ConnectWise Automate vs. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ConnectWise Automate
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
ConnectWise Automate, formerly LabTech, is a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform. It provides powerful automation to discover and manage devices, monitor for problems, and scripts repetitive action.
$700
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Quest now offers the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) as an IT Asset tracking and management appliance (also available as a virtual deployment if hardware requirements are met). Beyond discovery, inventory tracking and license management, KACE emphasizes automating software upgrade distribution with minimal end-user disruption, featuring remote replication for multi-site upgrades and rollouts. KACE SMA may be bundled with KACE Cloud Mobile Device Management (MDM) to form a complete UEM…N/A
Pricing
ConnectWise AutomateKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Editions & Modules
Agents
$1.00-$6.00
per month/per agent
Implementation Fee
$700
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ConnectWise AutomateKACE Systems Management Appliance
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ConnectWise AutomateKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
ConnectWise AutomateKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Monitoring Tasks
Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Product A and Product B
ConnectWise Automate
6.1
21 Ratings
18% below category average
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
-
Ratings
Remote monitoring7.221 Ratings00 Ratings
Network device monitoring5.120 Ratings00 Ratings
Management Tasks
Comparison of Management Tasks features of Product A and Product B
ConnectWise Automate
6.3
21 Ratings
13% below category average
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
-
Ratings
Patch Management5.920 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based automation6.921 Ratings00 Ratings
IT Asset Management
Comparison of IT Asset Management features of Product A and Product B
ConnectWise Automate
-
Ratings
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
8.6
12 Ratings
12% above category average
Software and hardware inventory tracking00 Ratings10.012 Ratings
License management00 Ratings9.011 Ratings
Asset lifecycle monitoring00 Ratings8.010 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings6.06 Ratings
Asset relationship management00 Ratings10.08 Ratings
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ConnectWise AutomateKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
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Score 8.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 9.2 out of 10
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Enterprises

No answers on this topic

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Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
ConnectWise AutomateKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(58 ratings)
8.0
(12 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(4 ratings)
8.6
(3 ratings)
Performance
3.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(14 ratings)
9.5
(4 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ConnectWise AutomateKACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
Likelihood to Recommend
ConnectWise
I recommend it to all IT colleagues; regardless of the size of the PCs with which you work most of the time, the application allows connection stability between computers that make it possible to continue working or taking care of the infrastructure from afar.
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Quest
I think it has added value for any organization. It reduced our Tech Support cost by: -Supporting users anywhere -Reducing users downtime as well keep them informed with the status of their tickets -Managing software and hardware actively -Processing automation -deploy mass software installs, patching or updates - Provide approved software's to users to install without IT help
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Pros
ConnectWise
  • Desktop sharing / view with chat to the operator, file sharing and pass-through for keyboard strokes
  • Computer/server monitoring with thresholds and warning
  • Search - tracking down computers when you have many by name, logged in user, IP
  • End user ticket raising is built into the tray icon which make access really easy
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Quest
  • Inventory: KACE provides a ton of hardware and software inventory information that is easy to search, filter, and export. This is critical when we need to find the answers to questions about how many of such and such we have in our fleet.
  • Patch Management: We were using WSUS before and it was altogether too cumbersome. KACE has given us the power, flexibility, and verification we need to feel comfortable our patches are up-to-date.
  • Service Queue: We made KACE our help desk system and it does everything we need it to do. Great improvement over our old system.
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Cons
ConnectWise
  • They have conflicting scheduling paradigms. When scheduling patching for clients, the 1st Friday is interpreted as the very first Friday of the month, even if this is the 1st of the month. For scripting, the 1st Friday of the month is interpreted as the 1st Friday of the 1st FULL WEEK of the month. This makes no sense to have two different interpretations, and makes it unreliable to schedule recurring scripts to fall when recurring maintenance does. The scripts need to be done manually because of this.
  • There is no way to dictate reboot orders for patch policies. This tied directly in with my first point. We have some clients that require reboot orders. This is not possible without having different patch policies for each server and specifying a time this way. But, there aren't small enough increments of time to make this reliable, plus patching duration might vary. Excluding reboots with patching and scheduling reboot scripts fixes this. However, this can't be done once on a recurring schedule due to the different scheduling paradigms already discussed. We have to schedule these manually each month.
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Quest
  • The KACE SMA needs a better way to handle different roles in the software so certain users can access or administrate certain parts of the software, but not the entire software installation.
  • The KACE SMA could improve the ticketing process of projects. The aspects of the title and some information do not always flow down from the parent ticket to its child tickets.
  • The KACE SMA could improve the UI of the software with the addition of different CSS color schemes.
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Likelihood to Renew
ConnectWise
The primary reason for this rating is that ConnectWise Automate is currently so integral to our operations that moving away would involve more man hours than we would realistically have to invest. However, ConnectWise Automate is also completely capable of meeting all of our business needs and customizable to the point where if something is not meeting those needs out of the box, it can be modified to do what we want. From only installing software on machines if a different software package exists, to push a new version of that software is available, to check if credentials for user/machine have been updated to our new standards and then updating them if they have not, ConnectWise Automate is capable of doing everything we ask of it.
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Quest
No answers on this topic
Usability
ConnectWise
Basic use of the product is fairly easy. Information about the machines you manage can be found in customizable dashboards, which can be unique for each user, and, therefore, properly suited to the users' needs/job function. This is not a 10 because some of the interfaces are very clunky (Patch Management), and some features are not intuitive and not well documented (reporting). Scripting and Patch Management have a fairly steep learning curve (For structure in patch management and syntax in scripting), but once learned, they work well.
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Quest
Overall, the software is simple to understand and use. That said, most vendors have been slowly updating their user interfaces to HTML5 so that they have a clean updated look and feel. This is where KACE falls short in that the UI is great for a packaged software 10 years ago. This isn't a major limitation as the software is really meant primarily for technology users.
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Performance
ConnectWise
It used to be great, but then they broke reporting, speed and responsiveness with version 11 and the new Patch Manager. It's really bad and their support people are way behind on fixing so many bugs. They have really gone downhill. If they don't get it together soon, we'll start looking around.
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Quest
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
ConnectWise
ConnectWise Automate lets you manage more endpoints, with enhanced productivity and improved service, all without increasing expenses. It can manage patches and updates across thousands of computers. We also use it for customized monitoring and alerting on workstations and servers. Monitoring is really robust and granular. It does a great job of gathering a TON of data about the network, and that data is searchable. There are a bunch of different reports built in. Integrates with Manage, Control, and other applications. It does a ton of stuff out of the box, and has endless customization options.
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Quest
KACE does exactly what you need it to do, it maintains your computer environment. You can set patch schedules, inventory computers, setup software catalogs; basically everything you need to ensure the computers on your network are being actively managed. This is all with little need for constant configuration or updating the setup.
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Online Training
ConnectWise
The Online training has been re-done and needs a lot more work. When you look at training in different roles, it shows a lot of the same topics but no explanation to what is different about them. Several times that topics are the exact same, but they make you re-take the same information for a different topic, instead of marking that you have already completed that portion of training.
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Quest
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
ConnectWise
Start small and learn the in's and out's before making policies and rolling things out company wide. Ask the questions of why if you don't agree with something or your company does things a different way. Usually they are done a certain way for a reason. Start simple with roll out and slowly enable or add on the functionality that is needed.
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Quest
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
ConnectWise
I believe the monitoring and alerts in Continuum command is better, but [ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech)] does have stronger scripting, and perhaps a better interface. N-Central is inferior on all fronts to both. I did not make the purchasing decision. I would myself likely pick Continuum if I had to make a on the spot choice.
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Quest
We have selected this software because it rolls several different systems into one. We have a helpdesk system with this and an asset and inventory management system as well. We pay one price for the whole system instead of paying multiple companies different amounts that would have totaled more than we pay for the single system.
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Return on Investment
ConnectWise
  • We found we were able to provide good monitoring of our customers sites which was an objective. However, that came at a significant time investment that never seemed to be finished.
  • We were able to negotiate a price that worked for us for an up-front purchase which was nice.
  • We found the pricing to be very competitive.
  • Bottom line for us was despite the pros of the product, we found other RMM solutions to be a better overall "value" due to not having to dedicate technicians to maintaining the product.
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Quest
  • KACE has saved us from having to spend several days of employee hours in crafting DVDs and duplicating them (100+ DVDs)
  • KACE has saved us on the postage required to send out those DVDs for every update (monthly) to all of our customers electronically
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ScreenShots

ConnectWise Automate Screenshots

Screenshot of Monitor: Find problemsScreenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of