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ConnectWise Automate vs N-able N-central comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

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

ConnectWise Automate
Ranking in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
9th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
N-able N-central
Ranking in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) category, the mindshare of ConnectWise Automate is 7.0%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N-able N-central is 7.7%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
N-able N-central7.7%
ConnectWise Automate7.0%
Other85.3%
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
 

Featured Reviews

Sean Saeb - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner and CIO at Caspian IT Group
Responsive, integrates well with other applications, and the technical support is helpful
There is always room for improvement. I haven't had any problems, and they're doing a great job, in my opinion. They're doing quite well. In most cases, when we discover an issue, we report it to their engineers, who then schedule a fix. Normally, when we request something, I can see it happening within three to four months. This is a raw system. Of course, it has some flaws that could be improved. But, it's something that we will have to work with to get to the point where we need this, we request it and they do their best to make it happen. There is a lot of integration with other applications through Automate, and I believe they are working with all of the industry leaders to get the integration going. I am very pleased to be working with them.
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

"Maybe they could improve the capability to be multi-tenant."
"It is very scalable."
"The most value we get from this solution is that everything is on a patch cycle."
"This product saves us a lot of time and increases our efficiency."
"A good automated scripts feature."
"It's definitely improved the help-desk servicing, et cetera."
"The database is great. It's a nicely ordered database."
"The implementation is nice and easy."
"N-able N-central is an easy tool to implement with customers."
"The most valuable feature of N-able N-central is the many options it has."
"The most helpful features of N-able N-central include providing a single pane of glass for many insights in an environment regarding their patching, their assets, their devices in general, and the active issues that they show."
"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 is very scalable."
"The most valuable features of N-central are its ease of deployment and ease of use."
 

Cons

"They always change the GUI to some dumb-down version of tiles which are more "user-friendly", but slows my team down in the end."
"We would love to get feature updates and cumulative updates fixed. I know they aren't really supposed to be pushed with Patch Manager. We've got recommendations from ConnectWise to use the scripted feature update installs, scripted KB updates, etc. Having these in Patch Manager itself would be great."
"I have a problem with the reports available on the solution. I don't understand how to work with the reporting functionality. For example, when I want to give a report for a specific machine, ConnectWise doesn't seem to have this as an option. I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or if the reporting functionality is just poorly conceived."
"The wait time for a support ticket to be addressed needs to be reduced. They take a couple of days to get back. It is a little frustrating when we have to wait for a couple of days. A lot of times, the issue is critical for us. If we're reaching out to their support team and submitting a ticket, it is because we need it handled quickly."
"In Patch Manager, there should be more reportability so that it is easier to see the updates that I have applied to a machine and when the next update will happen. A lot of times, it seems like all the information is kind of thrown all over the place, and you can't really see it all at the same time. There should be a simplified patch data view that allows us to quickly confirm that our various clients are getting patched as they should be."
"There could be better linkages between ConnectWise Automate and Manage from a ticketing perspective. Automate and Manage each has its own ticketing system. We use the one in Manage, but it'd be nice if they were linked directly to the one in Automate."
"Their support needs to be better."
"Patching and reporting need improvements, especially reporting. The reporting engine is quite outdated, so you end up having to use your own dashboard."
"Involving AI in the platform could improve it further."
"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."
"It was previously expensive and tedious to manage different licenses."
"There is room for improvement in the development of custom monitoring services."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"At this moment, we encounter stability issues with N-able N-central from time to time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing and licensing are reasonable."
"From what I've overheard, it is pretty comparable to other solutions in terms of price."
"I believe Automate is available for around $2."
"I pay $85 a month per user for a ConnectWise package that contains multiple solutions."
"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
Performing Arts
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Performing Arts
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

LabTech for IT Service Providers, ConnectWise Automate for Corporate IT Departments, ConnectWise Automate for IT Service Providers
SolarWinds N-central, SolarWinds MSP N-central
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

I-M Technology, Mainstay Technologies, PC Works Plus, Integrity IT, Kerkhoff Technologies Inc., Marathon Consulting, Christenberry Sales Company, EDTS, Secom Technology, Ready to View, ARRC Technology, DaVinci Digital, JNR Networks, Quinn Technology Solutions, PCIT, Liberty Technology, Capital Computers & Networks, Atlanta Technology Force, Doberman Technologies, First Column Enterprises, CisCom Solutions
Premier Technology Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about ConnectWise Automate vs. N-able N-central and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.