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KACE Desktop Authority vs ManageEngine Endpoint Central comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

KACE Desktop Authority
Ranking in Client Desktop Management
3rd
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ManageEngine Endpoint Central
Ranking in Client Desktop Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (4th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Client Desktop Management category, the mindshare of KACE Desktop Authority is 5.4%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ManageEngine Endpoint Central is 41.3%, up from 38.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Client Desktop Management
 

Featured Reviews

DW
Saves me time and effort when adding and subtracting drives, and Premier Support handles updates
Desktop Authority is nice for us because we can pass out all of our drive mappings and our printers, throughout the office and the shop. Our environment is a very big place because we're a steel fabricator. We don't fabricate steel racks for your kitchen. We're fabricating steel buildings and beams for highrises. We're sitting on a few acres of property, so it's nice to be able to deploy and fix things without always having to walk everywhere or physically go to a machine to map a drive. It's easier to use than doing it in Windows Active Directory, which I never have loved at all. One of the benefits is time savings. If we make a change to a job and I want to pull a drive off of a set of computers, I can do it without having to leave my desk. Before we started using the solution, I would have had to go to every machine. That was a much more cumbersome way of handling it. That is one way it does save me time, probably a few hours every month. I don't have to mess around with something that I can do by opening up Desktop Authority. I can make a few changes, apply those changes, and I'm done in a matter of a few minutes. In the old days, I would have had to go outside, to every machine and every computer. We have jobs that run anywhere from two months to two years. We did a lot of steel for the Rams' stadium, SoFi Stadium in California. That job is still going and it's four years in. But at some point, we're going to want to shut that job down, and we'll shut that particular drive off of the network. And that's the advantage. I can individually go in and say, "Okay, we're done fabricating steel for this job. The shop doesn't need to see this information anymore," and I can pull it away from them really easily with this software. That's one of the things that is a huge benefit for me. That's where it's saving me time.
Gabriel Clement - PeerSpot reviewer
Good for patch server management
For Endpoint Central, as an end-user system, we set automatic deployment from Friday. If, for any reason, there are instances that are missed, we check every day from 07:00 AM to 05:00 PM. We don't need to submit automatic deployment, so it's still part of my deployment process. We set up a test server. Once we are okay with the patch that they need to test, they approve it, and then it applies to production. We used Microsoft. So, for asset processing reports and things like that, we had to move to ManageEngine. They changed the name to Endpoint Central. So, it's like that in terms of being much better and having more functionality as a product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If we make a change to a job and I want to pull a drive off of a set of computers, I can do it without having to leave my desk. Before we started using the solution, I would have had to go to every machine. That was a much more cumbersome way of handling it."
"The ability to run event viewer, task manager, services, command, file browser, certificate all remotely without interrupting users is the most valuable aspect. Software deployment and prohibiting, allowing us to standardize on the software that has been deployed through the environment and then prohibiting illegal software such as torrent applications has been valuable."
"The most important feature we found to be useful in the COVID situation is the secure connection, which gives the IT support staff the ability to seamlessly connect with the users remotely and in a secure way."
"Very good, functional solution for endpoint management."
"Everything is easily centralized and managed under this one product."
"The product works perfectly for patch management and software deployments."
"The most valuable in Desktop Central is the way it is tightly coupled with the rest of the modules and the entire gamut of ManageEngine."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the Patch Management."
"Honestly, I have to say all features together have become the Swiss army knife of desktop management. They all work hand in hand. Software deployment saves an unbelievable amount of time installing an application on hundreds of computers."
 

Cons

"It would be nice if it were a little easier to maneuver around the patch management. I would like to use that more, but it got very cumbersome and complicated when I tried to use it in the past. I haven't used that much since then."
"Each of their products is an independent product, and they don't have anything to do with each other. It is a suite of packages. They all run independently, and they all are a little different because they were acquired differently. They could standardize their portfolio."
"I would like to have the option to install the agent remotely."
"The solution should be better at integrating with other solutions."
"Desktop Central has very good information, however, you can't customize the dashboards."
"The product must provide more API integrations with different ERP tools."
"We would like to see options for deploying Microsoft 365 accounts into Outlook. For now we only can use it to deploy exchange accounts. Also we would like to see an option do decline Windows 7 ESU patches in a bulk."
"The team I've currently got is not using it particularly well, due to the fact that they don't know how to use it particularly well. They've not done any training and so on."
"The reporting analytics could improve in ManageEngine Desktop Central. However, there are some third-party add-ins or modules you can purchase to do reporting analytics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost was a big factor when we made the decision to go with it. It wasn't very expensive, and it's not even very expensive now. I pay less than $500 a year for it."
"The licensing is very easy to understand and pricing is right for what you get."
"The pricing of the product is not bad compared to the other similar solutions in the market."
"The product is cheap."
"The price could be cheaper."
"Compared to other products, ManageEngine Endpoint Central is a very cheap solution."
"There are multiple flavors of the app. They have a distributed version for enterprises. It depends on your size. They price it on a per machine basis. 250 or 500 is probably their least amount."
"Affordable for any customer."
"The solution is very affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
47%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. What I like most about ManageEngine is that I can log on to every PC very easily a...
What do you like most about ManageEngine Endpoint Central?
Well, what we like is that it catch actually a lot of features constantly upgrading. So all the three maybe there there were some features as the tenant on the earliest version. Now it's it's almos...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ManageEngine Endpoint Central?
I am not aware of the pricing and costs. I might know more when we renew our contract.
 

Also Known As

No data available
ManageEngine Desktop Central, Desktop Central, ManageEngine Desktop Management MSP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elevion
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Strathallan School, BMI Healthcare, Comercial Kywi, First Priority Federal Credit Union, Gerab National Enterprises
Find out what your peers are saying about ManageEngine, Broadcom, Quest Software and others in Client Desktop Management. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.