Item: Action1
Rating: 10
Author: Lo Dutra

Overall Satisfaction with Action1

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have a very small IT team, only 2 people, and about 100 devices to manage, both internally in the office and remotely.
To be honest, first usage idea was just as a inventory + easy remote access to the devices.
Later, we started using remote software deploy, patch management (I know it should be the main usage, but for us, it was a collateral bonus), some reporting on disk usage and so on.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Easy remote access to devices. That simple. We have some very unskilled users in the field where asking them to access their PC via conventional remote tools like TeamViewer, Anydesk, etc. was always a pain. Now, all they have to do is ensure their PC is online, and we can connect to them.
Remote software deploy. Before Action1, we did have some GPOs and scripts, but again - being able to deploy to PCs outside of our office/LAN, is just beautiful. On top of the standard repository, being able to create new packages is very useful for our scenario.
Inventory Reporting. Recently we had to identify PCs running old versions of Windows. Can't highlight enough how easy it is.

Cons

Even though my team and I use a lot of the remote desktop functionality, I believe it could be further improved in regards to file sharing and perhaps a dedicated client software so we could have even easier/faster access to our endpoints.

Return on Investment

It's pretty hard to negotiate investments / costs in IT when you have a small team in a mid size company. Everything is seen as useless cost and not investment. As of now, I'm pretty sure that if we ever cross the free-tier, I'll have no problems with investment approval since the tool is proven and useful on a daily basis. I believe this was the single most importat decision that Action1 took in their sales model.

Usability

There's always room for improvement. I believe that a dedicated client for the remote connections would be a game changer. Of course this could be specific to my use case, where this is one of the most used features, perhaps others would no even notice it.
In terms of the overall platform, even though it's not a deal breaker for me, I understand that having the option of a PT-BR localization of the platform, would be interesting.

Alternatives Considered

NinjaOne

To be honest, I might have been lucky, but Action1 was the first I actually tested.
I've heard from our mother company from Italy, that they have tested NinjaOne but it was not what they were expecting in terms of vulnerability and patch management. I've recently suggested them to try Action1, not sure if they were able to do it already. I'm confident they will be impressed.

Key Insights

Do you think Action1 delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Action1's feature set?

Yes

Did Action1 live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Action1 go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Action1 again?

Yes

Other Software Used

TomTicket, Ploomes, Omada, SentinelOne Singularity, Bitwarden

Likelihood to Recommend

For small teams having to deal with significant ammount of devices, I can't express how useful Action1 is. With very small effort, you can easily keep track of your devices, keep them up to date, deploy new software to your users, create recurring reports/alerts and so on.
Initially, the 100 endpoints for free was also a nice touch. Now, even better since they increased to 200. For the forseeable future, I have not to worry about costs and still can't believe it's a full solution for free, not those freeware stuff where what you really desire is behind a cost.

Comments

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Action1 for small teams - way to go