Atera is presented as an Agentic AI platform for IT management, that offers a digital workforce of AI agents that proactively and autonomously support entire IT operations. Atera’s all-in-one IT management platform consolidates RMM, helpdesk, ticketing, and automation, so IT teams and MSPs can manage and protect infrastructure, automate tasks, and boost service quality by reducing downtime and improving SLAs. Atera has shifted focus from automation to AI-powered autonomy in IT. With…
$139
per month per user
Perforce Puppet
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Puppet Enteprise is an IT automation and configuration management solution that enables users to manage and automate infrastructure and complex workflows. The vendor states Puppet Enterprise combines both model‑based and task-based capabilities in a way that enables organizations to scale their multi-cloud infrastructure as their automation footprint grows, with more flexibility from both agent-based and agentless capabilities.
Atera is doing well in the monitoring part as it is informing the real time ping of running devices and if any device goes down, it is informing us on the real time. It is helping us to monitor the last reboot status, current logged in users, time zone, IP addresses and other things so that we can track our end devices status. In the patching part Atera is pathing our all devices with the notification stating user to restart device at their convenient time. It is also patching our third party applications. It is good in installing and uninstalling of the third party application but limited to availability in the Atera inventory. Atera is not good in some parts such as in the patching part of applications, sometime it fails to update all 3rd party applications that were not installed via Atera. It is not good if you have to transfer a file to multiple systems at the same time.
Puppet is good enough to get the job done, you can use it to automate deployments and maintain files and configurations, if this is all you're looking for it's great. If you're looking for more control over your systems as a whole without having to write your own scripts or install multiple configuration management systems then Puppet is not what you're looking for.
Atera is very helpful in monitoring the servers and end-user devices for high CPU, memory, hard disk uses, and temperature monitoring.
Atera is good at installing third-party applications and also helps to remove it from the end systems.
Atera is perfect for patching as you can select the patches as per your need and reject those that are not required for you or going to disturb any of your internal applications.
Atera is good for managing software inventory as it provides you with the complete software list that is used in your infrastructure.
Atera does not yet have a MDM system, but I have been told that it is in the works!
Sometimes getting around the admin section of the IT side of Atera can be tricky, but the webinars and chat support help.
Many of the demo and onboarding agents are based in Israel, so it can be a challenge to find available times during the day while living in the United States.
The setup of Puppet is a nightmare compared to ansible. Anyone watching a youtube video can easily set up ansible with minimal IT knowledge. All one needs is the source IP addresses and we are good to go. Setting up Puppet is a more hands-on task and pushing the puppet agents to all the boxes is another issue. If the installation and setup were simplified like ansible that would attract a lot of people to this platform
The syntax of the code for Puppet is not as easy as ansible. Ansible simply follows a YAML format and it's like typing in normal English. Even complicated tasks can be written by just understanding YAML syntax. Perhaps Puppet needs to revisit the lanugage used and try to come up with a much simpler lanugage for writing code. This will make day-to-day usage easier.
As of right now, we have found nothing that can offer as many features as Atera does along with the affordability. They are doing monthly releases each month and not just making small changes (shared scripting library, chocolatey support, Install packages, Splashtop SOS support, Scheduled tickets to name a few). The uptimes are great and accessibility to the dashboard has yet to be limited. We are a happy customer and bordering on fanboy status now
Atera's remote monitoring feature is one of it's best features. The laptops and servers we used it on responded quickly to our administrative task requests and made our work light. We were able to increase the resources, manage patches, windows updates and quite a few other tasks remotely and that too 24×7.
Atera support provides answers to my questions lightning fast. They have never left me feeling like I'm out there on my own. I can ask questions by email, or by chat, or by opening a ticket with them and they are always on it quickly. They also have a forum where other Atera users can help you if you need it, and you can also add feature requests via the forum.
Puppet has top class support. You can simply mail them with their query and they will respond to your query in a timely manner. We do have enterprise license for puppet. Also there is a vibrant community for puppet out there. So even if you dont purchase a premium support option you can simply google your queries and get answers
Because Atera is a much more effective and efficient solution to manage all our IT operations, it automates each of our business processes. It offers us the best support to respond to any problem that may arise. I think Atera is much more cost-effective and reliable; its value is justified with each function and satisfies all our business needs and requirements.
HPSA is a licensed product and incurs significant upfront investment costs due to COTS licensing. Puppet Data Center Automation has a significantly lower upfront investment and product documentation is more readily available. Chef is a very similar offering, however, at the time our decision was considered, the adoption of Chef vs. Puppet was significantly less in the community.
The intuitive user interface has enabled both users and support technicians to familiarize themselves quickly with the functionality, and the learning curve is less.
Some features need to be accessed through documentation; they're not available directly on the dashboard.
Sometimes, internet access plays a significant role, whereas low connectivity is a hindrance.
