A great RMM tool, so long as you don't need support
Updated January 19, 2020
A great RMM tool, so long as you don't need support
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Solarwinds N-able
We use the SolarWinds N-able N-central product to manage all of the customers we provide IT service to. It is used to monitor our client's networks, manage and maintain their assets, and to provide remote support.
- 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.
- Support - their customer support is extremely lacking. This goes all the way up to management. Entry-level techs provide scripted or cut and paste answers, which is not a bad thing, but there is almost always a back and forth process that happens before you can get to a real solution. The biggest issue with this is that it seems as if they only want to respond to an issue once every day - it is not uncommon for support issues to take a week or more to be resolved.
- Security features - Ncentral does not have very granular security. Users have a role, and basically anything under that role is game. We don't want all techs to have access to a clients Active Directory, but they would still need the ability to have remote access for example - there is no way to lock down specific features.
- Solarwinds N-able seems to be more focused on sales than customer satisfaction. It feels like pulling teeth to get responses to support issues or concerns, but salesmen will be relentless when it comes to needing to meet their quota.
- The product definitely increases productivity. Technicians can spend a few seconds to take care of remote tasks with a few clicks as opposed to minutes to get a user to start a remote control session, or worse, going on site to work on a piece of equipment.
- The packaging of the features makes selling and pricing the product fairly straight-forward and convenient. This saves our sales team time from trying to work with add-ons when pricing our services - the product makes it easy to just have an "all you can eat" package at a set price.
- When something goes wrong with the product, our business and our customers suffer. If for example, a bug causes all managed computers to reboot, our customers call in, resulting in our technicians being booked solid doing damage control. This also causes loss of trust with our customers - we can't simply blame the product, the customer trusts us to provide them a service and if the product fails, we fail.
Since I came in to manage the product, we have only tested one other product. The main reason for not switching was that it would take a considerable amount of time and resources to convert everything to a new service. Additionally N-able's interface, while it does have much room for improvement, is far superior to that of LabTech's.
Solarwinds N-able Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
None | Slow Resolution Poor followup Problems left unsolved Not kept informed Escalation required Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times Support doesn't seem to care Slow Initial Response |
Yes - We can't afford downtime when there is an issue, and do not have the resources with the expertise to resolve issues with the software.
Yes, there is one specific technician, named Lennaert, who has always been prompt and helpful. He would talk through issues with you and provide status updates, and most of all seemed to really know what he was talking about. I'm not sure if he was promoted, or left, but I have not worked with him or anyone that provides the same caliber of service in well over a year.