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Clarity CA vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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

Clarity CA
Ranking in Client Desktop Management
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KACE Systems Management App...
Ranking in Client Desktop Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Compliance (7th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (12th), Patch Management (9th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Client Desktop Management category, the mindshare of Clarity CA is 11.2%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is 12.2%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Client Desktop Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)12.2%
Clarity CA11.2%
Other76.6%
Client Desktop Management
 

Featured Reviews

TN
Solution center consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Multipurpose and useful for managing projects and resources; easy to integrate with other systems, and has a knowledgeable technical support team
I support Clarity CA, but I'm on the administrator side rather than the end-user side. My company has a partnership with Clarity CA. Clarity CA is deployed on-premises in my company, but I have a customer who deployed the solution on the cloud. Deploying the solution requires two or three resources. For ongoing support, it depends on how many people use Clarity CA. A minimum of three or four resources would be enough to support the solution, particularly two LIFF developers and one administrator. My advice to people looking into implementing Clarity CA is to make sure there's a team who'll support it, otherwise, you have to look into a Broadcom partner that can provide you with a service support deal. This way, you don't have to deal with the many administrative and maintenance responsibilities that go with Clarity CA as that could be a hassle. You have to be ready by having a team who will support the solution. My rating for Clarity CA is nine out of ten. Its interface is getting better. It has everything you need in terms of program or project management. The solution works for any organization. It's stable, flexible, and has been around for a long time. You can do a lot with Clarity CA, and that gives you a little bit of power.
AdityaJain - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Administrator at EbixCash
Centralized software deployment has simplified endpoint control but needs stronger security alerts
What I like best about KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is that it allows pushing custom-made applications to all computers that have KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) endpoint installed. This makes it easier for the organization to push patches and updates. If I need to push EDR updates, I can use KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), as it automatically updates the EDR on that endpoint, and that is a great feature. Overall, KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) helps streamline my processes by allowing me to check the uptime and downtime of machines, whether they are connected to the internet or not, and how long a machine has been switched off. I can also gather hardware details and software inventory from it. I can show a live demonstration if a video conference can be arranged. Incident resolution capabilities with KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) have improved operational efficiency for system administrators, as it makes it easier to track machines with KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), gather their IP addresses, and push several updates, patches, or software deployments at once. I can design compliances as per my requirements, such as ensuring passwords are reset after 45 days.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My organization has benefited from Clarity CA because everyone can do project staffing through it, people in the organization can staff projects by looking at the resources and skills before staffing, change requests can also be done in Clarity CA, and through it you can have an overall view of each project and how a project is doing, so it helped improve my organization."
"It is also really easy to use; you just schedule a job and create a package of software, and everything just works."
"To me, the most valuable feature of Clarity CA is the timesheet. It's the only feature I use because I just support the tool, and I just enter time on it. Others use Clarity CA for other purposes, such as resource management, project management, scheduling, and financials. The tool also has a fairly simple integration with other systems, so at the moment, it's working fine. I also like that you can write your own code in Clarity CA, and you can make changes to it based on your needs."
"The ability to build scripts right on the deployment center itself, as well as building groups that take those scripts/task chains has been absolutely invaluable and one of the most important parts of my whole environment."
"It is excellent in terms of updating and configuring everything the way we need. For anything more complex, we do professional service engagements, and they're exceptional. For anything less complex, we just need to ask questions. Their support division is extremely good too."
"You don't have to be an advanced user. Rather, in terms of ease of use, this product is right where it needs to be."
"The big pros of Quest KACE Systems Management are its simple interface, and simple, direct management. It's very easy to maintain and manage the device, and it's easy to get it up and running. You can have it up and running in an hour..."
"Using this solution saves us lots of time, especially when it comes to performing updates."
"For an IT department in any organization that pays for endpoint management, KACE is really a blessing for them."
"It is a very good solution."
"Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"Technical support is good, when they get back to you. I usually have to use Google, though, because sometimes we have to meet deadlines and don't have the time to wait for them to get back to us."
"The software also has too many functions, so it would be good if the functions or features could be split up, rather than needing to buy the whole Clarity CA package, when you'll only use a few of its functions."
"What could be improved in Clarity CA is its UI, but I know the Clarity team is working on a new UI, so I'm expecting its UI to get better. The software also has too many functions, so it would be good if the functions or features could be split up, rather than needing to buy the whole Clarity CA package, when you'll only use a few of its functions. This increases the cost of the software, so that's another area for improvement. How Clarity CA is marketed could also be improved."
"It could be designed a little bit more intuitively in terms of administration."
"The customization of the interface needs improvement for things like end user tickets."
"I think it should have the ability to have the applications automatically update. It would be really helpful if this would override what the user might choose to do."
"It took a little bit of time to figure out how to use the KACE Service Desk. I like the way that I'm able to customize it. But when it comes to how our techs are able to use it, it's not as functional as our current solution, which is BMC FootPrints Service Desk."
"I still need better communication about which processes are really due and which processes are currently being processed."
"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."
"Imaging becomes a problem when you start to try to go beyond doing more than thirty or forty machines at a time. We initially tried to do that virtually and it just, it wouldn't work."
"There should be a mini toolbox, like the competitors of KACE have, with the small features for KACE administrators. That would make their lives easier. If you are troubleshooting a specific endpoint, remote control is available as is Wake-on-LAN. But if you want to execute some commands, you have to use a third-party tool, the PS tool. If they would integrate those small things, it would make KACE more powerful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's fairly expensive to use Clarity CA. There's a yearly license fee for the solution based on the users, and there's a one-time implementation fee as well."
"The cost of KACE has been relatively low compared to other systems. Even if those systems have the same cost, they do not do as much of the third-party patching that KACE natively does."
"We are also saving on the licensing fee, compared to other endpoint management solutions."
"The pricing and licensing are good. It's worth it."
"The pricing is fair."
"It was a very attractive price. This is a huge feature of this product. If you would "credit score" this product versus others out there on the market, this one has a very attractive price."
"We pay annually for technical support."
"Their pricing is per end-point device. There is an initial cost for the license for the server, which is pretty low, and then there is a per end-point device license, which is also fairly low. So, the pricing is still reasonable."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
University
11%
Non Profit
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?
In terms of cost-effectiveness, considering a situation where I want to deploy KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) for just pushing updates, it is completely fine. However, apart from that, I d...
What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?
For improvements in KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA), I would want to see it become a standalone software agent. I am curious about why it does not offer EDR functionality. Additionally, the...
What is your primary use case for Quest KACE Systems Management?
I have deployed KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) around 230 plus PCs, and I use it to push Windows updates and scripts. I have designed various scripts for tasks such as password resets afte...
 

Also Known As

Client Automation, CA Client Manager, CA Client Automation
Dell KACE Systems Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

First Horizon National Corporation, Olympus, Petroleum Company of Trinidad and Tobago LimitedŒ _Petrotrinî, Racing and Wagering Western Australia
Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
Find out what your peers are saying about Clarity CA vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.