The only area where I see room for improvement is the ability to delay the application of patches for a set number of days. Currently, when patches become available, you have to either approve or reject them immediately without any waiting period. Additionally, the third-party patching application used by the software lacks support for a sufficient number of apps. This means that you may need to install an additional tool, such as Chocolatey, to patch more applications effectively.
Automation for updates is a feature that I'm really clamoring over, or it's an important feature to me. Remote support is also really important to me. I would like the ability to remotely manage configuration and settings on individual units. Some organizations have a certain device configuration that needs to be consistent across all computers. For example, if we have computers that cannot go to sleep or hibernate because they're being accessed remotely, we need to be able to quickly configure those computers to not hibernate. With Datto, there is no easy and/or direct way to accomplish this. I can't create a group called No Hibernate and drag all those computers to that group so that they do not go into hibernation. There is no easy way to put in a policy or a procedure like that. It's still back to going to each computer and doing it by hand, which is what I'm trying to get away from. I want to automate and simplify as much as possible. I write code and scripts to do most of my work anyways. The intention is to get away from me having to be so hands-on. This is a major feature that I need, but I'm surprised that it has been overlooked by Datto. There is no easy way to do that. There are indirect means that they've given me, but if I move it out of that group, there's no way to undo it. I still need the means to undo the policy change. It's just very frustrating. It should also support end-device configuration and management, not just updates.
Sales & Marketing at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2022-01-05T07:34:47Z
Jan 5, 2022
The CRM capabilities are not very good. It's clunky and could work a lot better than it does. There are no marketing add-ins, for example. It's an older way of doing things. Adding some workflow to the CRM then that would be better. If they had math that worked when trying to calculate percentages and/or dollars and cents on projects, that would be a lot better. You have to put down a large box. You can't break it down into quarterly, for example. It doesn't map out well if you're trying to do a subscription model and build something up.
They have a tab to provide information about the type of hardware the computers have. One thing they don't specify is what model of hard drive the computers have. Identification of storage models would be nice. There should be faster processing of jobs. I sometimes wish that when I push changes, they go out a little faster, which is more critical when we are terminating an employee, and we need to push the command to shut down and wipe the machine immediately. Its stability should be improved. The area of stability has been going downhill, and it has been frustrating.
Business Development Manager at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
2021-12-17T17:43:00Z
Dec 17, 2021
Integration between Datto and PSA solutions could be a little more seamless. They are working towards that, but they're not quite there yet. Datto integrates already well with Outlook and other products. My most significant criticism is Datto is a complex product that takes a while to understand, but that could be said of almost any solution at the same level. It depends on where you're starting from. You have to rework all your workflows, and it's some heavy lifting if you want to get it right. Also, there are a couple of other little quirks with the interface design. For example, you would think we could find everything on the main tab bar at the top, but you need to dig through another menu system to see all the stuff. If you're just a tech who is limited in what you can see, it's probably not such an issue. However, in smaller organizations like ours, everybody can see everything. When you're searching for one of the clients where you think they should be, you will not find anything or see any of the clients, and you'll have to go to a different area. It's okay once you get used to it, but it's not intuitive or straightforward when you first start working with it.
Learn what your peers think about Datto Remote Monitoring and Management. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
General Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
2021-12-15T02:48:00Z
Dec 15, 2021
There are tons of improvements, but the initial setup and false alerting are two of the biggest things. The actual setup and the automation of their product are horrific. When you buy it, there is nothing out of the box. You have to custom design it for everything you want it to do. You pay for implementation, but they don't really do a whole lot to help you get it going. I know it does a lot more than what ours is set up to do, which is frustrating. When I've demoed other systems, their setup is so much better. When you pay for their setup, there is so much more, whereas I just feel like we didn't get a very good setup. It has a lot of false results, which is very annoying. False alerting is just very frequent. We have to put in a lot of help desk tickets about why it has given us false outages on our machines. Their help forum for getting help is difficult to navigate.
Remote Network Support Analyst Level 2 at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
MSP
2021-11-18T21:15:35Z
Nov 18, 2021
Sometimes we have some downtime when Datto is doing updates. Maybe it's because of the cloud service they use. I'm not sure if they're going through AWS or Azure or what. That's happened, but the outages have been few and far between. But sometimes, we kind of needed it when it happened because it gave us a valid excuse to take a break.
We are still on the learning curve with the solution, so I can't point out many specific areas for improvement yet.
The only area where I see room for improvement is the ability to delay the application of patches for a set number of days. Currently, when patches become available, you have to either approve or reject them immediately without any waiting period. Additionally, the third-party patching application used by the software lacks support for a sufficient number of apps. This means that you may need to install an additional tool, such as Chocolatey, to patch more applications effectively.
Automation for updates is a feature that I'm really clamoring over, or it's an important feature to me. Remote support is also really important to me. I would like the ability to remotely manage configuration and settings on individual units. Some organizations have a certain device configuration that needs to be consistent across all computers. For example, if we have computers that cannot go to sleep or hibernate because they're being accessed remotely, we need to be able to quickly configure those computers to not hibernate. With Datto, there is no easy and/or direct way to accomplish this. I can't create a group called No Hibernate and drag all those computers to that group so that they do not go into hibernation. There is no easy way to put in a policy or a procedure like that. It's still back to going to each computer and doing it by hand, which is what I'm trying to get away from. I want to automate and simplify as much as possible. I write code and scripts to do most of my work anyways. The intention is to get away from me having to be so hands-on. This is a major feature that I need, but I'm surprised that it has been overlooked by Datto. There is no easy way to do that. There are indirect means that they've given me, but if I move it out of that group, there's no way to undo it. I still need the means to undo the policy change. It's just very frustrating. It should also support end-device configuration and management, not just updates.
The CRM capabilities are not very good. It's clunky and could work a lot better than it does. There are no marketing add-ins, for example. It's an older way of doing things. Adding some workflow to the CRM then that would be better. If they had math that worked when trying to calculate percentages and/or dollars and cents on projects, that would be a lot better. You have to put down a large box. You can't break it down into quarterly, for example. It doesn't map out well if you're trying to do a subscription model and build something up.
They have a tab to provide information about the type of hardware the computers have. One thing they don't specify is what model of hard drive the computers have. Identification of storage models would be nice. There should be faster processing of jobs. I sometimes wish that when I push changes, they go out a little faster, which is more critical when we are terminating an employee, and we need to push the command to shut down and wipe the machine immediately. Its stability should be improved. The area of stability has been going downhill, and it has been frustrating.
Integration between Datto and PSA solutions could be a little more seamless. They are working towards that, but they're not quite there yet. Datto integrates already well with Outlook and other products. My most significant criticism is Datto is a complex product that takes a while to understand, but that could be said of almost any solution at the same level. It depends on where you're starting from. You have to rework all your workflows, and it's some heavy lifting if you want to get it right. Also, there are a couple of other little quirks with the interface design. For example, you would think we could find everything on the main tab bar at the top, but you need to dig through another menu system to see all the stuff. If you're just a tech who is limited in what you can see, it's probably not such an issue. However, in smaller organizations like ours, everybody can see everything. When you're searching for one of the clients where you think they should be, you will not find anything or see any of the clients, and you'll have to go to a different area. It's okay once you get used to it, but it's not intuitive or straightforward when you first start working with it.
There are tons of improvements, but the initial setup and false alerting are two of the biggest things. The actual setup and the automation of their product are horrific. When you buy it, there is nothing out of the box. You have to custom design it for everything you want it to do. You pay for implementation, but they don't really do a whole lot to help you get it going. I know it does a lot more than what ours is set up to do, which is frustrating. When I've demoed other systems, their setup is so much better. When you pay for their setup, there is so much more, whereas I just feel like we didn't get a very good setup. It has a lot of false results, which is very annoying. False alerting is just very frequent. We have to put in a lot of help desk tickets about why it has given us false outages on our machines. Their help forum for getting help is difficult to navigate.
Sometimes we have some downtime when Datto is doing updates. Maybe it's because of the cloud service they use. I'm not sure if they're going through AWS or Azure or what. That's happened, but the outages have been few and far between. But sometimes, we kind of needed it when it happened because it gave us a valid excuse to take a break.