Atera is a platform that enables IT professionals to gain access, visibility, and control over all their networks and devices from anywhere. Users can manage their IT operation from patch management, IT automations, advanced reporting, alerts, helpdesk, ticketing, and it features dozens of integrations with familiar tools. Its pay-per-technician model enables IT teams and MSPs to pay a fixed price and scale operations across unlimited devices, all while reducing menial tasks so they…
$99
per month per user
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is network diagnostics and troubleshooting technology, from Austin-based SolarWinds.
N/A
Pricing
Atera
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
Editions & Modules
MSP - Pro
$99
per month per user
MSP - Growth
$129
per month per user
IT Department - Professional
$149
per month per user
MSP - Power
$169
per month per user
IT Department - Expert
$169
per month per user
IT Department - Master
$199
per month per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Atera
SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
Unlimited devices.
Prices per user, per month, billed annually.
As a one-person IT department, Atera is almost like having another person to help, especially as we integrate the AIT functionalities. We have several locations spread over nearly 200 miles, and Atera has enabled me to remote in and fix something that before would have had to wait until we could justify an all-day or overnight 300 mile round trip.
If your IT team isn't proficient in automation and scripting, Solarwinds NCM can fill that gap (assuming your company's security team signs off on approving SW in your environment given the hack.) Basic device configuration, pushing mass changes reliably and backups are NCM's strong suites. If you have a complex scenario where if/then cases are needed, NCM is a bit lack luster. Auto discovery isn't as easy either as certain parameters need to be met for that feature to work 100% of the time
Support, if you need them they are there and they always have the answers you need.
The AI scripting features allow you to really hit the ground running. You can give it a prompt and it will give you a script that will be very close to what you need. All you have to do is polish it up and test it out.
I love having the ability to use multiple remote access tools, in the event a machine has an issue with one of them, or if a cloud service goes down, you have a fallback.
The shared script library is an amazing resource for troubleshooting and streamlining.
The development teams are open to adding features and have done so frequently based on user requests.
For our use case, it does everything great and some of the features we underutilize but I would like to be able to set a configuration baseline when initially adding a node instead of after the configuration is pulled but it's not a particularly big deal to let it pull the configuration then set it as the baseline.
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
Medium complexity to set up in the beginning if using any non-standard devices or configurations, else fairly easy (e.g. Cisco Nexus or IOS-based devices). Reports are fairly straightforward to set up. Updates to the platform are fairly straightforward and don't take a major effort. Easy to add or remove devices.
This has been a great platform to handle both service requests and device maintenance. Without it, we would have to do manual ticket creation through another platform that does not link with a RMM making the help desk inefficient and frustrating both Employees and the Executives of the company. The addition of AI makes all of this even easier!
The user interface is lacking. It is difficult to navigate at times and things can be done multiple ways. Quite often I am confused by how their notification structure works. It is not very intuitive. They do offer a free Academy. They also offer a community of other technical folks. I have enjoyed both.
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.
To be fair, I have not had to involve Support in a number of years, but when I did, I was greeted with enthusiastic engineers who wanted to understand and solve the issue. It was a fairly complex scenario and I have discovered in my most recent implementation that engineering included that option as a standard now.
Solarwinds has actually produced new training since I last used it that is available on their site at any time. Their previous training was more than enough to get us started but now there is significantly more content. Since I'm comfortable with the Orion platform and the products we use I haven't checked the new training out yet but we have new staff go through portions of that training and they always come away with an understanding of the platform and ready to use it
it was a fairly easy implementation and everything was pretty straightforward. only challenge we had was getting all the snmp communities updated on the networking equipment
Atera was the clear winner for us. The interface and tools were very easy to learn and setup. Atera's licensing incorporates good feature sets and value levels. Some of the other products were difficult to setup and lacked good flow between tools. The value proposition was also not as good.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a great tool and matches much of the functionality of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. Nothing about Ansible will likely be overwhelming to an engineer with a little time to spare, but that spare time combined with SolarWinds already being our monitoring tool made the decision easy. Time is at a premium in small teams and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is very easy to use right out of the box without all the tweaking required by powerful command line driven tools like Ansible.
We have been able to add new employees/devices without increasing my staff to support them.
The value of charging per technician verses per device cannot be stated enough. Without that pricing, I wouldn't be able to budget enough to pay for all of the things I get with Atera.
They have a customer portal which allows the end user to check on submitted tickets, open new tickets and recommend any new features.
