ManageEngine Endpoint Central Reviews

We carried out a POC on Desktop Central before implementing and it's been in production for two months. Our use case is for patching third-party applications and Windows applications. We use the solution extensively so that aside from the monthly scanning we use it to work on Microsoft vulnerabilities.

We are customers of Desktop Central and I'm an IT Manager. 

Previously, our monthly maintenance would have taken about eight hours, and two or three people continuously on a laptop. Our maintenance is now carried out by this solution and once it's done there just needs to be a check for errors. It's time-saving and resource-saving which is pretty good!

The patch management is really wonderful, it's effortless and just a matter of building a few configurations and creating a few templates which can be reused. The UI is quite good and user-friendly. 

There are a few basic things that haven't been configured in the tool. We're dealing with 600, 700 servers. The way the solution has been configured means you can only see 500 systems at a time. The company has acknowledged that this is an issue but they haven't worked on it yet. It's a little strange given the amount of time the product has been on the market. 

We're working on migrating to Azure. It involves a new patch that was not picked up by Desktop Central. I think it's a problem for them because Azure is everywhere right now and they don't seem to be up to date with the new patches. More needs to be included because everything Microsoft is launching now is more related to Azure.

I've been using this solution for six months. 

Performance is good and stable. If it's working on 600 servers at a time, there is a 90-minute window that it uses to communicate with its agent, and that's divided between all the servers. It can hamper performance at times when compared to other tools where you just click and everything is communicated without any wait time. The IT Ops team uses Desktop Central which, in our company, is two or three people. 

We haven't yet scaled but I believe it will be quite easy. 

We were using batchpatch earlier.

All the ManageEngine products are pretty straightforward when it comes to implementation. There are a few configurations you have to do on a network level for the codes, but it's not complicated. I carried out the deployment with one other person. We contacted the vendor a few times for some assistance but that was it. The POC took about a month and the actual deployment took a week to 10 days including configuring everything on the network level.

In terms of maintenance, the server and installed agent need to be updated on all servers. You do have to check it on your test environment to make sure everything is compatible with a virtual environment, otherwise it could crash your VM. 

The solution is relatively cheap because we purchased the full package. For now, we're only using patch management, but it offers many other things such as software deployment, the ability to create configuration packages and install new software. There are no additional costs to the licensing fee. 

We only recently started using Desktop Central, so we're comparing the results with another solution use, BatchPatch. The Desktop Central UI is very good and easy to use. BatchPatch is a cheaper product so it's more complicated and the UI is not as good. What BatchPatch does have that's lacking in Desktop Central is the granular representation of progress and what's happening on the backend. BatchPatch gives you a clear picture of what's happening step by step and progress per server; it gives you specific errors so you can check and troubleshoot. Desktop Central lacks that visibility. If you're carrying out maintenance of 600 servers, you need to have that visibility, so that if something's not right, you can look into it instead of having to wait eight hours.

If you're new to the solution, check your requirements because the solution is not suitable for every situation. We're using it for a data center, so we configured it differently. If, for example, you're dealing with local laptops on office premises and you're looking to do patch management, a product like Ivanti might be more useful. For us, Desktop Central is pretty good because we are working on servers, and the vulnerability checks we do on the security base are pretty high, so the patch management option of Desktop Central is pretty good. 

There is room for improvement, so I rate the solution eight out of 10. 

We use ManageEngine Endpoint Central for endpoint management.

Page management and ADA integrations are the most valuable features of ManageEngine Endpoint Central.

ManageEngine Endpoint Central’s scalability could be improved.

ManageEngine Endpoint Central is a stable product. I rate ManageEngine Endpoint Central ten out of ten for stability.

I rate ManageEngine Endpoint Central an eight out of ten for scalability. Currently, we have 10 machines running the solution in our organization.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

The solution’s deployment took 15 to 20 days.

Compared to other products, ManageEngine Endpoint Central is a very cheap solution.

I recommend ManageEngine Endpoint Central to other users because it is quite easy to deploy.

Overall, I rate ManageEngine Endpoint Central a nine out of ten.

We use the product to know about our assets and manage remote support. 

The tool's security can be better. 

I have been using the product for five years. 

The tool is stable. 

The solution is scalable. My company has 7000 users for the product. 

We don't require any support from the product since we have a good engineer. 

The product's setup is easy. We have around 45 people to manage the tool. 

The solution's deployment was done in-house. 

I have seen ROI with the tool's use. 

The product is cheap. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We do patch management and are enabling this service portal. Users can interact with IT in order to download and install the applications. We also push out software to various departments. It's mainly used for patch management. We tend to test and monitor patches. 

The patch management policies are great. We can handle patches that are highly critical, and it makes handling patch deployment very simple. 

Customization is very easy. 

The dashboard has been very useful. 

It is stable.

The solution is scalable. 

We'd like more compatibility for Mac in the future. That way, we wouldn't need to use two tools for different computers. 

The support could be faster. 

It was a bit expensive. 

We just finished a POC, and we are onboarding the solution right now.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable and the performance is good. 

It is scalable. 

We have 1,000 or more people using the solution. 

The support isn't as good as it could be. We need it to be better. When we send requests, we find it takes too much time. 

I handle technical support for clients, and I troubleshoot where I can. I tend to go through documentation and resolve what I can. Otherwise, I have to reach out to Microsoft, and there can sometimes be a delay in response. 

The initial setup is easy. It's not overly complex. 

Currently, we are using an identity manager like JumpCloud. We are pushing via JumpCloud. If there is a new user, I have already created the groups, and I can just add them in. It's pretty simple. 

The cost of licensing is paid yearly. 

The price is a bit expensive. However, it's not too bad compared to the market.

There are some extra costs as well. If you go for the standard enterprise plan, not many features are covered. You need to trade up to bigger editions that offer more features. 

I am an implementor and admin. 

We have it on-premises and on the cloud as well.

I'd recommend the solution to others.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Endpoint Central is for managing everything, including desktops, laptops, workstation servers, implementing software, and OS deployment. Mobile Device Manager is also included in some editions. There is software deployment, document sharing, remote control, and patching. The Endpoint solution is a complete solution for patching, management reports, Mobile Device Manager, OS patch, OS deployment, and complete endpoint management.

We are a partner of ManageEngine, and we install their solutions for our customers.

From the point of my customers, there is a need for fewer people in the company to manage things. We do not need four or five workers on Endpoint Central. 

Our customers are very satisfied as it simplified their endpoint management, their patching solutions, and is an all-in-the-one web interface control.

They recently included a feature for endpoint security for hard endpoints and offer cord blocking, for example. Also, the fact that you can manage from the same platform, desktops, laptops, mobile devices, et cetera, is great. It simplifies management. The software deployment for remote patching is helpful.

I don't know if it's ManageEngine fault or not. However, most of their agents that are being used for scanning endpoints and implementing software, and getting interaction from the ManageEngine platform are usually blocked by default by Windows Defender or other security products. Users may run into conflicts with other antivirus or firewall solutions. It requires manual intervention so that users do not receive false positives. You need to manually tell some systems, "this agent is not malware, don't block it."

It might be helpful if they offered a simpler way to use the OS deployment function. It's a bit complicated for most of the customers. You have to take some time and create a customized image. Maybe if they had a repository where you can store a Windows image and auto-deploy it, with not so many parameters on how to deploy it, or where to deploy it would be easier. It's overcomplicated for what it is used for.

I've used the solution for almost a decade since it was Desktop Central. Desktop Central's name was changed last year to Endpoint Central.

The stability is great. I'd rate it ten out of ten. I've never had it crash before. 

It may be slow upload to the web interface sometimes, however, in terms of crashing, only the computer or virtual machine would crash.

The solution scales very well. I'd rate it ten out of ten. We can go to almost 60,000 endpoints, and I'm not sure if you would need more. In Romania, we don't have overly large companies

We've worked with support in the past. We have a partnership with them, so we are in contact often. If maybe a customer wants another feature or wants something else done differently, we're in contact with support to help facilitate that.

We have not used a different solution. We only deployed this kind of environment for managing endpoints. Endpoint Central, we consider a good price for the features we get and it scales very well, so we only recommend Endpoint Central, or different editions maybe. It's great for the customer. 

The implementation is pretty simple. I'd rate it nine out of ten for ease of deployment. The only issue is the firewalls and antiviruses need to be manually told what it is. You simply need to install the console and the agents, and everything mostly goes like clockwork. 

Most clients require on-premises installations as they are big entities and have their own hardware and prefer to have everything on-prem. 

How long it takes to deploy everything is very subjective. For example, maybe if a customer just wants an installation. Getting the agent working can take maybe between a couple of hours to maybe a day or two. If you want customizations of policies, software uploads, et cetera, that depends on human intervention and coordination, and that can take four months. However, installing the solution is straightforward. It only takes a couple of hours to one day.

Usually, it only takes two people to handle an implementation. We just need one person that installs and one that checks on an endpoint to see if the agent started working. If it started working, then we replicate the process at scale for the entire organization.

We can install the solution for our customers and do not need the assistance of third parties during implementation.

We have definitely witnessed an ROI.

ManageEngine solutions are very affordable compared to other endpoint management options, like Ivanti or Microsoft. I was looking at VMware Workspace ONE. We compared to features and price and found this product to be one of the most affordable. In a straight race, ManageEngine will win in terms of pricing.

There may be extra costs on occasion. For example, if you purchase Endpoint Central Unified Edition, most of what you only need to pay for is a trial over the server or an add-on so that you have a passive machine that will wake up if the main machine dies. You might also have an endpoint security add-on. If you buy a standard, you have to pay for the add-on. If you want mobile development, you pay for mobile development. Therefore, the cost depends on the edition you're purchasing.

I have looked into VM Workspace ONE in order to compare features with this product.

We're an ManageEngine partner. 

I'm likely using version 13. It would be the version they released last year that we are working with. 

It's the best product. It's a solution that has all the features you will ever need to manage all the endpoints in your company. It has everything you will imagine, and it's simple to manage, it's simple to install, and once you install it, it will work on its own, and you can reduce the manpower required. You may have needed ten administrators before, yet, with this, now you only will use two due to the automated remote control software pushing and patching. All can be done on a single console remotely. You reduce the workload and free up people.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten based on its many features and its low learning curve. You can become a good admin within a month or two just by using it and checking the menus. 

I'm a system admin and network engineer.

I've found the solution to be user-friendly for us in the IT department and for our employees. Raising a ticket is pretty much effortless and getting it to the next level is also simple. The entire package is quite flawless. The functionality, the basic elements and the help aspect are all fine.

The user interface could be improved because it's quite hardware based. There are no dynamic changes on web pages and it's lacking visually. 

I've been using this solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. I haven't found any crashes or abnormalities in the program.

We haven't fully tested scalability. For now our users include three IT people and 105 employees.

We haven't needed any support but I think everything is available on YouTube.

The initial setup was straightforward and took maybe half an hour. I found some useful tips on YouTube.

We've only tested the help desk aspect to date. From that perspective I would definitely recommend it. We've been testing ManageEngine for the past six months and we'll continue that for a while longer. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

This company uses the product a lot to do the patch implementation. In terms of the configuration of all machines, they do a lot of remote sections for the end-users.

The patch distribution is so easy. 

The mobile functionality is very easy. 

Remote sections are very good. 

The initial setup is easy.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support has been helpful.

It's quite stable. 

The pricing is good. 

The graphical dashboard is so easy to do analysis from.

I don't have any suggestions to improve the solution at this moment. However, the problem is Desktop Central is a big solution. It is a very powerful solution. It can be overwhelming.

Desktop Central has very good information, however, you can't customize the dashboards. If they had dashboard customization, it would be a very good improvement. When you have a dashboard that shows where, when, and why you had some problem it's quite useful. Customizing it to meet your exact needs would be ideal.

I've been using the solution, more or less, for four years.

It is a stable product. The performance is good. There are no glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

Sometimes we have bugs, however, the support is very, very nice and the support is a very good to us.

With a customer, we have more or less 2,000 desktops, 50 mobiles, and 300 servers.

It is a scalable product.

We do have plans to increase usage in the future. Likely in the next two months, we'll be looking at getting 200 more licenses.

We don't have problems with support. They are very helpful and responsive. 

We also use remote sessions to do support for the final user.

Positive

We also did POCs with HPE and IBM. We also looked into CA, Computer Associates.

Before moving to ManageEngine's Desktop Central and doing the POCs we did not use any different products.

It's an easy implementation. The setup is not overly complex. I haven't had any issues with the process at all. 

It doesn't take long to deploy. The problem is this customer. I spent a lot of time not on the setup. We did a POC and I spent more or less three months on it as this customer compared ManageEngine with three other solutions. ManageEngine Desktop Central was benchmarked in the comparison of the other three products. We proved everything including patch distribution, configuration, machine configuration, OS deployment, and remote sectioning. We proved everything and we did a comparison with two other solutions. That's what took the most amount of time.

We have more or less 20 technicians working with Desktop Central.

In terms of maintenance, the Desktop Central team works with the client to maintain all the machines and keep them up to date in terms of configurations and patches. 

We handled the implementation ourselves. We didn't need outside assistance. 

We have seen an ROI. 

If you do have one company with more 200 computers it's impossible to have all the machines up to date with patches. It's hard to get to every final user's machine. The problem is when you have many sites and solutions and development solutions inside of the company, it gets complex.

If you do one patch optimization without doing a test before the real installation of the patch in all machines, you can run into very big problems inside the company. Sometimes you install one patch and this patch is not compatible with all solutions, for example. If you have to patch for 2,000 machines, you can't say how many people will need which patch, et cetera. This solution solves that problem and removed the hours of work and complexity that you'd have to face if you didn't have it on hand.  

The pricing is very good. It's very reasonable and less than other options. 

We looked into HP, IBM, and CA. We compared them against ManageEngine. ManageEngine ended up being the cheapest.

We are using the last version of the solution.

I'd advise users to try out a POC. If they have a lot of machines in their company and need help with patching, this might be the perfect solution. However, try it on some machines first. See how it goes. It's the easiest way to find a solution that will work for you. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

The solution is used predominantly for our service desk and IT uses it for capturing issues from our users.

The solution has a lot of the features we need and we are looking forward to taking advantage of them after a little bit of training. 

It seems to be pretty straightforward in terms of ease of use. The user interface is good.

We don't have any issues with the pricing. 

The solution is stable.

The product can scale.

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. There are lots of things that need to be done. Hence, why I was looking to whether it's a good product or not, which I think it is. It's a good enough product, yet in terms of the team, they just don't know what to do. I don't know how good it's going to be. That said, it looks like it's going to be perfect for what we want; it just needs to be matured further.

I am an interim contract head of IT for the Commission, and the company I work with has been using it for about two years. I wanted to see what other potential solutions there might be out there, and also to see how it stacks up against others. I've only been using it for about six months, however, I was looking at the competitors as well.

The stability is good. Once we get going with it, and we get the partners to help us develop it further, it'll be absolutely perfect.

The scalability seems to be okay.

I have no comments in regards to technical support. I've never called them.

I did not previously use a different solution.

I was not around for the initial implementation and therefore cannot speak to how easy or difficult the process was. 

It is my understanding that the company had third-party support to do the implementation.

The cost of the solution is reasonable. 

I have been actively evaluating other solutions. 

We are using a previous version of the solution. It's not the latest version. 

The most important thing, when you're looking at any product, is to make sure you've clearly defined what you're trying to achieve and do, and then go through what it can and can't do for you to make sure you get a good fit. That's the advice I'd give to anyone considering implementing it. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I've been pleased with its potential capabilities so far. 

My primary use case is for operating system imaging and deployment. We also use it for software deployment, automatic software updates, and computer remote assistance.

Desktop Central allows us to manage everything related to computing equipment including mobile devices and software licenses in a centralized place.

All of Desktop Central's features are valuable, especially its simplicity.

The team should work on improving the stability, particularly with massive patches deployment, clients are not 100% getting patches and the information provided by the system does not help; more detailed report would be very useful. ManageEngine should provide a periodic health checks for licensed customers; can be a sharing for best practices, tips or recommendation of critical patches or features the customer may have missed.

I've been using Desktop Central for two years.

This solution is scalable.

Excellent technical support, the team is very supportive and responsive to all issues.

Positive

I previously used Microsoft SCCM, but it was difficult to deploy, while Desktop Central is more flexible and user-friendly.

The initial setup was straightforward.

I implemented it by myself, which took two days.

We pay 40,000 per year for Desktop Central, ready to manage any size of IT computing environment without having to pay additional fees.

Desktop Central is easy to deploy, manage, and integrate with other ManageEngine products. I would recommend it to anyone managing a computing environment - it's a complete product for all sizes of enterprise, and it's ready to be deployed straight out of the box. I would score it as nine out of ten.

Our main use case, the core function we are using it for, is Patch Management. We download the patches from the database in the Desktop Central server, then we test the patches in our system and push those patches on the server, Microsoft server and Windows, user machines.

Inventory Management, Managing Index of Central, was the second main function that we were using to maintain all the records of our servers, laptops, and all the other devices, like Cisco devices and other things on our network. We manage all of our assets through Central.

We have directory information using User Management, where we sync all users from the Active Directory to Desktop Central to give access to the users.

We did not use Mobile Device Manager, MDM.

The first benefit that we use Desktop Central for is this: In our audit reports, we have to compile a list of all the vulnerable systems and determine which are healthy systems and which are vulnerable and highly nervous systems. On a quarterly basis, we have to make sure that all the systems are healthy. We categorize all the highly vulnerable systems and install the patches on those using Desktop Central. 

Patch Management is the most valuable feature of Desktop Central. We have all the information on the patches we are going to push on the systems and which patches are not installed on the server. We know which servers or Windows machines or Linux machines are highly vulnerable. We categorize the machines so if there are any issues on one of the machines, we just take care of those specific machines which are highly vulnerable and take care of the patches which are not installed on those machines. 

Inventory is also a very good feature of Desktop Central. We don't need to manage all the inventories manually. We just install the Managing Desktop Central agent in all the systems, put down the report request, and download all the reports to share with management. 

There are many features that we use from Desktop Central, but Inventory Management is a solid feature, and Patch Management is a solid feature.

One area that could be improved with the solution would be integrations. Sometimes it happens that the agent got corrupted on the systems, and we have to manually uninstall and push it to the systems again. Also, ManageEngine does not recognize systems that are not on our network. For example, one of our employees in another city did not connect his or her laptop to the system for a few months, or just connected to the internet and did not connect to our VPN, so the agent got corrupted or disconnected from our ManageEngine. Then we have to manually ask them to connect to the network. Then we push all the updates.

That's the only issue we really face with Desktop Central. So if somehow we could connect it through the internet, that would be a great improvement. Right now, if a user is not connected to the VPN or the network and he's outside the country or city, and when he just connects the internet, ManageEngine does not connect to communicate with our server. 

Regarding additional features, I had created a lot of tickets for feature enhancement, things which were not available in Desktop Central previously, but were noted by the team, developed by the Desktop Central team, and published. For the last year and a half, and I haven't opened any tickets or seen any additional requirements from our side. Desktop Central is very good software.

I worked with this solution for about five years. I have had a great experience with Desktop Central, and I have great knowledge of this product. Five years of experience for one product is sufficient to learn the things under the product.

The performance of Desktop Central is nice. We don't need any high-end servers for Desktop Central; we just install it on a VM, Virtual Machine, the database, gigs, memory, and a few hard discs, and we don't need any high-end CPUs for the Desktop Central support. The performance is good, and it doesn't require any high-end processor.

The solution is definitely scalable. Once you are working on a virtualization environment, it's very simple to scale any product. We can enhance the memory and the processor of the servers.

We have around 400 or 500 client machines using the solution, and I was the person managing it for the last five years. In the last three months, my colleague has now been taking care of managing Desktop Central.

Customer support was great. They were helpful and always responded to my queries, and they help really quickly. I'm very happy with the Desktop Central support team.

I created a lot of tickets for support and new features. They promptly responded and took care of those issues and how to resolve them. If I don't know how to perform the step, they always send detailed documentation or detailed steps to perform those tasks. The technical support is good. 

One thing that could be improved is documentation. For example, with Atlassian Jira and Confluence, their documentation is very strong. Desktop Central could improve the documentation so we don't need to create the support requests first; we just go to the documentation, and it should be very simple in words so everyone who is not technical or doesn't have the in-depth knowledge of Desktop Central can easily read and perform those steps. 

The initial setup of the solution is simple. We have a server on which we set up the Desktop Central server, and we synchronize our active directory with it. Then we push the agents in, on the OUs, and then on all the system got pushed. It only takes a few hours for the initial setup from scratch. 

The upgrade process is also very simple. We just bring down the system, get the update downloaded to the server, post it on the server, install it, and bring the server up. So that's great, and the agent always upgrades on the systems as well, once the server is upgraded. The upgrades only take a few minutes.

The validation process is quite long because we have to make sure that it upgrades all the agents on all the client machines. The validation is a lengthy process just to make sure that all the systems are upgraded on the new version of the agent. But the overall process is not very long.

I did the deployment of the solution on my own. I always upgrade the server myself, and I was the person who was managing the Desktop Central server and managing the Desktop Service Desk on my own.

The pricing is fine. We purchase a one year agreement and one year support with Desktop Central for 500 users, and the price was fine. We were not charged for any additional costs, except the licensing.

I've recommended this product to a few of my colleagues in different companies because I was admiring this product when we need to make sure that all the systems are healthy and patches are installed. It's a very user-friendly product, and anyone can use this product.