Fortinet offers FortiClient, their endpoint security system emphasizing automated advanced threat protection, security fabric integration, secure remote access, endpoint quarantine, and a comprehensive reporting dashboard.
N/A
N-able N-central
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
MSPs
and IT professionals use N-able™ N-central® to monitor and manage devices and complex
networks remotely. N-central provides
visibility and efficiency as the user's needs scale. N-central can help users:
1. Proactively monitor everything on a customer network—not just servers
and workstations—and troubleshoot.
2. Stay on top of threats with features like MFA, antivirus, integrated endpoint
detection and response, data backup, disk encryption, email protection,…
FortiClient is really well suited for providing remote employees super quick access to a local network without needing much technical know-how. The virus scanning and web-blocking is also really great at making sure to keep the spam, ads, and other malicious web connections at bay. I have not run into any specific scenario that FortiClient has not been well suited - All of the scenarios in which I have used FortiClient have all functions really well for me.
In my opinion, N-able N-central is a good "learn your lesson and move onto something better" tool. I've used many RMM tools over the years and I feel that this one is slow, does a terrible job with reporting, alerting, monitoring, software deployments, etc. The ability to turn on services like AV, backup, etc easily is cute, but you're not going to be able to use your own tools with this easily. In my experience, if you do turn those tools on for testing during the trial, you'll be charged later (despite it being a trial). They also turn off your ability to monitor these increased costs or to turn them off yourself. As a company, I found that they were impossible to work with. The sales team is right there if you want to buy something - but if you need anything other than to buy something, in my experience, they take days or weeks to navigate. I found that they are not a terribly ethical company and are more concerned with making a few dollars than creating a partnerships with MSPs. I can see value is in the advertised price of $99 for a hundred endpoints. However, you need to remember to not trial any other tools (like AV, backup, etc).
[FortiClient] splits the traffic very well. For example, when users connect a VPN to the office they are connecting to the internal system which uses VPN traffic. If users access the public internet they use the internet traffic, but [Fortinet] does not route this traffic back to the office.
Remote tasks - entry-level techs can run basic tasks without physically touching a piece of equipment.
Remote support - remote controlling user devices is easy and saves a lot of time with having to initiate a remote session.
Management of devices, particularly patch management and anti-virus management - you can automatically approve and deploy patches and schedule automatic AV scans.
font way too small on login, unable to select an option, for example, to see each letter of password as typed promotes errors at login
login errors and failure rate extremely high as [reported] by all our physicians and other providers: not infrequently one will have to return to office after hours in order to complete charts or access charts to answer patient after hours questions
frequent disconnects in spite of excellent internet signal
Because the software is very simple and easy to use, very efficient, and has a stable connection that allows the user to perform tasks without problems. Also, this software does not need to be configured by IT technicians, since it comes with a very developed and understandable set up guide.
Overall we have liked our solar winds experience, however, as our company has grown to support larger enterprises, this product does not have the functionality that our teams need in order to fully support them. The lack of granularity with backups and lack of ability to support nutanix environments is slowly drawing us into the use of other tools.
Usability is pretty solid. It is not as easy to manage and adjust if you are not a trained IT professional, which requires smaller companies without IT staff to reply on outsourced IT partners. The user interface is a bit clunky, but you can generally figure out what you need to do, it just takes a little bit of time and effort.
The user interface is fairly straight forward, with logic groupings for objects. I did not deploy this software, but am one of the daily administrators. Once you get the correct agent package (Which can be a challenge) the integration into AD is not bad. The UI could be more customized, but that may have been a design choice.
FortiClient is a security suite with which we can keep our equipment well-protected. And it is that in a system like Windows, which is always the target of all kinds of attacks, it is not enough to have a simple antivirus.
Every time we have reached out to SolarWinds they are quick to respond, even offering support chat 24/7. Their support team is great and works with you to find solutions to issues. They have taken items we had issues with before and used those to create updates so that the issue is handled better in the future.
Meraki MX has a much more basic set of features compared to FortClient and the Fortinet ecosystem of devices and software. Setting up a FortiGate with FortiClient can take a little more time, but the feature set is much richer. We use Meraki MX is a few offices, but are now converting many of them over to the FortiClient and Fortinet suite of security devices and software.
Our version of SolarWinds was old and running on old hardware, but it was way easier to setup and do things with. It did not do everything N-able does such as patch management, or at least we didn't have a module to do so if one existed. However it definitely seemed easier to use and possibly more stable.
