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Kaseya VSA vs Microsoft Configuration Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 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

Kaseya VSA
Ranking in Patch Management
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (2nd)
Microsoft Configuration Man...
Ranking in Patch Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (3rd), Configuration Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Patch Management category, the mindshare of Kaseya VSA is 4.5%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 19.6%, up from 18.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Patch Management
 

Featured Reviews

Ben Blissett - PeerSpot reviewer
Broken from the beginning and never functioned as anticipated
They had a major issue that resulted at one point (the straw that broke the camel's back for us, although we'd been fighting with support for months by that point in time) in which every Kaseya VSA customer was offline for two weeks. This vulnerability pushed us over the edge. It never functioned as intended. If it functioned as it was supposed to, it would've been fantastic. However, the previous solution we used just performed reliably and so much better. I can't say that there was anything positive about my experience. The intent of the software, other than integrations, is to be able to just make an anytime secure direct connection to an endpoint. However, whenever we would connect, at least half the time, it would not record keystrokes properly, no matter what system we connected from. So if you're trying to enter a password, there'd be 2-3 seconds' latency in the response and then it would just spew out a bunch of letters and numbers you didn't type in. You would just try, try, try again to type in something, and just half the time it worked, half the time it didn't. If you brought up more than three or four endpoints simultaneously, it never worked. It was a major point of contention for us. For us, at least, it just didn't work. It just was broken. Scripting didn't fire, reports didn't come back, and monitoring wasn't there. A server goes down or a router goes offline, no notification. Stuff like that. Bush league.
MikeNelson2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements
While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The patch management and the remote support are very good, especially the remote support. There is a module built into the solution which allows remote control without necessarily interrupting the user. We could manage things in the background without them seeing or interacting with anything, which is a very useful feature."
"Provides efficient automation."
"The remote management is quite good. Also, the patch management and service desk are great features of the solution."
"The automation capabilities are incredible!"
"Kaseya VSA's best features are auditing and reporting."
"The most valuable features of this solution are automation, inventory, and patch management."
"As a small IT shop, the weird feature that the VSA has that I have not found anywhere else is they have these little colored dots that tell you the status of the machine. Is it offline and powered up? Is it actively being used? Is it idle? A lot of our clients ask us to do things for them, but, of course, they don't really want us to be underfoot. So we always look for, "Hey, there's an idle machine. We can work on that one now." And to say it makes it easy, we can do that at a glance. In any other tool we've looked at, you have to go several layers deep to see if the machine is in use, and you could spend your entire day just trying to find a machine that was idle, whereas, with Kaseya VSA, you can tell at a glance."
"The most valuable piece of the puzzle for me is what they call Live Connect. It is the piece that allows you to support an end-user without having to take the keyboard and mouse."
"The most valuable features are Remote Connect, SUP, Cloud functionality, Report, Query, and third-party patching."
"I manage software updates and operating systems for devices, and within seconds, we can remotely deploy a system for, say, 2,000 devices. Not only that, but we can also deploy scripts and create comprehensive compliance rules."
"It is a good choice for deployment that performs very well."
"The product is suitable for our size, handling 800 devices."
"The technical support is good."
"This solution has made life easy with respect to patching, compliance, and OSD."
"The solution is stable."
"I like its ease of use. It does what you need it to do, and it's a one-stop-shop for the company and for all your deployments. If you incorporate Intune into it, you can have both. You can bring your own devices and corporate devices, and everything runs out of SCCM and Intune."
 

Cons

"The agent-based monitoring solution can be improved."
"There is room for improvement in the integrated mobile device management, MDM."
"The way it is laid out can be improved. If it could be a little more intuitive, it might be a little bit easier. Sometimes, it is hard to find features because they're called something weird, or they're in an interesting location that you wouldn't have thought that they'd be in."
"I believe we should include a VSA license to provide complete endpoint management."
"Kaseya VSA could be improved with more features to support the latest operating systems."
"It's very difficult to update the third-party software on every device."
"The main difference would be the addition of audio transfer between the end-user and the remote connectivity software. That is the one critical piece that we are currently lacking."
"The technical support of the solution is an area with shortcomings that needs improvement."
"Their compliance reporting is not accurate, and they admitted it on the phone when we had a call with them. We were trying to understand why their numbers didn't match on our compliance reports. It is not accurate and you cannot depend on the compliance reports. The numbers just don't match, and we can't figure out why. We called Microsoft and they said, "Yeah, that's a known issue." But there is no word that they're working on it."
"It needs to be able to load faster during deployment."
"The tool's deployment is complex and depends on the architecture you want to implement."
"Marketing: Our management doesn't understand that there is a piece of software which helps them automate and manage the entire network, as far as operating systems on computers."
"I currently need to increase my compliance level in the patching processes which this solution could improve on."
"As far as load balancing across, they don't have that support yet, so that you can actually build multiple primaries and have it load balance across. They don't have any of that functionality yet. That would be a nice feature, to scale that way."
"Our company would prefer not rebooting computers while people are using them. There seems to be no strategy behind it."
"Devices like smartphones and tablets are managed very well on VMware, however, they are absent in SCCM. I could configure iPad from the VMware site and it was done very easily. It should be just as possible on SCCM."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I find Kaseya VSA's pricing extraordinarily expensive, with very limiting contracts. They discuss being flexible once you're locked in, but I haven't found that true. It is one of the most expensive tools in my arsenal and our highest expense to any company."
"It is, in my opinion, competitive in the market. It is determined by the number of users and licenses needed. Depending on the license count of users, the price ranges from $10 to $80 USD."
"Kaseya VSA can be described as a fairly priced product."
"We pay a monthly fee, but it's a three-year contract divided by 36. They don't offer a true SaaS plan where you can add licenses monthly as you go. The cost is $7 per person per month, and we are paying about $1,700 a month."
"We use annual licensing, but we also have a special agreement."
"Without the managed antivirus, it was about $2,000 a month for the team. It's quite reasonable in that sense. The industry standard is anywhere from $0.90 to $1.10 per endpoint for antivirus, depending on how many you have, so it was fairly priced."
"The dollar exchange rate in Brazil is very high, so the price should be better for our country."
"The solution's pricing is reasonable."
"We have to pay for a license."
"The price is competitive and reasonable."
"The price model is different for every client."
"Its licensing is quite complicated because we are getting the license not only for SCCM but for the full Microsoft package. We don't need to pay for a separate license. We need to have one license that includes everything we need, such as Windows, Microsoft 365, SCCM, encryption, and so on. So, we don't have a specific price for it. Perhaps, it is good that it includes the full suite of licensing of Microsoft. It is expensive, but we are getting a lot of features."
"Pricing and licensing are a downside of SCCM. It's expensive. I'd have to confirm this, but I think they changed the licensing to core-based instead of socket-based. It's not cheap, because you have to buy the software, you have to buy SQL. Another thing we learned from talking to Microsoft is that they provide you a license for SQL if you run it on the same box as the primary server. If you run it outside that box, you have to buy SQL. Microsoft does recommend you running it on the same box because of performance. But then, in order to run SQL, SCCM, and everything on the same box, you better have some resources. It's an expensive solution. There's no doubt about it."
"There is not a license needed to use the solution."
"We use the tool's free license. It is expensive."
"When you compare this solution with other tools in the market you might actually find a lot of variation in the pricing and that's why people opt for the other tools rather than Microsoft tools."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Non Profit
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kaseya VSA?
The most valuable feature of Kaseya VSA is the ability to control laptops remotely.
What needs improvement with Kaseya VSA?
One area that could be improved is the documentation, which often contains errors that prevent you from following along, especially during migrations.
What is your primary use case for Kaseya VSA?
We use the solution as a remote control tool to help clients.
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...
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 SCCM?
One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages efficiently and deploy them to specific groups within our network. This streamlined ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sage UK, MSP, CodeBlue Ltd, Connect Work Place Solutions, All Covered, 501cTech, Chairo Christian School, Green Duck
Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad
Find out what your peers are saying about Kaseya VSA vs. Microsoft Configuration Manager and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.