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

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
Quest KACE streamlines operations, saving time and resources, offering quick ROI and enhancing productivity through efficient patch management and automation.
Sentiment score
7.3
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform accelerates provisioning, saves time, enhances scalability, and optimizes resources, improving maintainability and reducing burnout.
The return on investment is seen in the quick access to information, good inventory management, and efficient systems management.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
Quest KACE support is praised for responsiveness, knowledgeable staff, and effective problem-solving, with minor ticket resolution time issues.
Sentiment score
7.3
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers strong documentation and support, with high user satisfaction in community and technical assistance.
The customer service is very good, providing quick customer support in Spanish.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Quest KACE scales efficiently, managing up to 10,000 endpoints, and adapts to expansions with simple resource additions and licensing.
Sentiment score
7.4
Red Hat Ansible scales well in small to mid-sized environments but faces challenges and performance issues in large deployments.
The product is very scalable as it supports 10,000 thousand endpoints with just one appliance.
Ansible can face scalability issues, such as limitations when trying to scale up infrastructure.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Quest KACE SMA is reliable with minimal downtime, regular updates improve functionality, but frequent updates may need attention.
Sentiment score
7.9
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is highly stable, with updates enhancing its reliability, users rating stability 8-10/10.
 

Room For Improvement

Quest KACE struggles with scalability, automation, usability, imaging, customization, and support, while needing improved licensing, reporting, and integration.
Red Hat Ansible Automation needs improved scalability, usability, integration, module support, and enhanced Windows and non-expert user features.
The user interface needs improvement as customers have mentioned they do not like the interface since it is not an SMA-based interface.
More library support for microservices architecture and Kubernetes would be helpful.
More detailed dashboards would be beneficial because there is a lack of dashboards on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
 

Setup Cost

Quest KACE SMA offers competitive pricing with per-device licensing, valued for comprehensive features and ROI for large organizations.
Red Hat Ansible offers free and paid options, with costs based on node management and additional features like Ansible Tower.
The pricing is in the middle range of the market, not too expensive but not the cheapest either.
The pricing is high, and since I'm not using all functionalities, it would be better if the price depended on the functionalities used.
 

Valuable Features

Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance streamlines asset management, deployment, and IT tracking, enhancing productivity with automation and integration tools.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is valued for its agentless architecture, ease of use, scalability, and robust community support.
The most valuable features include simplicity, which makes systems management easier and faster, especially for device management.
The automation capabilities streamline deployment processes, providing reliability and reducing manual intervention and errors.
It makes it simple to develop Ansible playbooks and roles, which aids in simplifying my daily administrative tasks.
 

Categories and Ranking

Quest KACE Systems Manageme...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Client Desktop Management (5th), Endpoint Compliance (7th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (13th), Patch Management (10th)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (1st), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is designed for Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) and holds a mindshare of 1.5%, up 0.7% compared to last year.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Configuration Management, holds 18.3% mindshare, up 18.4% since last year.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Scott Tweed - PeerSpot reviewer
Low maintenance, reliable, and easy to create packages
I like how when you click on the device, it shows you everything that has changed as well as the software versioning. I am really enjoying the inventory aspect of it. The deployment process for both deploying and creating a package is straightforward. I believe the inventory in KACE is superior to SCCM's. I know with SCCM I could do things like remote console into machines via the agent's remote console, but that is not a feature that is provided in KACE. I know that at least in the Systems Management Appliance, I can't get to it. I'm not sure how distribution works, with distribution points. I'm not sure if KACE has that feature. You could use an SCCM to set up distribution points at remote sites so that they don't have to download patches or software from across the country. If you have a DP or something similar, they could pull it down.
Surya Chapagain - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to manage and simple to learn
We use Red Hat a lot. I open tickets for the Red Hat cases, however, with Ansible, I haven't opened any cases. My manager worked with them a bit. If we have a problem with some file and we need to get Red Hat to analyze the issue and the file is 100GBs, we'll have an issue since we need to provide a log file for them to analyze. If it is around 12GB or 13GB, we can easily upload it to the Red Hat portal. With more than 100GBs, it will fail. I heard it should cover up to 250GB for an upload, however, I find it fails. Therefore, Red Hat needs to provide a way to handle this.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solutions are best for your needs.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
University
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
32%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Quest KACE Systems Management?
My company had bought some new machines. We used the tool to do some basic settings to ship every machine the same way and undertake the Windows deployment. We did the scripted installation. The to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?
The pricing is in the middle range of the market, not too expensive but not the cheapest either.
What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?
The user interface needs improvement as customers have mentioned they do not like the interface since it is not an SMA-based interface and lacks a manual configuration option.
What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...
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...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

Also Known As

Dell KACE Systems Management
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.