scanning at the endpoint on its own and mitigate that. Then, we wouldn't have to rely on a third party VA tool. I would like to see this application move to being a web-based one."

"The solution needs to add whitelisting because many customers request it."

"BMC Client Management supports only iOS devices. It would be good if they would support Android as well."

"Paying for the product should come with full and extended training anytime it is needed."

"The problem is that it's harder to directly emulate a lot of the stuff that the group policies do, using the KACE solution. With regular group policies, you just specify the various settings you want to change on the workstations, and then you specify the workstations and—while it's kind of an ugly mess—it does it. Whereas on KACE, you really have to know what you're doing with scripting to effectively script those exact same changes."

"They could make the booting solution easier for different things, e.g., easier to insert drivers. They could make it easier to create a new image and put it onto the server. Those would be some nice solutions. They could make it so that somebody who has no knowledge at all can do it. That would be really nice. Because every time, until I get it memorized, I still need to go back to the training, the manual, or Google it to figure it out again. If they would make it a lot easier, to where a nine-year-old could do it, that would be really cool. If they made it easier, I could have more people managing the images on the server, instead of just one or two people."

"Its dashboard needs improvement. Currently, there is no way to modify the dashboard. There should be more flexibility so that we can create views according to our use case."

"There isn't a lot they need to improve with the solution itself at this point. It is pretty close to providing a single pane of glass for everything that we need for endpoint management specifically on all devices. There is very little that it doesn't provide for us, and for those, we have to go to other methods. There are some of the patching solutions that it doesn't take care of for us. So, we have to do those manually on the devices, and that's really the biggest thing. It doesn't do patching really well for non-Microsoft applications. The major application updates, particularly Windows updates, don't function nearly as well, but, for the vast majority of things, it does just fine. If they could improve in this aspect, that'd be great, but I don't know if they're going to be able to do that."

"The only hiccups we had were some power issues, where the box was a little under-powered early on."

"There may be a good reason why some things are not easily able to be done, yet it needs work to compete with some of the other ticketing systems out there now."

"It is a little bit difficult to use the license compliances because you need to decide when you are using the software catalog if you are using it with their license compliance or the normal software part. Under the inventory, you can use software as a menu link or software catalog. Most of my specialist software is not in the software catalog. When I try to import them, in my license compliances overview, there are cryptic names for this software that I have to import. That is not very good for the reports that I use. When I take them to my bosses, they see cryptic names of software that they don't understand. It would be much better for me if I could use software and the software catalog as well for the license compliances."

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"BMC Client Management is a very affordable solution. There is one main server license which I believe is around $1,000 per year, and then there is the license for the actual solution. With the solution license, you can opt for a suite license where you get access to all the features and benefits, or alternatively you can buy any of the five main components of the suite license individually."

"The solution is low cost."

"BMC Client Management is a high-priced solution, but given its performance and capabilities, I think it offers great value. I don't have the exact number for the yearly licensing costs. I believe there is an additional cost of around two hundred dollars."

"To use BMC Client Management they charge annually per node."

"The pricing is great. It's billed annually and it's very reasonable."

"Licensing is done on a per device basis, so it's dependent on how many agents you've got installed."

"We are also saving on the licensing fee, compared to other endpoint management solutions."

"It may be more expensive, but you get what you pay for."

"We need it, so we have to pay the price. It is what it is. If you need a gallon of milk, then you have to pay the price for it. You don't want to buy the cheap stuff. You want to buy the stuff that is organic and good for your body, which doesn't have all this other junk in it. You want it clean for your body. Quest has done that for our deployment and management systems."

"The pricing is fair."

"We buy consulting fees from Software Factory, then we pay extra for it."

"Licensing is very straightforward. They don't overcomplicate it. This is not a Cisco product where you have to have 30 different licenses just to open the box. It's pretty much set-and-forget. You pay an annual license... The cost is in the mid to upper range, but the ROI exceeds the outside cost, especially once you've had the system for a while."

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Retailer

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

University

12%

Non Profit

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Client Management?

BMC Client Management is a high-priced solution, but given its performance and capabilities, I think it offers great value. I don't have the exact number for the yearly licensing costs. I believe t...

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What needs improvement with BMC Client Management?

In BMC Client Management, I would like to see more features for executing commands remotely. For example, with SAP, there isn't the capability to execute all the commands available in the console. ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for BMC Client Management?

The most common use cases for BMC Client Management among my clients include managing inventory and deployment of a software package.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is that, hands down, it beat all of the others in simplicity and pricing.

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What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?

I wish Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) would have a top-down approach since we use orgs; currently, we have to go into each org to deploy applications when we need them all across the...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Quest KACE Systems Management?

My main use case for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is to deploy applications and maintain security, and we use it day-to-day to handle those tasks. With Quest KACE Systems Managemen...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Mobile Device Management (MDM)

January 2026

Download BMC Helix Client Management product report

Buyer's Guide

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

January 2026

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) report

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Also Known As

BMC Helix Client Management, Helix Client Management, BMC Fromdistance Mobile Device Management

Dell KACE Systems Management

Overview

BMC Helix Client Management offers robust systems management capabilities, focusing on patch management, software licensing, and remote administrative access, crucial for compliance and security.

BMC Helix Client Management enables efficient endpoint management across diverse systems with features like software deployment, inventory control, and compliance management. Offering stable performance, the SaaS version excels in supporting IT managers in regulatory compliance while managing thousands of endpoints. Users find the remote control feature exceptionally useful in remote work settings, facilitating updates and issue resolution seamlessly. There is a growing demand for enhancements such as Linux and Android support, improved integration, and mobile device management. Additionally, clients suggest the inclusion of vulnerability assessment, better agent reliability, application whitelisting, and refined remote command execution capabilities.

What are the key features of BMC Helix Client Management?

Patch Management: Streamlines deployment and updates to ensure security compliance.
Software License Management: Optimizes usage and adheres to licensing agreements.
Remote Control Access: Facilitates remote troubleshooting and updates without delays.
Inventory Management: Provides comprehensive oversight of software assets.
Compliance Management: Assists in maintaining regulatory standards across endpoints.

What benefits should users expect from BMC Helix Client Management?

Cost Reduction: Enhances operational efficiency and license use, leading to cost savings.
Management Efficiency: Simplifies overseeing large endpoint environments.
Security Enhancement: Ensures strict compliance with security protocols, reducing risk.
Improved Support for Remote Work: Seamless updates and troubleshooting improve remote productivity.

In the tech-savvy industry, BMC Helix Client Management proves invaluable for IT managers tasked with software deployment and comprehensive endpoint oversight. Users in heavily regulated sectors leverage its capabilities for ensuring compliance and optimizing resource usage, ultimately driving management efficiency and reducing operational costs.

BMC Helix

KACE Systems Management Appliance offers integration capabilities, efficient image deployment, and comprehensive asset management. It supports centralized management across diverse devices and locations, simplifying IT processes and enhancing security.

KACE Systems Management Appliance provides single-pane visibility for endpoint management, mass software deployment, automated patch management, robust scripting, and detailed inventory tracking. It streamlines IT management and improves cyber-security compliance through remote software updates and centralized IT request handling. Despite struggles with scalability and the need for interface improvements, it enables efficient device imaging, script automation, and network management through detailed reporting. Organizations find it effective for software deployment, asset management, and endpoint monitoring, serving thousands of IoT devices and desktops.

What are the key features of KACE Systems Management Appliance?

Integration capabilities: Seamlessly connects with existing IT systems.
Efficient image deployment: Facilitates quick and effective distribution of system images.
Comprehensive asset management: Provides detailed tracking and management of IT assets.
User-friendly helpdesk: Simplifies handling IT requests and issues.
Automated patch management: Ensures devices are up-to-date with security patches.
Robust scripting: Allows for automation of complex IT tasks.
Detailed inventory tracking: Maintains accurate records of all IT assets.

What benefits should users expect from KACE Systems Management Appliance?

Simplified IT processes: Centralized management enhances operational efficiency.
Improved security: Streamlines cyber-security compliance through automated updates.
Flexibility in customizations: Adapts to specific IT environment needs.
Increased productivity: Efficient ticketing and reporting ease organizational operations.
Remote software updates: Ensures all devices are current, reducing security risks.

In healthcare, KACE Systems Management Appliance is used for maintaining device compliance and security standards. Educational institutions benefit from its capabilities to manage large numbers of endpoints across campuses. In finance, it aids in strict compliance requirements through automated patch management and detailed reporting. Retail sectors leverage its asset management features to streamline operations across numerous locations.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

Charter Manufacturing

Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King

Buyer's Guide

BMC Helix Client Management vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

February 2026

Free Report: BMC Helix Client Management vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

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