Autotask PSA vs ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus

In my opinion, Datto Autotask is exceptionally complicated to set up, manage, and use on a daily basis. I would think the target market for this product would be someone managing a team of 20 - 50 people, possibly more. In my experience, for it to run properly you will need to dedicate at least half an FTE to running this product in an organization of that size per month. I would not recommend it for companies with less than 10 people or for companies that value quick communication with their clients. I would not recommend it for companies using Datto's RMM product. The integration exists, but it is clearly a bolt-on. They were not developed together and they are slow to talk to each other. Frequently you cannot add details from RMM sessions into the PSA without manually copying the ticket number, and if the ticket is more than a week old, then you can't even find it with the ticket number.

We use the free version, it allows up to 10 technicians to be added to the system, but that has never been an issue, as we are a small team. The functionality and usability of MESDP are great and can work with larger teams too. It is well suited to be used as a main Ticketing system, and this is not limited to IT only, I am sure other teams that need to keep track and log issues will be able to utilize MESDP without any issues. There is a self-service portal as an option, however, we do not use it as of yet, as there has not been the need for it. If you would need to use the same instance within multiple departments, this may be a bit tricky to achieve, as there is no easy way to limit visibility to tickets from other departments, however, I am sure there is a way around it.

• The graphical calculations on time spent on requests, how long they were open for, who worked on a ticket last.
• Grouping by priority so you can determine easier what needs to be addressed sooner rather then later. This also helps if Account Management has conversations a technician is not aware of so they can prioritize efficiently.
• The email updates that are sent out to the technicians so they are aware of upcoming or stale tickets.

• It is very easy to create business rules that automatically route email tickets to the correct department and apply templates to correctly categorize the incident.
• The technician auto-assign function allows email tickets to be fairly apportioned using a round robin technique. We do not cuurently use the load balancing technique which is also available.
• It is very easy to bulk edit requests to correct miscatergorization by Analysts. (i.e. Incidents vs. Service Requests)
• Coordinating communications and notifying ticket holders when a network or application event is resolved is very simple.

• The GUI is a little dated.
• Some integrations are limited for not being a Datto product.
• While not as complex to set up as Connectwise, it definitely requires some serious thought during the initial setup.
• Email processing could offer more options for parsing keywords and allow for more automation.
• The mobile app is just not worth using in my experience.

• Reporting tools; the report features can be a little limited, it can be quite tricky to get the information you want displayed in detail
• You can set required fields within the ticket template, which should mean the user has to complete them before they can submit the ticket, however this often doesn't enforce correctly

After using multiple products on the market, Autotask was intuitive and easy to manage.

we are looking at other tools like Zendesk which may replace ServiceDesk. We are currently evaluating both tools to see which one would serve our needs better

The work flow is much better then other competitors

As any other feature-rich software package, starting out with ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus has a little bit of a learning curve, but it usually doesn't take very long until you can use the basic features. Training new technicians on the use of the software does not take very long, and for users to submit tickets it is as easy as sending an email.

They are fairly quick at returning a response to a problem and have been able to fix all issues for the most part.

I have a few issues with MESDP and even though we use the free version, the support staff was very quick to respond and extremely competent and helpful. Luckily, I have only had to use them a couple of times over the 2.5 years I have been using their product, but they strike me as very competent, friendly and helpful, regardless of the version of their product you use.

The portion of Autotask that we've used other companies for prior to using Autotask is the Endpoint Management. The Autotask Endpoint Management (AEM) portal integrates perfectly with their PSA/CRM tools. It's alerting features are much better than the above software as there aren't a bunch of superfluous and unneeded alerts. Instead, it only alerts for things that you specify that you want. Alerts aside, for the PSA/CRM, I don't have much to compare it to as Autotask was the first PSA we tried. It's hard to imagine a PSA having more features or doing a better job than Autotask.

ManageEngine stands high when it compares to other products. Users & administrators have a very good experience from submitting the ticket to the submission & assigning by the administrators & technicians. The added features such as change management, asset management & more gave ManageEngine more advantages. We choose ManageEngine for it is stronger features & stability.

• We were able to identify the profitability of our entire client base.
• We identified a loss of over 1 million dollars for time unbilled consultancy fees using metrics derived from Autotask.
• Autotask helped us serve our client base in a professional manner, it's like having an entire department at your finger tips.
• Autotask is the heartbeat of our operation.

• The tool does not scale well from an ROI perspective. As you add a customer, you must add a new instance, hence a new license.
• The tool is probably on the expensive side (34,000 USD per 130 technicians per year).
• There is no usage beyond incident, change, and problem management. The CMDB feature is extremely limited and cannot generate additional ROI. There is no knowledge-base or integration with other software (other than ME Desktop Central).