N-able N-central vs. Panda Systems Management

N-Able is perfect for an MSP environment. It gives all the standard functionality an IT professional needs out of the box and can be configured to show almost anything required. For example, we have configured a dashboard to show when our backups need attention for each customer. This is achieved by running a small script on repeat via N-Central everyday/evening, and the result gives us information on the dashboard to help us identify exactly what is working and what needs looking into.

Incentivized

Panda Systems Management is well suited for small to medium sized organizations looking for a tool to centralize asset management not only physical but also assist with rapid deployment of patches, applications, etc. It proves also to be very beneficial as permits (to and extent) to do troubleshooting without interfering or interrupting end users.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Remote access. It's as good as any other on the market. It also allows for RDP connections which is a nice feature.
• Inventory management. We get some great insight from the reports we can run.
• Quick Jobs. If there's an app or service you use, there may be a quick job to install and update it remotely.

Incentivized

• Customer support just points to online guides and I feel they aren't helpful.
• During the trial they turn on a lot of features. In my experience, if you play around with the features, they charge you for them. Keep this in mind if you move forward with N-Able - they will charge for "trialed" services.
• In my experience, some services that you're being charged for can't be disabled or monitored by you or your team. You only see them on the monthly invoice.
• In my opinion, the "Scripting Automation" doesn't provide value. You're either going to be writing your own batch or Powershell to make scripting work.
• In my opinion, monitoring software deployments is painful.
• The default monitoring template can't be duplicated, edited, or referenced. You'll find that the default monitors in an unusual way and will throw needless recurring alerts into your ticketing system. To avoid this, you need to create a template from scratch which takes many hours to set up.
• In my opinion, they're more concerned about a quick buck than customer service. "Buyer beware" company.

• Licensing. With the possibility of monthly splitting
• Integration with firewalls even outside the corporate network

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We rate and recommend Panda Systems Management not only because it is a very effective and very cost effective solution that pays itself for us (ROI) extremely fast, but also due to all reason described previously and possibly a few more I'm sure we missed here. I do have to says tech support for this solution sometimes leave a bit to be desired.

Incentivized

Make sure if you your using a vm you follow the instructions for provisioning to the letter or it will be starting from square one

Incentivized

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.

Panda is a bit of a greatest hits between some of these other things. I feel like GoToAssist has a stronger remote support option, but Panda is more convenient. Kaseya has a ton of features, but from an ease of use standpoint, Panda seems stronger. Spiceworks has a fine inventory system but it lacks features. I added Azure as well since we are a 365 shop and Azure supplies a lot of the same visibility that Panda does. However it is a completely different animal, and it's way easier to hop into Panda and get what you need than get waaay more data than necessary from Azure/Azure AD/ATP.

Incentivized

• We have lost hundreds of hours on the phone/emailing support with no resolution for any of our issues
• We had to move all of our services away which was very painful
• Staff satisfaction was low having to deal with this company

• It has facilitated us in the management of controls on the various clients, reducing the cost of human resources
• Thanks to the alerts, in case of intrusion, it is possible to intervene promptly

Incentivized