No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Datto Remote Monitoring and Management 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

Datto Remote Monitoring and...
Ranking in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KACE Systems Management App...
Ranking in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Client Desktop Management (2nd), Endpoint Compliance (7th), Patch Management (9th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) category, the mindshare of Datto Remote Monitoring and Management is 9.7%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is 1.9%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datto Remote Monitoring and Management9.7%
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)1.9%
Other88.4%
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
 

Featured Reviews

Alex Clerici - PeerSpot reviewer
System Integrator IT Manager at Tecnimex S.r.l.
Granular monitoring and automated patching have improved service delivery and customer autonomy
I am always busy and have a lot to handle as the customer asks. I absolutely see the importance because if we lose this opportunity, it is probably detrimental. From my experience, automated patch management is considered efficient and useful, but it needs proper training. During the initial deployment, I faced some challenges as operating systems often have vulnerabilities that arise month by month. Datto Remote Monitoring and Management alone is not sufficient for effective patching; I need to pay attention to the manufacturer platform as well. Therefore, I must manage the RMM software effectively while being mindful of the lifecycle of operating systems to identify the best patch policy to adopt. Datto Remote Monitoring and Management's real-time monitoring capabilities are very granular depending on what I want to manage. For Windows, PCs, servers, and other devices such as tablets, I can customize my policy quite effectively. However, for network devices, there are other tools that might be more efficient than Datto Remote Monitoring and Management, such as Ovic, which is a specific solution for network scenarios. If I prefer not to use two separate solutions, I can meet minimal needs with Datto Remote Monitoring and Management's network module. I find the reporting and analytics features of Datto Remote Monitoring and Management to be very efficient as they are granular and rely on many customizable predefined templates. As an example of utilizing the reporting and analytics features for my customers, I act as an MSP provider and can define a site for an end customer, allowing them to monitor their environment by creating a specific account with defined roles. Consequently, a customer can often operate autonomously without my intervention while having an overview of their IT environment. I can control the reporting capabilities at different levels, giving customers autonomy if configured correctly. Regarding the remote control capabilities of Datto Remote Monitoring and Management, it offers various ways to control devices remotely. While it may not be the best module in the suite, when used alongside other tools, it can solve many problems. Regarding pricing and licensing, after recent updates, I believe Kaseya has found a correct way to offer this solution by modifying their licensing policy. I can start with a minimum committed license, and if I exceed my limits, the additional costs can be managed efficiently by paying the difference. Also, if I wish to reduce my licensing, I can do so through my account manager. The latest news about Datto's licensing seems very interesting, and I plan to evaluate it further in the coming months. I chose Datto because of my positive impressions regarding their local support during the initial phase. I received good assistance from the distributor, who provided interesting tools and integrations for Datto. I can answer what other best features Datto has compared to others after I have explored other solutions deeply. Recently, I connected with N-able but do not remember the name of another solution that seemed interesting. Testing solutions comprehensively requires a time investment, which is something I currently lack. I do not currently have any questions. If I have questions in the future, I will likely reach out through my PeerSpot account or another method. I rate this product nine out of ten overall.
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

"The tool's main valuable features are its ease of use and intuitive console. It's very easy to implement and create policies. I don't need highly technical staff to manage the tool, which is a big advantage."
"Automation, in terms of the standard patches and standard updates, and remote support are valuable."
"Its scalability is fantastic; you can scale it up and down, and in terms of usage, it is the only product that we use for remote management."
"The alerting system helps us determine what are high level alerts, and what are alerts which can wait for a day or two. We catch RAID failures, hot servers, bad drives (or predicted failures on drives), etc."
"I also like how Datto integrates seamlessly with the Autotask ticketing system."
"The project management and task management features work well. It's a decent product in that regard."
"We support nine different nonprofits, and the billing took the manager three or four days working on spreadsheets. When I finished automating everything with Datto, we cut everything down to a couple of hours. That's a substantial cost savings on the billing side."
"The best feature that Datto Remote Monitoring and Management offers is the connectivity, which seems to be a whole lot quicker and responsive than Kaseya 10."
"The KACE SMA has helped make our endpoint team work more agilely, efficiently, and productively."
"Every year, the system becomes so much more valuable for us; maybe the quality of our service is much better now, the students at our university can use more software, so the knowledge of students using state-of-the-art software is much better than in the past."
"We can get the majority of what we need with this product and do not have to spend money on something else."
"The ability to push an image to a machine, wake that image up, and just blast a new image to a computer without even having to touch it, and then push the software to that machine, just made things so much more convenient for us and so much more efficient than having to go find that machine, pull that machine out, take it back to the shop, and repair it from there."
"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."
"It is a very good solution."
"Overall, this is a good solution that saves us time and effort."
"By using the KACE solution, we are able to provide endpoint management for our customers, it filled a critical gap for us, contributes to more than 30% of our revenue, and based on customer feedback it has saved more than 50% time through automation."
 

Cons

"This is not a product that I recommend."
"I would like the ability to remotely manage configuration and settings on individual units. Some organizations have a certain device configuration that needs to be consistent across all computers. For example, if we have computers that cannot go to sleep or hibernate because they're being accessed remotely, we need to be able to quickly configure those computers to not hibernate. With Datto, there is no easy and/or direct way to accomplish this. I can't create a group called No Hibernate and drag all those computers to that group so that they do not go into hibernation. There is no easy way to put in a policy or a procedure like that. It's still back to going to each computer and doing it by hand, which is what I'm trying to get away from. I want to automate and simplify as much as possible. I write code and scripts to do most of my work anyways. The intention is to get away from me having to be so hands-on."
"Its stability should be improved. The area of stability has been going downhill, and it has been frustrating."
"The only area where I see room for improvement is the ability to delay the application of patches for a set number of days."
"They have a tab to provide information about the type of hardware the computers have. One thing they don't specify is what model of hard drive the computers have. Identification of storage models would be nice."
"Right now, it's not making monetary sense."
"Sometimes we have some downtime when Datto is doing updates. Maybe it's because of the cloud service they use. I'm not sure if they're going through AWS or Azure or what. That's happened, but the outages have been few and far between."
"The main challenge was implementing patch management for software that was not in the tool's standard library or catalog."
"The KACE Go Mobile App crashes a lot, and it always has. I would love to see that get fixed because it's very convenient when it does work properly, but most of the time it does not."
"Sometimes, no matter how critical my application is, if my production server is down I won't be able to connect with anybody till 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time."
"My biggest complaint is that almost every time they send out a new version, it fixes something and breaks another. Something that wasn't working in the last version now works, but something else stops; or they'll remove some dashboard that I really found to be nice and replace it with something totally different that I could care less about."
"I would like for there to be improvement when it comes to Microsoft and Windows updates. It has the ability to do it but the control of it is not there like I have in the Windows Server Update Services. The way KACE does it is still very granular. You don't really see the process like it is in the Windows Server Update Services. I think that would be one of the biggest things that I would like to see KACE really put some work into and really make that a big enhancement."
"There is a Resolve issue whereby some workstations no longer report/check-in after a recent update."
"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."
"When we have to do a rebuild on these machines, although it is rare, I would like to be able to do more than 10 at a time. With the current limit, it slows me down because I have to set up 10, then the next 10, and so forth."
"The setup process was not good with the Dell people. We had horrible training and the setup was not right on a bunch of stuff."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It goes by how many endpoints you have. It is about $3,000 a month for us. If we can't figure it out ourselves and need additional help to set it up, we would have to pay for that."
"Regarding pricing, Kaseya sells it as part of a bundle called Kaseya 360. This package includes several tools, such as EDR, ransomware protection, and more. Considering the bundle, the price is reasonable. However, where I am in Brazil, the high dollar rate and taxes make it not cheap for mid-sized companies. Still, it's competitively priced compared to similar tools."
"It fluctuates on the number of computers you have. Depending on the number of computers you have, it can fluctuate anywhere between $5 to $10 per computer per month, which is not too bad. I am not aware of any additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee. It was one flat rate per device."
"We had to pay out some overtime for a few problematic sites. Sites on domain networks are incredibly easy to install. We learned a few tricks that streamlined the process, but in the beginning, it was a bit tedious."
"The license typically depends on the number of endpoints. On the RMM side, I think we're paying around $2,250 per endpoint. Then there is also a license per user and tech, so that comes out to about a hundred bucks per tech, give or take."
"AEM is a lot more scalable as you just pay per agent instead of having to purchase expensive licenses."
"The pricing is great. It's billed annually and it's very reasonable."
"The pricing is fair."
"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."
"We pay annually for technical support."
"Licensing is done on a per device basis, so it's dependent on how many agents you've got installed."
"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."
"The pricing and licensing are good. It's worth it."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solutions are best for your needs.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
15%
Wholesaler/Distributor
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
University
11%
Non Profit
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Datto Remote Monitoring and Management?
Improvements for Datto Remote Monitoring and Management could be made in the areas of vulnerability assessment and operations related to this field, which I currently manage using other solutions l...
What advice do you have for others considering Datto Remote Monitoring and Management?
I am always busy and have a lot to handle as the customer asks. I absolutely see the importance because if we lose this opportunity, it is probably detrimental. From my experience, automated patch ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Datto Remote Monitoring and Management?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Datto Remote Monitoring and Management is that it is smooth and simple.
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

Autotask EM, Autotask Endpoint Management, Datto RMM
Dell KACE Systems Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wessex Networks, Base2, Valiant Technology, Technology Services Group, TechGuru
Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
Find out what your peers are saying about Datto Remote Monitoring and Management vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.