ManageEngine Endpoint Central Reviews

We use the product for endpoint security.

They provide good services.

The product's remote access manager needs improvement. The wake-up takes longer time, sometimes more than five minutes. It could respond immediately.

I have been using ManageEngine Endpoint Central for one or two months. At present, I use the latest version.

I rate the platform's stability a seven out of ten.

We have approximately 2000 ManageEngine Endpoint Central users in our organization. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

The initial setup process is good. It requires a technical team of seven to ten engineers for deployment and takes an hour or two to complete. Later, we need to maintain the product as well.

The product is not expensive. I rate its pricing a seven out of ten.

I rate ManageEngine Endpoint Central a seven out of ten. We encounter issues related to the quality of services.

We use ManageEngine Endpoint Central for endpoint management.

Page management and ADA integrations are the most valuable features of ManageEngine Endpoint Central.

ManageEngine Endpoint Central’s scalability could be improved.

ManageEngine Endpoint Central is a stable product. I rate ManageEngine Endpoint Central ten out of ten for stability.

I rate ManageEngine Endpoint Central an eight out of ten for scalability. Currently, we have 10 machines running the solution in our organization.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

The solution’s deployment took 15 to 20 days.

Compared to other products, ManageEngine Endpoint Central is a very cheap solution.

I recommend ManageEngine Endpoint Central to other users because it is quite easy to deploy.

Overall, I rate ManageEngine Endpoint Central a nine out of ten.

We use the product to know about our assets and manage remote support. 

The tool's security can be better. 

I have been using the product for five years. 

The tool is stable. 

The solution is scalable. My company has 7000 users for the product. 

We don't require any support from the product since we have a good engineer. 

The product's setup is easy. We have around 45 people to manage the tool. 

The solution's deployment was done in-house. 

I have seen ROI with the tool's use. 

The product is cheap. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We are using ManageEngine Endpoint Central for patch and asset management.

The most valuable feature of ManageEngine Endpoint Central is the central management console. Additionally, inventory tracking is helpful for knowing where our assets are.

We are looking for a complete solution for patch management with central management and the cloud which ManageEngine Endpoint Central does not provide.

I have been using ManageEngine Endpoint Central for approximately five years.

We have not had many issues with the stability.

Our approximately 15 IT staff that are using ManageEngine Endpoint Central in my company.

The application support is effective. We can communicate with the agents by email, telephone, or online chat.

I rate the support of ManageEngine Endpoint Central an eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of ManageEngine Endpoint Central is simple. However, it is client-based, you have to identify the endpoint that needs to have the installation.

There is a freeware version of the solution available as long as you do not breach the number of licenses and users that are dictated.

The price of the solution is reasonable.

I would recommend people use the solution. It's designed to be user-friendly and easy to set up, and one of its key strengths is that many IT professionals are choosing it because it has a free version.

I rate ManageEngine Endpoint Central an eight out of ten.

I use only the asset-management part. 

The asset management is a good feature. It's not the best. However, it's a good feature to use.

It is stable and reliable. 

We can scale the product.

The OS deployment could be better.

Technical support from our local partner is not the greatest.

I'm still exploring the solution. There is yet more to uncover.

Typically, if anything was missing, I would put in a feature request. However, I have not done that yet.

I only started using the solution a few months ago.

It is a very stable solution. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze.

It is very easy to expand. You just need to add extra licenses that are required, along with the computer resources. If I add enough computer resources along with the licenses, it's very easy to scale.

We have around 2,000 endpoints on the solution.

How ManageEngine works is they have partner support. In my region, they have only one partner. If my understanding is right, they only have one partner for the full GCC, and the partner I'm with is not great. If you ask me to rate them, it'll be a zero.

The service from the OEM itself, ManageEngine itself, is good. It's just the partner that is not helpful.

I've also worked with VMware. 

We use the asset management from LANDesk Ivanti, although we can't compare all the features as we use it for other processes. 

We had assistance with the setup and only require three admins for maintenance tasks. 

I received professional support for the initial setup.

I don't directly deal with pricing. 

We're customers and end-users. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It's still new to me, and I'm still exploring its capabilities. 

We are using it for managing desktops and configurations and compliance.

We are using its latest version. We are all up to date with whatever we're doing. It is deployed on-premises.

It helps with compliance. We're moving into a regulated space, and we need to be compliant and have full control over every device. So, the primary purpose of implementing it was compliance.

Identification of gaps and filling the gaps with updates are most valuable. We are able to identify known updates or missing updates and then update.

Each of their products is an independent product, and they don't have anything to do with each other. It is a suite of packages. They all run independently, and they all are a little different because they were acquired differently. They could standardize their portfolio.

We found the team that supports us to be very difficult to understand because of their accent.

I have been using this solution for a year or so.

It is reasonably stable. I had a couple of issues related to corruption, and I worked with their support, but on the whole, it is reasonably stable.

I'm sure it is scalable. It is currently being used by three users. We are using it daily, and we don't have any plans to increase its usage. It is not for any real negative reason. I just don't have a need. I bought it for what I needed it for, and it is doing what it does.

I had some pretty significant problems, and they were very complicated. I've had a number of conversations with them, but the simple truth of the matter is that there were communication problems with their team because of the accent. We found the team that supports us to be very difficult to understand. They had a heavy Indian accent, and it was very difficult to communicate with them.

Neutral

We didn’t use any other solution previously.

It was of medium complexity. You have to get an agent out for every single machine by hand, or you need to push it somehow. It took a couple of weeks.

We implemented it in-house. In terms of maintenance, it requires a fair amount of maintenance. It takes some time. You have to touch it every week and make sure it is working and pushing the code. You have to make sure you're identifying the gaps and the packages to be deployed. You need to build those packages, deploy them, and monitor which ones didn't fire. It is not an install-and-forget package. It is an install-and-use package.

We have seen an ROI. I would rate it a solid four out of five in terms of ROI. The work that one person was doing by hand for each computer in the company is now being done by it in mass. Its value is large because I could free up that person's time to do other work.

The initial purchase was around $6,000 or $7,000. We most probably are not on an annual subscription. We bought it, and then we pay for the maintenance. I'm not 100% sure how that's working out.

We evaluated a couple, but I can't remember what we looked at.

If I re-implement it today, I'd strongly consider a cloud-based infrastructure instead of on-premise.

It is solid. It is a legacy technology, and it has been around forever. It does what it does. It is complicated, but it works. It is not brilliant, but it is highly functional.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

We have two main use cases of Desktop Central. The first is patching, because we want to keep our systems secure. We install Microsoft security updates using ManageEngine Desktop Central every month. The second case is to deploy applications. We want to install applications to the machines from a central location. Also, we want to give access to users so they can install whatever applications they need using the self-service portal option. When there is a common application used by many users, we publish it to the self-service portal so users can install it themselves instead of contacting local IT. Those are our two main use cases of ManageEngine, but we also use it for other tasks, such as remote connection. Our local IT uses two products: ManageEngine Desktop Central and TeamViewer. We use both to connect to the remote machines. 

We have the on-premise version, but we are looking to move forward to the cloud version once they start supporting data migration—at the moment, they don't support it. 

One of the benefits of Desktop Central is it made the provisioning process simpler because now we have a provisioning package. We have around 1,500 laptops at the moment and all these PCs were provisioned by a provisioning package. In the provisioning package, we have integrated every aspect of renaming, deploying applications, patching, etc., so we simply execute the provisioning package and as soon as it's executed, it will install the management agent. Once the agent is installed, it will take care of all the tasks, so we don't have to sit in front of the computer to prepare the machine. This really helps us to provision the PC quickly with our agent. 

Now, we are going to do a PC refresh. It's a big project for next year. We are going to replace all of our PCs—1,500 PCs—with a new one, for all the users, so we have big requirements for ManageEngine. ManageEngine does a lot of scripting work in the backend—including renaming the computer according to our conventions, distributing applications, patching—so when we prepare the machine, we want everything to be installed and ready to give to the user. We don't want to wait or take more time, so we've now combined ManageEngine with Microsoft's Autopilot and Intune to provision the PCs. PC provisioning is made easier with ManageEngine. 

Another benefit is we have the option to pilot updates with some machines before distributing them to production, and this can be completely automated. We don't have to create said task every time for testing and deployment, so once we scope it, it relieves the time we spend each month deploying patches. It regularly runs in our schedule with the reboot options. We give reboot notifications in a user-friendly manner to employees, with the option to postpone the reboot. This relieves the time that we spend with end users since it's user-friendly. 

One of the most valuable features is patching. They support third-party patching as well, so we don't have to use another product. They support both Microsoft and third-party updates, and this is one of the main functionalities that we use regularly. 

The software deployment feature is also valuable because, once in a while, we need to distribute applications, such as VCO, Office applications, etc. For example, when we prepare a PC for users. We use ManageEngine to perform lots of tasks. 

We also have the option to deploy scripts via ManageEngine. We use some scripts that are to be deployed during the machines' provisioning, to make sure our machines are renamed properly according to the naming conventions we want. For example, for the France region, we want FRP, France Paris, and then the serial number. We want to deploy some script that renames the PC after the machine is provisioned, and we also want to deploy background images, logon screen, logout screen, etc. So we deploy all these policies using ManageEngine.

ManageEngine could be improved by giving customers an option to perform certain actions proactively. Since I was a consultant, I worked on different products and some had advantages over ManageEngine. For example, proactive remediation—you want to proactively check something on the computers and run the script. In ManageEngine, you have the option to run the script, but Intune has the option to do so proactively. ManageEngine doesn't have this. You should have the option to act proactively, not just going ahead and fixing it once it's done. Proactive remediation should be a feature. 

Another thing is, with PC provisioning, they have to make it in a modern way. They have deployment, but it's a very outdated process right now. It's a modern workplace, so you have to provision a PC live, on the go—it's not that you create images and then distribute the image to the machines. Many customers are not using this and, in fact, we are not using it. We use a modern way of PC provisioning. So they have to concentrate on that more. 

There are small glitches, but it's not going to stop you from using the product. For example, when you open the configuration, you may not see the details, but if you refresh the page, you will see them. There are small glitches here and there that we can see. 

I began using this solution about a year ago. In the past, I implemented this solution for different customers, but now I am an end user.

This solution is very stable. It depends on the size of the company, though. For us, it's very stable because we don't have many machines. The overall count is 1,800 to 1,900 machines—our license is for 2,050, but we've currently only utilized 1,900. So our infrastructure is medium-sized, I would say. If you go for 10,000, 20,000, you might have some lagging in the performance, but I'm not sure. 

It doesn't really require much maintenance. You just keep it as you want and regularly do a cleanup of old applications—when you delete, you have a new version of the package, so you might want to clean up the old packages—and that's it. You have automatic cleanup functionalities in the product itself. For example, if you download an update for this month and, after three months, none of the machines require this patch anymore, it automatically cleans up. You have some settings to enable so that you don't have to manually work on the cleanup. 

This solution is very easy to scale. We are trying to create lots of virtual machines in Azure Virtual Desktop, so we might increase our machines by another 100 or 200. 

ManageEngine's support is one of the best, I would say. We have chat support, so I can immediately ping someone in support, from my end product console, and get assistance very quickly. If I have a question, I can ask them directly; if I have technical questions, I can ask them, and they will provide an answer right away. If I write an email, it will take three to four hours. Since I was a support engineer before, I don't normally raise questions, but when I do, I normally get quick replies. Because it's a one-to-one chat, you get immediate responses from the chat window. 

In the past, when I first joined this company, we were using WSUS to patch all of our machines, but we didn't have any control over what patches were installed. We didn't have a proper reporting aspect in WSUS—we could have, but it's very complicated. We'd have to connect the information using SQL Server and pull the information, and that's lots of querying. But with ManageEngine, it's explicit. You go and collect the reports as you want, such as the number of patches installed on a machine or how many machines got a particular update. We even have the option to uninstall patches once they're installed, so we can go back to the previous patch version of the application. 

Another drawback with WSUS is that you don't have the option to scale a reboot. With ManageEngine, we can give reboot notifications in a user-friendly manner to employees, with the option to postpone, and after a certain number of days, you can reboot forcefully. This relieves the time that we spend with end users, who now get a pop-up. You don't have many options with WSUS, but with ManageEngine, you do. 

The deployment process is very easy. It's a combined product, so when you install the Desktop Central EXE, you install the database on the same machine, as well as the web server components like Apache Tomcat and Observer. Basically, when you install the EXE, you just click "next," "next," "next," and then it's done. It's not a big deployment. In terms of planning, you might need a little bit of time, but that's it. It's a half-day or one-day task, not like SCCM where you have to spend a lot of effort and there are lots of technical guides, technical architectural documents, etc. So it's very user-friendly in terms of deployment, I would say. 

The number of people involved in deployment depends on the size of the company. As I was a consultant before, I worked with two people, sometimes with one to six people. So it depends on the company. For example, in our company, we have only two people who manage the platform. To be honest, I cannot say that only one person can install this solution. 

For us, the deployment took two to three days, but it's not a continuous three days. We installed the server component and we installed the distribution server component after two days. So on the whole, we would've spent two to three days, maximum. 

We implemented through an in-house team. 

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. 

Intune doesn't really have a price, at the moment, because they integrated Intune with another license for Microsoft. If you purchase M365, you get the license. They've made everything a combo now, so obviously any company will go for M365, which includes everything. That's what our company has, and we don't pay anything extra for it. If you split the money, it would be much less than Desktop Central, so you can't technically compare the two. 

ManageEngine's licensing is not as good. They add new features and they ask for money. For example, they introduced Browser Security, which is an extra add-on. Compared to Intune, you just buy the Intune product and that's it, you have everything in place—browser security, endpoint management, etc. Everything's included with the Intune license, which isn't the case with ManageEngine. That's something they really need to take care of. 

We also use Intune, which offers many functionalities since it's integrated with Office 365. In terms of the experience, it's very light, but since ManageEngine is a completely different product, you have to integrate a lot of things. For example, installing the ManageEngine agent to all the machines if you want to onboard them. In comparison, with Intune, normally when you prepare the machine, it's automatically included, so onboarding is easy. 

Also, since Intune is a cloud service, you don't need to manage any infrastructure and you don't need a server to host the solution. With Desktop Central, you need a server, and that server should be managed by someone else as well, like a GDC team, a server team. 

Both solutions have advantages and disadvantages. For example, creating packages in ManageEngine is easier than Intune. In Intune, you have to create a package and convert it to a package format supported by Intune. In ManageEngine, you can create EXE or MSI—both are supported—and you just upload and create the package. 

ManageEngine Desktop Central is a product that's worth the money. It's easy to install and quicker in action. If you start installing the product today, in a small environment, you will be able to deploy the application in two hours. 

I rate ManageEngine a seven out of ten. They have a lot of improvements to make. 

We primarily use the solution for managing patches and centralizing updates for applications. We can also blacklist and whitelist applications on our users' laptops.

Besides the office and operating systems, there are lots of other products that need to be taken care of, which are beyond your control. I have 250 endpoints here, sitting here and 100 roaming users, so for me, each and every application in the current scenario is very difficult, wherein the digital signatures are happening, the tokens are happening, which ask for the updates of Java, which ask for the update of a browser. It is very difficult for me to do the update of every PC individually. However, when handled in a centralized location, I get the control I need so that I can see which endpoint needs to be updated, which endpoint has been updated, et cetera. This is very helpful for me, very good.

The solution is very easy to use.

Everything is easily centralized and managed under this one product.

When we do the patching, I can select the applications which are applicable to my network. We will get multiple templates and tons and tons of applications, however, you can select and download and it'll start patching. It'll consume lots of bandwidth and disk space. What you can do, is that, whichever applications are applicable for you, you can select those applications and it will start patching only those applications. It will reduce the bandwidth, it'll reduce the disk space, and tracking will be much easier.

In terms of the warranty, you need to install the agent on the laptop, or desktop and once the agent is installed, when the communication happens, it fetches the entire detail of the hardware, software, and everything. The beautiful thing with that is it gives you the warranty information also, whether the product is out of warranty or not. I can set an alert for devices where the warranty is going to expire. I'll get an alert that it is going to expire in one year, a month, six months, whatever the term I defined.

Since I'm able to see whatever the applications are installed on the user's PC on the endpoint. Sometimes most of the roaming users who are out of my network tend to install applications that are not applicable as per company policy. You can define which applications are allowed. There was a couple of cases where my users had installed a YouTube Downloader, and while downloading and installing that filter, by default or by accident, they installed some of the adware also. That won't happen under this solution.

Desktop Central gives me an option wherein I can prohibit any software. When I blacklist software, the user will get an alert saying "This is prohibited software." Then they call IT and I'll get a notification. For me, I'm very much in control of my network now. I have the power of whitelisting or blacklisting.

For users that work from home and are not in the office, sometimes minor things happen, such as email not working properly, et cetera. Desktop Central will give me remote control of a user's machine and I can troubleshoot or find out what the issue might be. If something needs to be installed, I can do it remotely as well. I don't need to buy TeamViewer or AnyDesk or other software. 

There are so many features available to us. They've added a lot over time. Initially, the asset management was there, however, there were no warranty features. The remote control was there, however, there were various limitations. They've just gotten better and more robust over time. 

For the most part, all of my needs are met with this product.

I would like to see them come out with a SaaS version of the product in the future. There are dependencies with on-prem. For example, since it's on my data center, my bandwidth, it is totally dependent on my network. On the cloud, I don't have to worry about anything. 

One feature we're testing is when we have a laptop with just a DOS OS and we need to do a full installation, including installing the underlying OS. I'd like to have the option where we could create a template to allow the system to install the OS with the typical software. It's a feature we're testing now to see if this is possible. We don't use it yet. However, I'd like it if we could just run one script, one command, and then get an alert when the process is done so that I can go in and configure emails or whatever else I need so that it is ready for the end-user.

I've been working with the solution for around three years. 

The stability is very good. We have been using it for the last three to four years and there is not a single downtime where the product has failed. In terms of service updates, service backups, and whatever the features are coming, we have faced a 99.9% success ratio.

In the initial stage, at that time, we had a hybrid environment internally, where we had Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and some of the servers which had Windows 2003 OS. There were compatibility issues, however, we've since migrated and upgraded the systems and there is no longer an issue.

The solution is scalable.

We are using the solution quite extensively and have about 250 users.

Technical support has been good and we've been satisfied with their level of service. They have a good inbuilt chat option if you need to reach them. They have a technical team right within the solution that you can talk to in real-time. They can provide workarounds or escalate issues quite easily.

We used to have a Windows SUS server for patch management. There were other products that needed to be taken care of - for example, Adobe, the WinRAR, and multiple other software, which needed to be patched, and in which the assets needed to be managed. There are things such as warranties that need to be managed, and their tracking needs to be done, we were looking for an application wherein we would get everything on a centralized product, which is why we chose this solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. At the time, when we were in the phase of testing for the product, we did whatever testing to fulfill our requirements. That way, when we went into production, there were not any hiccups.

Deployment took around ten to 15 days, due to the number of endpoints that needed to be done, and the number of products that needed to be whitelisted. Also, everything needed to be configured. Around four to five people were involved in that project.

In terms of maintenance, if there is any product update, or if the application will have any service package coming, then I need to take downtime, to go through everything and do testing of the service pack to see whether it will hamper any current writing process or not. Once I do it in the test environment, then I have to put it in production.

That said, once we move to SaaS, this process will be obsolete in the cloud.

I have two dedicated resources for maintenance. That includes me. The other person looks at the patch management and the warranties. I look at server maintenance and deal with whatever resources are required for servers. 

We were able to set it up ourselves in-house. 

At the time we signed onto this product, it was a bit more expensive than SolarWinds, however, I'm not sure if that's since changed. 

We looked at SolarWinds, however, we went for the Desktop Central. We evaluated it and we found Desktop Central was quite user-friendly in terms of patch management and in terms of asset management. Right from the user inception, until the exit, everything is tracked under Desktop Central, whatever the asset allocated to the user, whatever the warranty, whatever the application, the install, everything is tracked under the Desktop Central.

Kaseya was also evaluated which was on the cloud. However, it was costlier and there were manageability issues. SolarWinds was a bit very complex in terms of handling. Technical support was also different as they only have an email option.

I'm a customer and an end-user.

Currently, we are using on-prem. I am waiting for SaaS, however, I really don't have the SaaS version. It'll be very good if they offer a SaaS version; my manageability will become very much easier.

If you're looking for third-party patch management, asset management, and/or remote control support, then this is the best app. For remote control, it doesn't require much bandwidth. Often, people sitting in a remote location are using their 3G data cards or mobile data, mobile phone, and they still got connected with the seamless connectivity. There has been no issue.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.