ManageEngine Endpoint Central Reviews

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. 

We have two main use cases of Desktop Central. The first is patching, because we want to keep our systems secure. We install Microsoft security updates using ManageEngine Desktop Central every month. The second case is to deploy applications. We want to install applications to the machines from a central location. Also, we want to give access to users so they can install whatever applications they need using the self-service portal option. When there is a common application used by many users, we publish it to the self-service portal so users can install it themselves instead of contacting local IT. Those are our two main use cases of ManageEngine, but we also use it for other tasks, such as remote connection. Our local IT uses two products: ManageEngine Desktop Central and TeamViewer. We use both to connect to the remote machines. 

We have the on-premise version, but we are looking to move forward to the cloud version once they start supporting data migration—at the moment, they don't support it. 

One of the benefits of Desktop Central is it made the provisioning process simpler because now we have a provisioning package. We have around 1,500 laptops at the moment and all these PCs were provisioned by a provisioning package. In the provisioning package, we have integrated every aspect of renaming, deploying applications, patching, etc., so we simply execute the provisioning package and as soon as it's executed, it will install the management agent. Once the agent is installed, it will take care of all the tasks, so we don't have to sit in front of the computer to prepare the machine. This really helps us to provision the PC quickly with our agent. 

Now, we are going to do a PC refresh. It's a big project for next year. We are going to replace all of our PCs—1,500 PCs—with a new one, for all the users, so we have big requirements for ManageEngine. ManageEngine does a lot of scripting work in the backend—including renaming the computer according to our conventions, distributing applications, patching—so when we prepare the machine, we want everything to be installed and ready to give to the user. We don't want to wait or take more time, so we've now combined ManageEngine with Microsoft's Autopilot and Intune to provision the PCs. PC provisioning is made easier with ManageEngine. 

Another benefit is we have the option to pilot updates with some machines before distributing them to production, and this can be completely automated. We don't have to create said task every time for testing and deployment, so once we scope it, it relieves the time we spend each month deploying patches. It regularly runs in our schedule with the reboot options. We give reboot notifications in a user-friendly manner to employees, with the option to postpone the reboot. This relieves the time that we spend with end users since it's user-friendly. 

One of the most valuable features is patching. They support third-party patching as well, so we don't have to use another product. They support both Microsoft and third-party updates, and this is one of the main functionalities that we use regularly. 

The software deployment feature is also valuable because, once in a while, we need to distribute applications, such as VCO, Office applications, etc. For example, when we prepare a PC for users. We use ManageEngine to perform lots of tasks. 

We also have the option to deploy scripts via ManageEngine. We use some scripts that are to be deployed during the machines' provisioning, to make sure our machines are renamed properly according to the naming conventions we want. For example, for the France region, we want FRP, France Paris, and then the serial number. We want to deploy some script that renames the PC after the machine is provisioned, and we also want to deploy background images, logon screen, logout screen, etc. So we deploy all these policies using ManageEngine.

ManageEngine could be improved by giving customers an option to perform certain actions proactively. Since I was a consultant, I worked on different products and some had advantages over ManageEngine. For example, proactive remediation—you want to proactively check something on the computers and run the script. In ManageEngine, you have the option to run the script, but Intune has the option to do so proactively. ManageEngine doesn't have this. You should have the option to act proactively, not just going ahead and fixing it once it's done. Proactive remediation should be a feature. 

Another thing is, with PC provisioning, they have to make it in a modern way. They have deployment, but it's a very outdated process right now. It's a modern workplace, so you have to provision a PC live, on the go—it's not that you create images and then distribute the image to the machines. Many customers are not using this and, in fact, we are not using it. We use a modern way of PC provisioning. So they have to concentrate on that more. 

There are small glitches, but it's not going to stop you from using the product. For example, when you open the configuration, you may not see the details, but if you refresh the page, you will see them. There are small glitches here and there that we can see. 

I began using this solution about a year ago. In the past, I implemented this solution for different customers, but now I am an end user.

This solution is very stable. It depends on the size of the company, though. For us, it's very stable because we don't have many machines. The overall count is 1,800 to 1,900 machines—our license is for 2,050, but we've currently only utilized 1,900. So our infrastructure is medium-sized, I would say. If you go for 10,000, 20,000, you might have some lagging in the performance, but I'm not sure. 

It doesn't really require much maintenance. You just keep it as you want and regularly do a cleanup of old applications—when you delete, you have a new version of the package, so you might want to clean up the old packages—and that's it. You have automatic cleanup functionalities in the product itself. For example, if you download an update for this month and, after three months, none of the machines require this patch anymore, it automatically cleans up. You have some settings to enable so that you don't have to manually work on the cleanup. 

This solution is very easy to scale. We are trying to create lots of virtual machines in Azure Virtual Desktop, so we might increase our machines by another 100 or 200. 

ManageEngine's support is one of the best, I would say. We have chat support, so I can immediately ping someone in support, from my end product console, and get assistance very quickly. If I have a question, I can ask them directly; if I have technical questions, I can ask them, and they will provide an answer right away. If I write an email, it will take three to four hours. Since I was a support engineer before, I don't normally raise questions, but when I do, I normally get quick replies. Because it's a one-to-one chat, you get immediate responses from the chat window. 

In the past, when I first joined this company, we were using WSUS to patch all of our machines, but we didn't have any control over what patches were installed. We didn't have a proper reporting aspect in WSUS—we could have, but it's very complicated. We'd have to connect the information using SQL Server and pull the information, and that's lots of querying. But with ManageEngine, it's explicit. You go and collect the reports as you want, such as the number of patches installed on a machine or how many machines got a particular update. We even have the option to uninstall patches once they're installed, so we can go back to the previous patch version of the application. 

Another drawback with WSUS is that you don't have the option to scale a reboot. With ManageEngine, we can give reboot notifications in a user-friendly manner to employees, with the option to postpone, and after a certain number of days, you can reboot forcefully. This relieves the time that we spend with end users, who now get a pop-up. You don't have many options with WSUS, but with ManageEngine, you do. 

The deployment process is very easy. It's a combined product, so when you install the Desktop Central EXE, you install the database on the same machine, as well as the web server components like Apache Tomcat and Observer. Basically, when you install the EXE, you just click "next," "next," "next," and then it's done. It's not a big deployment. In terms of planning, you might need a little bit of time, but that's it. It's a half-day or one-day task, not like SCCM where you have to spend a lot of effort and there are lots of technical guides, technical architectural documents, etc. So it's very user-friendly in terms of deployment, I would say. 

The number of people involved in deployment depends on the size of the company. As I was a consultant before, I worked with two people, sometimes with one to six people. So it depends on the company. For example, in our company, we have only two people who manage the platform. To be honest, I cannot say that only one person can install this solution. 

For us, the deployment took two to three days, but it's not a continuous three days. We installed the server component and we installed the distribution server component after two days. So on the whole, we would've spent two to three days, maximum. 

We implemented through an in-house team. 

The pricing is very low, compared to other products. Compared to Intune or SCCM, it's much less. I can say it's a good product for less of a price. 

Intune doesn't really have a price, at the moment, because they integrated Intune with another license for Microsoft. If you purchase M365, you get the license. They've made everything a combo now, so obviously any company will go for M365, which includes everything. That's what our company has, and we don't pay anything extra for it. If you split the money, it would be much less than Desktop Central, so you can't technically compare the two. 

ManageEngine's licensing is not as good. They add new features and they ask for money. For example, they introduced Browser Security, which is an extra add-on. Compared to Intune, you just buy the Intune product and that's it, you have everything in place—browser security, endpoint management, etc. Everything's included with the Intune license, which isn't the case with ManageEngine. That's something they really need to take care of. 

We also use Intune, which offers many functionalities since it's integrated with Office 365. In terms of the experience, it's very light, but since ManageEngine is a completely different product, you have to integrate a lot of things. For example, installing the ManageEngine agent to all the machines if you want to onboard them. In comparison, with Intune, normally when you prepare the machine, it's automatically included, so onboarding is easy. 

Also, since Intune is a cloud service, you don't need to manage any infrastructure and you don't need a server to host the solution. With Desktop Central, you need a server, and that server should be managed by someone else as well, like a GDC team, a server team. 

Both solutions have advantages and disadvantages. For example, creating packages in ManageEngine is easier than Intune. In Intune, you have to create a package and convert it to a package format supported by Intune. In ManageEngine, you can create EXE or MSI—both are supported—and you just upload and create the package. 

ManageEngine Desktop Central is a product that's worth the money. It's easy to install and quicker in action. If you start installing the product today, in a small environment, you will be able to deploy the application in two hours. 

I rate ManageEngine a seven out of ten. They have a lot of improvements to make. 

We use the product for endpoint security.

They provide good services.

The product's remote access manager needs improvement. The wake-up takes longer time, sometimes more than five minutes. It could respond immediately.

I have been using ManageEngine Endpoint Central for one or two months. At present, I use the latest version.

I rate the platform's stability a seven out of ten.

We have approximately 2000 ManageEngine Endpoint Central users in our organization. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

The initial setup process is good. It requires a technical team of seven to ten engineers for deployment and takes an hour or two to complete. Later, we need to maintain the product as well.

The product is not expensive. I rate its pricing a seven out of ten.

I rate ManageEngine Endpoint Central a seven out of ten. We encounter issues related to the quality of services.

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. 

I use only the asset-management part. 

The asset management is a good feature. It's not the best. However, it's a good feature to use.

It is stable and reliable. 

We can scale the product.

The OS deployment could be better.

Technical support from our local partner is not the greatest.

I'm still exploring the solution. There is yet more to uncover.

Typically, if anything was missing, I would put in a feature request. However, I have not done that yet.

I only started using the solution a few months ago.

It is a very stable solution. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze.

It is very easy to expand. You just need to add extra licenses that are required, along with the computer resources. If I add enough computer resources along with the licenses, it's very easy to scale.

We have around 2,000 endpoints on the solution.

How ManageEngine works is they have partner support. In my region, they have only one partner. If my understanding is right, they only have one partner for the full GCC, and the partner I'm with is not great. If you ask me to rate them, it'll be a zero.

The service from the OEM itself, ManageEngine itself, is good. It's just the partner that is not helpful.

I've also worked with VMware. 

We use the asset management from LANDesk Ivanti, although we can't compare all the features as we use it for other processes. 

We had assistance with the setup and only require three admins for maintenance tasks. 

I received professional support for the initial setup.

I don't directly deal with pricing. 

We're customers and end-users. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It's still new to me, and I'm still exploring its capabilities. 

We are using it for managing desktops and configurations and compliance.

We are using its latest version. We are all up to date with whatever we're doing. It is deployed on-premises.

It helps with compliance. We're moving into a regulated space, and we need to be compliant and have full control over every device. So, the primary purpose of implementing it was compliance.

Identification of gaps and filling the gaps with updates are most valuable. We are able to identify known updates or missing updates and then update.

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.

We found the team that supports us to be very difficult to understand because of their accent.

I have been using this solution for a year or so.

It is reasonably stable. I had a couple of issues related to corruption, and I worked with their support, but on the whole, it is reasonably stable.

I'm sure it is scalable. It is currently being used by three users. We are using it daily, and we don't have any plans to increase its usage. It is not for any real negative reason. I just don't have a need. I bought it for what I needed it for, and it is doing what it does.

I had some pretty significant problems, and they were very complicated. I've had a number of conversations with them, but the simple truth of the matter is that there were communication problems with their team because of the accent. We found the team that supports us to be very difficult to understand. They had a heavy Indian accent, and it was very difficult to communicate with them.

Neutral

We didn’t use any other solution previously.

It was of medium complexity. You have to get an agent out for every single machine by hand, or you need to push it somehow. It took a couple of weeks.

We implemented it in-house. In terms of maintenance, it requires a fair amount of maintenance. It takes some time. You have to touch it every week and make sure it is working and pushing the code. You have to make sure you're identifying the gaps and the packages to be deployed. You need to build those packages, deploy them, and monitor which ones didn't fire. It is not an install-and-forget package. It is an install-and-use package.

We have seen an ROI. I would rate it a solid four out of five in terms of ROI. The work that one person was doing by hand for each computer in the company is now being done by it in mass. Its value is large because I could free up that person's time to do other work.

The initial purchase was around $6,000 or $7,000. We most probably are not on an annual subscription. We bought it, and then we pay for the maintenance. I'm not 100% sure how that's working out.

We evaluated a couple, but I can't remember what we looked at.

If I re-implement it today, I'd strongly consider a cloud-based infrastructure instead of on-premise.

It is solid. It is a legacy technology, and it has been around forever. It does what it does. It is complicated, but it works. It is not brilliant, but it is highly functional.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.