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,…
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SOTI MobiControl
Score 8.7 out of 10
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SOTI in Mississauga offers MobiControl, the company's enterprise mobile device management application which can be used to track physical mobile assets as well as their applications and provide data privacy and security.
MobiXontrol allows more access to different types of devices. I also appreciate the ability to separate out the devices by type to make searching easier. The real-time access to what the user is seeing is much better with MobiControl.
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.
The experience using SOTI MobiControl has been excellent as a user. My notebook and smartphone devices have the security policy applied and it works perfectly. I have all the apps I need to work installed, up to date and with no issues. All devices are tracked by the software and are safe in case of theft, and the information contained in the devices is erased remotely. Each group/user has their permissions specified according to what they need and that makes things even more secure. I recommend SOTI MobiControl for its ease of use and security and for not slowing down my devices.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I support other users with the help of this tool. I really like the remote support functionality. You can make screenshots or even capture videos. If you face network problems, the tool doesn't help at all. It might be helpful, if they would develop a kind of offline support mechanism. So that there is some kind of logging even when there is no network and we can check the logs afterwards (or do video capture while being offline, etc.).
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.
We had a feature request. They accepted the request, but couldn't tell us whether the feature will be developed or when. I think this is not helpful for us as a customer. We do not always ask the SOTI MobiControl for help but other consultants. I think that is quite expensive.
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.
MobiXontrol allows more access to different types of devices. I also appreciate the ability to separate out the devices by type to make searching easier. The real-time access to what the user is seeing is much better with MobiControl.