ConnectWise Automate vs Datto Remote Monitoring and Management comparison

"Remote access and detailed monitoring help us support our equipment."

"A good automated scripts feature."

"The database is great. It's a nicely ordered database."

"This product saves us a lot of time and increases our efficiency."

"It's a very good IT tool for a company that provides IT services. It is very helpful for technicians to work with the tool to see all of the customers in one place and then manage all of the computers in one place."

"The most value we get from this solution is that everything is on a patch cycle."

"It is very scalable."

"The implementation is nice and easy."

"We support nine different nonprofits, and the billing took the manager three or four days working on spreadsheets. When I finished automating everything with Datto, we cut everything down to a couple of hours. That's a substantial cost savings on the billing side."

"AEM support is great for Macs."

"The tool's main valuable features are its ease of use and intuitive console. It's very easy to implement and create policies. I don't need highly technical staff to manage the tool, which is a big advantage."

"I also like how Datto integrates seamlessly with the Autotask ticketing system."

"The project management and task management features work well. It's a decent product in that regard."

"Automation, in terms of the standard patches and standard updates, and remote support are valuable. When it does the standard Windows and patches, it works really well. This is something they focus on. Remote support is also something they focus on quite a bit, and it works really well. Being able to get to an agent or a client computer right away is very helpful."

"Even when the connection to the server is lost, the monitoring continues without interruption."

"It has a single pane of glass, and it integrates well with other software."

"I have a problem with the reports available on the solution. I don't understand how to work with the reporting functionality. For example, when I want to give a report for a specific machine, ConnectWise doesn't seem to have this as an option. I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or if the reporting functionality is just poorly conceived."

"They always change the GUI to some dumb-down version of tiles which are more "user-friendly", but slows my team down in the end."

"There could be better linkages between ConnectWise Automate and Manage from a ticketing perspective. Automate and Manage each has its own ticketing system. We use the one in Manage, but it'd be nice if they were linked directly to the one in Automate."

"This is a raw system. Of course, it has some flaws that could be improved. But, it's something that we will have to work with to get to the point where we need this, we request it and they do their best to make it happen."

"The menu doesn't always load properly."

"They could use some automated alerts particularly when we're talking about an MSP that might shoot over."

"Scheduling of automation could be improved and made more simple."

"The fixed client for Automate is slow. The web client is not very intuitive."

"They have a tab to provide information about the type of hardware the computers have. One thing they don't specify is what model of hard drive the computers have. Identification of storage models would be nice."

"My most significant criticism is Datto is a complex product that takes a while to understand, but that could be said of almost any solution at the same level. It depends on where you're starting from. You have to rework all your workflows, and it's some heavy lifting if you want to get it right."

"The CRM capabilities are not very good. It's clunky and could work a lot better than it does. There are no marketing add-ins, for example."

"I would like the ability to remotely manage configuration and settings on individual units. Some organizations have a certain device configuration that needs to be consistent across all computers. For example, if we have computers that cannot go to sleep or hibernate because they're being accessed remotely, we need to be able to quickly configure those computers to not hibernate. With Datto, there is no easy and/or direct way to accomplish this. I can't create a group called No Hibernate and drag all those computers to that group so that they do not go into hibernation. There is no easy way to put in a policy or a procedure like that. It's still back to going to each computer and doing it by hand, which is what I'm trying to get away from. I want to automate and simplify as much as possible. I write code and scripts to do most of my work anyways. The intention is to get away from me having to be so hands-on."

"Be prepared to spend a lot of time on conversions if you have a lot of clients."

"The only area where I see room for improvement is the ability to delay the application of patches for a set number of days."

"Sometimes we have some downtime when Datto is doing updates. Maybe it's because of the cloud service they use. I'm not sure if they're going through AWS or Azure or what. That's happened, but the outages have been few and far between."

"The main challenge was implementing patch management for software that was not in the tool's standard library or catalog."

"Pricing and licensing are reasonable."

"I pay $85 a month per user for a ConnectWise package that contains multiple solutions."

"I believe Automate is available for around $2."

"From what I've overheard, it is pretty comparable to other solutions in terms of price."

"It fluctuates on the number of computers you have. Depending on the number of computers you have, it can fluctuate anywhere between $5 to $10 per computer per month, which is not too bad. I am not aware of any additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee. It was one flat rate per device."

"The license typically depends on the number of endpoints. On the RMM side, I think we're paying around $2,250 per endpoint. Then there is also a license per user and tech, so that comes out to about a hundred bucks per tech, give or take."

"We had to pay out some overtime for a few problematic sites. Sites on domain networks are incredibly easy to install. We learned a few tricks that streamlined the process, but in the beginning, it was a bit tedious."

"Regarding pricing, Kaseya sells it as part of a bundle called Kaseya 360. This package includes several tools, such as EDR, ransomware protection, and more. Considering the bundle, the price is reasonable. However, where I am in Brazil, the high dollar rate and taxes make it not cheap for mid-sized companies. Still, it's competitively priced compared to similar tools."

"AEM is a lot more scalable as you just pay per agent instead of having to purchase expensive licenses."

"It goes by how many endpoints you have. It is about $3,000 a month for us. If we can't figure it out ourselves and need additional help to set it up, we would have to pay for that."