ConnectWise Automate vs. ManageEngine ADAudit Plus

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.

Incentivized

I would recommend ADAuditPlus (and/or Log360) to any org that is trying to achieve PCI DSS Compliance and is struggling with some of the monitoring and reporting aspects, provided that the org is prepared to spend a little time and effort in truly understanding the requirements and is prepared to document requirements and match them to the ADAuditPlus product features.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• ManageEngine ADAudit Plus changes for user and group management can be looked up in builtin reports
• You can build your own reports based on almost every logic you can think of
• You have the ability to create alerts based on logic and filters and sendout custom alerts to email, SMS or other means.
• First you need to understand the basics of the software, after that the software itself is very helpfull in configuring specific items.
• I really love the support that ManageEngine is giving the customer, for all questions I use the chat on their website. This is for me the best remote support I ever saw, and I saw a lot in my 20 years of experience in IT.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• It's based on Java engine that is slow -- reports are often difficult to build (we are going to upgrade the machine it's running on to see if this is the issue)
• Keeping this software up to date is a pain; there should be a better "update" function
• The naming and navigation are terrible -- it's never clear which feature you're looking for and where it's hidden in the menus
• Adding machines is not as easy as it should be; occasionally there are IP conflicts that are nearly impossible to resolve

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It works great for everything we need and use. Any issues in the software are pretty easy to resolve with tech support. And they are very responsive to resolving issues. Even ones where a fix/patch are required. At present, the software does everything we need it to for compliance, audit, and account review.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

ADAudit with its cloud and on prem install option allows any organization to get in on AD report management. Whether you need to report internally only for for external audit controls its a great tool with flexibility to handle most any user or group report capability. Since this also includes m365 integration it enables IT pros to administer usage, license, cost control and permission access to most anything in Microsoft's portfolio. Its a great tool all around for AD integrated access needs.

Incentivized

uptime good

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Integration/overlap between products could be improved

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I'd give their support a 10 if it weren't for the fact that sometimes, the support team (I believe they are overseas) can take a little bit to respond, but not too long. I may submit a ticket in the morning and won't hear about it until later in the afternoon. However, my tickets were not "urgent," so that may have been the reason for the delay. Other than that, support is great, and the ManageEngine account team has visited us in the past. It's always nice to see your product representatives take a white-glove approach like that.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

knowledgable and prompt response

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The remote setup team helped when i needed it and setup weas very straight forward and easy. The advanced setup for an external db and customizations for our latest version AD environment went pretty easy once they found documentation on customization.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

In terms of features, ADAudit Plus offers a comprehensive set of features for monitoring and auditing Active Directory, including real-time alerts, detailed reports, and user behavior analytics. The platform also offers support for multiple platforms, including Windows, UNIX, and Linux, as well as integration with other ManageEngine tools.

Incentivized

updates are effective and system is reliable

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

I like the ability to customize reports and provided great visibility to AD and some servers.

• It helped greatly with customer support issues when we used ADAudit with the hundreds of customer accounts used for SSON to the LOB application server to users over Citrix.
• It saved time on some issues with accounts and Group Policy changes that affected customer experience.