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KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs Pulseway comparison

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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

KACE Systems Management App...
Ranking in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
11th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Client Desktop Management (2nd), Endpoint Compliance (6th), Patch Management (11th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (12th)
Pulseway
Ranking in Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (51st), Server Monitoring (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) category, the mindshare of KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is 2.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pulseway is 3.0%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)2.6%
Pulseway3.0%
Other94.4%
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer2132892 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Hogan's Systems Consulting, LLC
Great notifications, a wide variety of features, and excellent monitoring capabilities
It would be nice if it also had a desktop application, similar to the phone app, which would allow me to monitor and control computers from my desktop. It's nice to be able to do things remotely using my phone; however, in many cases, it would be very helpful to be able to do things from a desktop or laptop computer. This would be especially useful for things like remote access to computers. It's too hard to do much on a Windows computer using a tiny phone screen. Being able to do things from a desktop or laptop computer would be much more productive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Without this solution, we would be dead in the water."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Overall, this is a good solution that saves us time and effort."
"My primary use case of this solution is to help us obtain accreditation in the UK of Cyber Essentials Plus, a program sponsored by the UK government which encourages UK companies to obtain a certain level of cyber-security within their cyber environment."
"This solution makes it easy to control assets and upgrade all types of software."
"The solution has great workflow and server modules."
"We like the patching of the window updates in the client's systems. You can automatically do updates with a single click."
"The setup is simple."
"It has been very helpful to get notifications about various issues with my servers and network to help me take action to resolve problems before they become major issues."
"One of the applications I have used the most was to troubleshoot users and I've never faced difficulties or issues with the application itself."
"It has made life a lot easier for the administrators."
"They provide a lot of features; it's good and easy software."
"So this solution allows for 24/7 support and is very handy."
 

Cons

"We had issues with the tool's support. We are a Dutch firm and everything has to be in Dutch. We were not able to do the alerts. You were required to tweak them a lot to get them in the language that you preferred. The solution's support depended on the person that you got online. Sometimes, the response was fast and other times you needed to wait a long time. The support also depended on the levels of support that you had requested."
"On the patching, the Systems Management appliance, I noticed whenever there is something new that the vendor has to do, he always has to call KACE for help with it."
"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."
"The KACE Go Mobile App crashes a lot, and it always has."
"There is a Resolve issue whereby some workstations no longer report/check-in after a recent update."
"It could be designed a little bit more intuitively in terms of administration."
"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."
"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 have good technical support but it's not excellent."
"There are some bugs or glitches."
"GUI needs to be improved and the solution lacks a process for monitoring VOIP calls."
"Sometimes the speed is a problem. When I've been remote controlling people, from time to time, there were some issues with people in Hong Kong."
"Support needs to be improved because we've sometimes had to wait 24 hours to get a response."
"However, the solution does not allow you to make a script for just one customer, so it would be great if that is improved."
"It would be nice if it also had a desktop application, similar to the phone app, which would allow me to monitor and control computers from my desktop."
"Remote Desktop Assistance for Mac endpoints - not having this functionality is a major inconvenience in having to have two systems for clients using this platform."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is fair."
"We pay annually for technical support."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"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."
"The pricing is great. It's billed annually and it's very reasonable."
"Based on other solutions that we had implemented, its pricing seems to be quite competitive. It is not inexpensive, but it is also not more expensive than any other solution. They have the standard licensing fees and support fees."
"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."
"We are also saving on the licensing fee, compared to other endpoint management solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
10%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

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

Questions from the Community

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...
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Also Known As

Dell KACE Systems Management
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
Dell, Canon, Siemens, Harvard University, Northwestern University
Find out what your peers are saying about KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Pulseway and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.