Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access vs Microsoft Remote Desktop Services comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 7, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Remote Access
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
BeyondTrust Privileged Remo...
Ranking in Remote Access
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (10th)
Microsoft Remote Desktop Se...
Ranking in Remote Access
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Remote Access category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 3.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access is 3.2%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is 15.7%, down from 19.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Remote Access
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi - PeerSpot reviewer
Everything has worked better since we started using it
Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.
Hahn Rolf - PeerSpot reviewer
Securely manage high-privilege remote access with granular configurations
I recommend that we improve integration with other products like PasswordSafe, aiming for smoother integration. Better alignment between products would enhance manageability from a single point. Additionally, BeyondTrust should focus on automating the update process to reduce unnecessary ticket creation. Improved quality control for non-English language versions is needed to avoid translation and layout errors.
BHARAT B  SHARMA - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up and reliable, but needs an additional control panel
We've had issues with security breaches. The main problem is that if we are using this with the individual computer and using a remote desktop, there are some loopholes there. When I implemented this on an individual computer within two or three days it got captured. There is a problem with the printing and sharing of this program. There is a lot of customized software leaving the market due to this. If somebody wants to run a specific program with the specific settings, they don't want full access to the computer. Then there are some problems that have to be resolved. We'd like to have an additional control panel available in order o more easily give resources to the computers. There are a lot of restrictions and having a program panel would make things easier. It would help us set up the right access and permissions.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like the group policy management feature, which performs application monitoring and device enrollment."
"Intune simplifies compliance. The ability to manage software updates and policies on endpoints has helped us meet contract requirements."
"It is a very helpful solution."
"It provides control over all mobile devices that are being connected to the corporate network."
"The mobile device management is very useful."
"The ability to switch between Affinity and non-Affinity enrollment is great."
"I particularly appreciate the administration and security features, which can be deployed easily."
"The device profiling which uses the official Outlook email enabled us to control the screenshot feature and prevent copying outside of the organization's application."
"We can truly elevate our admin rights while we're in there to fully take control of a system and manage it as if it was sitting right here on our desk. Most of the organization has gone to remote work or work from home. With that being the case, this solution allows us to be able to still work with our end-users, even though they're not always sitting on our network."
"We like the integration with Active Directory. It allows us to discover the endpoints and user accounts that need protection. It's a good way of securing our privileged access."
"I like the enterprise credential manager. It's a connector that sits in PRA and tests the credentials for the end user with a process that will clean the password. This is one of PRA's primary features and simplifies user onboarding. There aren't many restrictions or complications. We can add the user while only opening one port, which is more than enough to access the PRA server. Every organization requires only four critical servers out of a hundred and some 50 production servers."
"Based on the feedback from my colleagues who have never complained about the technical support, I would say that the product's support team is good."
"The product has improved remote support capabilities since it works fine."
"Its security, simplicity, and ease of deployment and maintenance are the most valuable. It is FIPS compliant, so it goes through severe penetration testing every one year or two years. They have to maintain this compliance. It is very safe. Customers have been using it in the last eight years because of the simplicity of getting it deployed quickly. Most of the people using the solution had been hacked already, so they needed it quickly. As compared to the other solutions in the market, it can be turned on in production very quickly. You don't really need to have a server. It can be deployed very rapidly on VMware or Hyper-V, and you don't need to do an installation. It is a kind of an all-included package that you just deploy in a VM environment. It is basically a VM that is specifically built for a customer. The way the PRA data solutions work is that you need to build them for each customer because of being hard-coded with their SSL certificate, their web page name, and all that."
"The security provided by PRA when it comes to access for remote and privileged users has been outstanding. It has met all of our objectives, everything from password rotation to securing and allowing us to clamp down access to the auditing and monitoring features."
"When it comes to the Privileged Remote Access (PRA) solution, instead of depending on a VPN client, from Cisco or any other vendor, we can directly use this product from the internet. It is very easy to do the implementation, and it is easy for every user to access the server from outside of their organization. They can open the URL and put their name and password, and it'll do the multi-factor authentication. They can easily access the server. Prior to this solution, the users had to log into the VPN, which is not required with BeyondTrust. Now, they can use their computer over the internet."
"I give the stability a nine out of ten."
"What I found most valuable in Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is accessibility because the solution lets you take control of your computer remotely."
"The solution now includes a multi-screen feature which is great."
"The most valuable feature of this solution at the moment is the HTML5 web client. You get a browser experience, not just the terminal sort of client, and the integration with Azure multi-factor application."
"The most valuable feature is the remote application access."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is its security and simple configuration."
"The most valuable features of the solution are ease of use and the simple environment."
"It's built into the operating system and has a command line interface capability to insert credentials, IDs, a password, et cetera."
 

Cons

"The backend of Microsoft Intune needs to be improved. We have seen a little bit of delay as compared to other MDM solutions. That needs to be improved. A little bit more granularity should also be added"
"It would be nice to have a location tracker for the mobile device management tool. I'm not sure if it exists but hasn't been configured or if it's missing, but we've been unable to utilize the location features."
"I'd like some more reporting so that I don't have to delve into PowerShell and I can pull more of the local device information such as memory, apps installed, etc. It would be nice to be able to see the apps that are present there but might not be managed. For example, if they installed 7Zip, it could report that back via an installed program or feature to see what was currently installed."
"The configuration and pricing can be improved."
"Regarding mobile devices, Intune is good, but there are other services that I would say are ahead of Intune from an administration and reporting point of view."
"Setting up Intune Autopilot can be a little complicated."
"There are challenges with Intune, specifically in reporting. Many third-party companies offer single-pane-of-glass reporting that shows you what your update environment looks like, how your patch is doing, application status, etc., but Intune's reporting is not intuitive. You can connect to Azure, monitoring, and the workbooks, but it's not streamlined."
"An issue we have run into with Microsoft Endpoint Manager is that we cannot patch third-party products like Adobe and Chrome with it."
"I recommend that we improve integration with other products like PasswordSafe, aiming for smoother integration."
"The issue I found with the product revolves around the fact that RDP and SSH sessions take too much time, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The price is pretty expensive."
"Its management is through two different portals, and you can't get from one portal to the other. I have to literally open up another website and go into it a different way. There are no inner links between the two. They should interlink the actual virtual server and the appliance. In general, there should be one interface for management for admins."
"There is no connectivity to the appliance side. There is no API, and it is just difficult for me to capture what version the device is on without going in and doing screenshots. It is a little too secure in that regard, where they don't even trust their product owner. Since a lot of hacks come from the inside, they are probably doing what they need to do out of necessity. It is just that I have to work pretty hard to produce compliance data on the box."
"Changing your password should be simplified, and there should not be a charge for it."
"One of our gaps or pain points is having multi-factor authentication at the endpoint and using the PRA password injection from BeyondTrust, which does not work in our environment. We can only have MFA at the login of BeyondTrust to check out the password. Therefore, we can't meet our security requirements of having it on the endpoint."
"At the moment, I don't see any major problems with it. If anything, they can just change the look and feel of the login screen because it looks too simple to me. It does not have so much information. When you get to the login screen of the solution, you should have more information. We also have BeyondTrust Remote Support, and the login page looks similar to BeyondTrust Privilege Remote Access. I would love to see more rich information on the login screen or landing page so that rather than having a regular sign-in screen or page where you just provide a username and password and get into the solution, you should have more insight into what the solution does. I've mentioned this to them every time I have had an opportunity."
"I would like to see a web-based interface, instead of client installation to refresh the UI through HTML."
"In the past, my company had faced some issues related to the stability of the product. The product's stability can be improved."
"Sometimes the server stops working, and we don’t know why. Occasionally we’ll get a message to the effect of "There is no remote license.""
"For Microsoft, maybe bandwidth optimization is one of the areas that need improvement."
"The only issue I experienced was with the initialization of the session, which affected the stability of the solution."
"The only problems that you're going to have with the remote desktop are going to be firewall ports, security, and NLA, which is a net network level access control, or TLS transfer layer security or some other SSL-type of security."
"I would like to see the hard drives work without locking up and integrate the local drives in the next release."
"The reliability of the solution could improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have no comment on pricing of the solution."
"Microsoft Intune has been incorporated into our Microsoft E5 licenses."
"No one can compete with Microsoft when it comes to price, and the features it is offering."
"They have categorized the licenses according to the size of the business. So, if it's a smaller organization, we can choose the license accordingly. If it's a big organization, then we can choose accordingly. Everything is clearly mentioned, and we can decide. It's suitable for all kinds of infrastructure, and that's very goo"
"The cost is handled through our Office 365 license, so I have yet to be able to compare it directly with other tools in its class."
"I am not that aware of the pricing, but as compared to other MDM solutions, Microsoft is providing a lot of things at the organizational level. So, it is quite reasonable as compared to other MDM solutions."
"It is not a cheap solution. The price for a device when you start using it at a large scale can be improved. It is covered under our enterprise agreement. We pay once a year. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"I liked the tool's pricing until P2 came into effect. I am unsure about the current value versus the cost of the new licensing model."
"I wish it was a little bit cheaper, but when a product is as solid as this, I understand what the cost does. It helps them to make sure it stays that way. If you want a reliable, solid product, you're going to pay more."
"My client found the solution a bit expensive but considering their use case and requirements, they didn't have any other choice. As far as I know, implementation and licensing are the only costs."
"The price is pretty expensive, but you get what you pay for and this is a great product."
"Its price is pretty good for the features and services that it provides. It is not outrageous. I'm not aware of any additional charges or anything like that."
"PRA's pricing is competitive."
"Though the solution was a bit expensive, the overall pricing was average."
"I wasn't directly involved in the licensing and pricing, but I can say that PRA is licensed per endpoint added to the Vault. I would advise users to take frequent exports of their license usage package; it's a simple feature that provides a spreadsheet of every machine in the Vault. This helps to cut down on duplicate licenses, which can happen by adding the same endpoint using an IP address and a fully qualified domain name, for instance. The implementation is an additional cost, and they offer several tiers, so the price varies. There are also some optional add-ons, so I would advise people to research the product well and find out precisely what they need regarding features. The Advanced Web Access add-on provides some required functionality when interfacing with websites; that's one to consider."
"I rate the product's pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is high, and ten is low. It is an expensive product."
"The solution is expensive. Since things are made to be a bit easier in the solution, the solution's cost is a bit on the higher side."
"The price of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is reasonable."
"The solution has a perpetual license and it is purchased upfront."
"I rate the price of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services a three out of five."
"There is a licensing cost."
"It's not an expensive product."
"It's not an expensive solution."
"I think that Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is expensive compared to Login solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Remote Access solutions are best for your needs.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What do you like most about BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
The product has improved remote support capabilities since it works fine.
What needs improvement with BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
I recommend that we improve integration with other products like PasswordSafe, aiming for smoother integration. Bette...
What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
We use the tool for vendor access, providing secure vendor access to manage systems. Most of our use cases involve se...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services?
I've never had an issue with it. I've always thought the pricing for RDS was reasonable.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services?
The current process I have to go through to get a Windows 11 VM up and running is difficult. Windows 10 worked a whol...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Bomgar Privileged Access
Remote Desktop Services, MS Remote Desktop Services
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Horizon Beverage, Air Liquide, Gateway Bank of Florida
Bank Alfalah Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access vs. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.