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Kaseya VSA vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Kaseya VSA
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (2nd), Patch Management (5th)
SolarWinds NPM
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
155
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Kaseya VSA is designed for Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) and holds a mindshare of 7.8%, down 10.4% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NPM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 5.2% mindshare, down 6.2% since last year.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ben Blissett - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 4, 2024
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.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 30, 2022
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
Our company uses the solution to monitor NPM for 100 large accounts that typically have 40,000 interfaces.  Basic monitoring includes CPU memory, errors, and interfaces. Advanced monitoring includes F5 load balancers, in-depth tunnels, and AP alarms.  We also monitor CM for backup parts and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The remote management is quite good. Also, the patch management and service desk are great features of the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Kaseya VSA is the ability to control laptops remotely."
"We can schedule the patching of the endpoints."
"Kaseya VSA's best features are auditing and reporting."
"The most valuable features of Kaseya VSA are remote control, live connect, and automation."
"I like the Live Connect module provided by Kaseya. It is a powerful module. I also like the Agent Procedure module. We work with it most of the time."
"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 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."
"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
"Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up."
"There are a lot of valuable features with SolarWinds NPM. We can receive a lot of detailed data from the monitoring that can use useful for investigations, especially when you are troubleshooting. It is very helpful. Overall it was a very good experience."
"It's easy to understand, even if you are not too technical."
"The people in technical support are very good."
"I like SolarWinds support because it's 24/7. You describe your issues, your situation and maybe two or three hours later you can discuss a solution with a technical engineer."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"The most valuable feature is the vital states of the devices as it provides overall CPU and device health information."
 

Cons

"Our main concern is related to security. Kaseya had a ransomware attack a few months ago, and it was a big concern for us because Kaseya was the main RMM tool that we were using. We faced a lot of difficulties accessing our users and systems. So, security is our main concern."
"The product's user interface is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The technical support of the solution is an area with shortcomings that needs improvement."
"Its scripting language kind of sucked. They have their own version of PowerShell inside VSA. if you want to reach out and grab endpoint information, for instance, to know how many end devices have a program installed, you actually have to write a script for that. It wasn't like how it is in CrowdStrike where you can just do a search, and it just happened. In VSA, you have to write your own script to do it. In terms of new features, an integrated MDM for mobile devices would be awesome."
"There is room for improvement in the remote control strengths."
"The audit and KNM tools could improve."
"It never functioned as intended."
"The response to bugs is slow and software improvement comes slowly too. The lack of response to our feature requests made it feel like they were going into a black hole. Additionally, when we encountered bugs or issues with the VSA, they were slow to respond to those too."
"Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today. They've done a fantastic job enabling the collection of data. Users are now demanding the ability to generate their own graphs, views, and so on; all of this must be done by an admin today."
"The market is changing, and people are expecting automation. I think that's a disadvantage."
"It has covered everything, so no improvement is required at their end. The only thing is the price."
"Being able to detect devices that are trying to connect wirelessly would make using this solution much easier."
"The solution is not always good with new features, so it's take a long time."
"If they’re going for a “cover everything” approach, then they need to do so and enable a bit more of the "cover everything approach" within every one of the tools."
"In terms of scalability, there is room for improvement. When you start monitoring, if you have so many interfaces and you're trying to monitor them at a faster interval, or a shorter interval, you get to a point where you need to request another node."
"We are looking to change away from this solution because of the documentation and the solution doesn't have enough integration in our country. The documentation is too weak."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Though I don't have complete visibility over the solution's pricing, the solution is not cheap, from what I remember. The solution is on the pricey end."
"The pricing is quite good and we are satisfied with it."
"With the on-prem, you buy the agent license. That's a one-time fee, and it varies depending on how many you have. You also pay annual maintenance on the number that you have. So, there are two fees involved: a one-time fee and a recurring fee."
"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."
"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."
"It is not expensive. Anyone can afford it. Most of the time, we get a discount for licenses. We had about 5,000 agents, and we received a discount on the price. There is only the licensing cost. If you use the on-prem version, you also have the infrastructure cost."
"It depends on what products you want. Kaseya loves packages, and if you are packaging, it is more affordable. If you're not packaging, it tends to be a little bit more expensive than others."
"The solution is robust and the price is good for the features that are provided."
"USD $15,000 annually for maintenance."
"You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Non Profit
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
Educational Organization
56%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
4%
 

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.
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sage UK, MSP, CodeBlue Ltd, Connect Work Place Solutions, All Covered, 501cTech, Chairo Christian School, Green Duck
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
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