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ConnectWise Automate vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    ConnectWise Automate

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AConnectWise 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

    Ansible

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AThe Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (acquired by Red Hat in 2015) is a foundation for building and operating automation across an organization. The platform includes tools needed to implement enterprise-wide automation, and can automate resource provisioning, and IT environments and configuration of systems and devices. It can be used in a CI/CD process to provision the target environment and to then deploy the application on it.

    $5,000

    per year

    Pricing
    ConnectWise AutomateAnsible
    Editions & Modules
    Agents
    $1.00-$6.00
    per month/per agent
    Implementation Fee
    $700
    Basic Tower
    5,000
    per year
    Enterprise Tower
    10,000
    per year
    Premium Tower
    14,000
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    ConnectWise AutomateAnsible
    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 AutomateAnsible
    Considered Both Products
    ConnectWise
    No answer on this topic
    Red Hat
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    86%
    Would buy again
    18 Answers
    99%
    Would buy again
    265 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    19 Answers
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    210 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    20 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    263 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    85%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    166 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    73%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    201 Answers
    Features
    ConnectWise AutomateAnsible
    Application Performance Management
    Comparison of Application Performance Management features of ConnectWise Automate and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    Feature
    ConnectWise Automate
    8.5
    1 Ratings
    18% above category average
    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    -
    Ratings
    Virtualization monitoring8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    IT Asset Discovery9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Monitoring Tasks
    Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of ConnectWise Automate and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    Feature
    ConnectWise Automate
    7.4
    22 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    -
    Ratings
    Remote monitoring10.022 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network device monitoring8.021 Ratings00 Ratings
    Activity Monitoring8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Management Tasks
    Comparison of Management Tasks features of ConnectWise Automate and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    Feature
    ConnectWise Automate
    7.8
    22 Ratings
    15% above category average
    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    -
    Ratings
    Patch Management10.021 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based automation9.022 Ratings00 Ratings
    Remote Access
    Comparison of Remote Access features of ConnectWise Automate and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    Feature
    ConnectWise Automate
    8.0
    1 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    -
    Ratings
    Attended device access10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Unattended device access8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile device access5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Virtual device access8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple-display support9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple concurrent sessions8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
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    User Ratings
    ConnectWise AutomateAnsible
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (59 ratings)
    8.8
    (292 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    9.2
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    8.3
    (184 ratings)
    Performance
    3.0
    (4 ratings)
    8.7
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.0
    (14 ratings)
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ConnectWise AutomateAnsible
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    I think it's the best defacto orchestrator for automation because it's so easy to integrate in other tools to it (dynatrace, cyberark, terraform, etc). It is a lot for a new or smaller team to use so I wouldn't recommend it to a new team using Ansible, in that case using Ansible navigator is a better start to understanding playbooks/inventories before diving into the complexity of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. EDA also takes a lot of connectivity between Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and target systems to get working which can be difficult in very locked down envs unless you have approval from many other teams like networking and security.
    Incentivized
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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
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    • Standardize controls and visibility for automation.
    • Provide RBAC and Vault for improved automation security and support.
    • Job Scheduling is much more effective than Cron or other home-grown solutions.
    • The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform API is one of the best features as it makes automation accessible from any other platform.
    Incentivized
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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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    Red Hat
    • Ansible is still not truly declarative like Terraform.
    • Simple automation is fine, but creating complex, scalable automation scripts is very difficult to learn.
    • For a higher number of nodes, Ansible consumes a lot of resources. It needs the paid version of AAP, which requires a cost.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    We are extremely happy with the use of AAP. It's better than expected, There is almost no limit when thinking of automation. The only problem is that the day to day is consuming a big part of our time. Patching and checking vulnerabilities are virtually killing us. But we can only improve with AAP.
    Incentivized
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    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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    Red Hat
    Everything has room for improvement, but Ansible is the best tool out there for what it does and what it can do. There are plenty of features and capabilities that can be added, but it's just a matter of time before it happens.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    Great in almost every way compared to any other configuration management software. The only thing I wish for is python3 support. Other than that, YAML is much improved compared to the Ruby of Chef. The agentless nature is incredibly convenient for managing systems quickly, and if a member of your term has no terminal experience whatsoever they can still use the UI.
    Incentivized
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    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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    There is a lot of good documentation that Ansible and Red Hat provide which should help get someone started with making Ansible useful. But once you get to more complicated scenarios, you will benefit from learning from others. I have not used Red Hat support for work with Ansible, but many of the online resources are helpful.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    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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    Red Hat
    I spoke on this topic today!
    Incentivized
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    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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    AAP compares favorably with Terraform and Power Automate. I don't have much experience with Terraform, but I find AAP and Ansible easier to use as well as having more capabilities. Power Platform is also an excellent automation tool that is user friendly but I feel that Ansible has more compatibility with a variety of technologies.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Red Hat
    • First, it keeps our entire server infrastructure aligned with our standards and reduces the time and effort needed to maintain our systems.
    • Automate routine IT tasks to save time, reduce errors, and ensure every server is configured and updated consistently.
    • Tasks that used to take our teams weeks to complete manually now run automatically and reliably, with full visibility, making our infrastructure management more effective and our compliance tracking much easier.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    ConnectWise Automate Screenshots

    Screenshot of Monitor: Find problemsProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshot