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ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs N-able N-central comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

ManageEngine Endpoint Central
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Client Desktop Management (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (4th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (2nd)
N-able N-central
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. ManageEngine Endpoint Central is designed for Client Desktop Management and holds a mindshare of 34.5%, down 42.0% compared to last year.
N-able N-central, on the other hand, focuses on Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM), holds 9.2% mindshare, down 11.4% since last year.
Client Desktop Management
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
 

Featured Reviews

Charles A - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective vulnerability, desktop, and patch management
We are using ManageEngine Endpoint Central primarily for desktop management. It allows us to deploy patches, manage antivirus, control endpoints like DLP, and more The most valuable feature to me is the vulnerability management. It also has effective patch management capabilities. The main issue…
Dimitri V G - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"We can scale the product."
"The solution is stable."
"The centralized control of all of our Windows hardware that this solution offers has been most valuable to our organization."
"Has good functionality and is user-friendly."
"All of Desktop Central's features are valuable, especially its simplicity."
"The patch manager is good, and it's easy to use."
"ManageEngine has improved my organization because right now we can actually monitor and find out which software products are installed on each desktop. We can then figure out which ones have to get patched and so forth."
"The dashboard has been very useful."
"N-able N-central has numerous good features. The asset tracking capability is powerful, allowing you to track hardware and software on devices connected to your network. The remote control is smooth, securely enabling remote access to servers and routers. It can be integrated with ticketing systems and other tools like CrowdStrike and N-able EDR for comprehensive network monitoring and security. The automation feature is handy, allowing you to schedule tasks, respond to system triggers, and automate problem resolution, such as handling disk space issues automatically."
"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."
"I like the remote connectivity, reporting suite, and patch management module."
"The most valuable features of N-central are its ease of deployment and ease of use."
"N-able N-central is very scalable."
"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."
"N-able N-central is an easy tool to implement with customers."
 

Cons

"I would like to see them come out with a SaaS version of the product in the future."
"ManageEngine Endpoint Central’s scalability could be improved."
"The performance sometimes lags a bit because the solution is demanding on system resources."
"Computer imaging is powerful but breaks frequently. The reason for this breaking is not clear and requires heavy amounts of attention to keep operational. There is a lot of room for this tool to do more but the reliability of this process should be focused on first to ensure core competencies are being fixed before more features are added."
"The tool's security can be better."
"The solution isn't fully stable, and, when it goes down, it's hard to get it up and running."
"The OS deployment could be better."
"It might be helpful if they offered a simpler way to use the OS deployment function. It's a bit complicated for most of the customers."
"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."
"The solution's overall integration should be improved."
"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."
"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."
"Involving AI in the platform could improve it further."
"The integration with other applications could be better."
"At this moment, we encounter stability issues with N-able N-central from time to time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Choose wisely between the Professional and Enterprise editions, based on your needs."
"Affordable for any customer."
"The product is not costly. The product is properly priced, especially for SMBs."
"The price is moderate."
"The pricing of the product is not bad compared to the other similar solutions in the market."
"I have been using the free version and am in the stage where I have to decide if I will proceed with the paid license, or instead choose another product."
"Could provide more services on the standard license"
"The pricing is very low, compared to other products. Compared to Intune or SCCM, it's much less. I can say it's a good product for less of a price."
"The pricing and licensing are average, almost six out of ten."
"N-able N-central is not an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Performing Arts
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. What I like most about ManageEngine is that I can log on to every PC very easily a...
What do you like most about ManageEngine Endpoint Central?
Well, what we like is that it catch actually a lot of features constantly upgrading. So all the three maybe there there were some features as the tenant on the earliest version. Now it's it's almos...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ManageEngine Endpoint Central?
The pricing is cheaper compared to other MDM products, but I don't remember the exact details.
What needs improvement with N-able N-central?
One of my personal challenges with N-able N-central is the monitoring of services for server hardware. The industry has moved towards Redfish for out-of-band and in-band monitoring, yet N-able N-ce...
What is your primary use case for N-able N-central?
Our primary use case for N-able N-central is monitoring. As an administrator, I frequently work with N-able N-central for monitoring, spending approximately fifty percent of my time on it.
 

Also Known As

ManageEngine Desktop Central, Desktop Central, ManageEngine Desktop Management MSP
SolarWinds N-central, SolarWinds MSP N-central
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Strathallan School, BMI Healthcare, Comercial Kywi, First Priority Federal Credit Union, Gerab National Enterprises
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