We performed a comparison between Atera and Microsoft Configuration Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Patch Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I really like the Shared Script Library and automation tasks which they have implemented... because all the Atera users in the community can share their scripts and their automation tasks knowledge. The same goes for the Shared SNMP Template Library."
"I have better access when I go to look for something regarding either a specific user or software. It is easier to locate. When I am troubleshooting with my clients on the phone, I am not fiddling around looking through a bunch of ticket notes trying to locate something. It makes me a lot more efficient."
"Atera saves money. A trip to the customer costs between $20 to $30. Then, you need to charge the customer $20 to $30 for the travel. However, if you are doing this work remotely, then you are not driving. This makes the process easier and saves money for you and the customer. For example, if it is just one machine, then the savings comes out to $50 to $60. If we are talking about a huge client, who has hundreds of machines and is changing their infrastructure, that is a lot of money."
"Pricing is definitely my favorite part of it. It is also extremely easy to use."
"I would say it's the number one tool for all ITMS."
"Atera has helped me to provide more accurate solutions based on a given problem. For example, we base our solutions on event scenarios, like the alerts. We identify that there's a series of problems occurring in a particular area from the information provided by the alerts."
"It's very easy to use, not just for me, but even for people who have claimed, "I'm not very good at IT." Once you have it installed and you have it set up, it pretty much works by itself. It really helps you do what you need to do. It's easy to use for a beginner, compared to some of the other larger RMMs that are a little bit more complicated."
"There are a lot fewer hardware replacements. Once people migrated from old style hard disks over to SSDs, you have things like hard disks filling up faster. So, I run a script to clear out all the waste, e.g., all the temporary files and downloads. A lot of our business runs through a custom web application that we built. This involves people downloading a lot of PDFs and Excel files, and not just having them sitting in folders. With Atera, I can just go through and clean the temporary files out."
"It gives us the ability to set up schedules, according to what our security requirements are, to automate the patching of our servers and desktops."
"Patching is very effective and reporting is very good."
"The main, clear valuable feature is updating the latest, patches and updates from Windows. This is the main feature we really utilize a lot."
"Microsoft has done a good job with authentication solutions, such as single sign-on, or open authentication."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to learn."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features are Remote Connect, SUP, Cloud functionality, Report, Query, and third-party patching."
"There have to be made some improvement in WSUS and control in other non-Microsoft products updates."
"It will be interesting if Atera can integrate all kinds of products. In North America, there are a lot of resellers, like Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Arrow Electronics, etc. It would be amazing if Atera could integrate with these products. If they could integrate with these products for MSPs, it would be much easier. Then, if you are buying something, and need to add something, you don't need to jump from place to place because this is a very quick sales instrument for use on a daily basis."
"The one thing that could do with improvement is the reporting. This is from someone who worked in an MSP, where I would want to run a report and be able to just present that to a client."
"The billing module has a standard layout which is too limited for my needs."
"The chat solutions need improvement because we first need to connect to the customer. This needs to improve so that there is a particular feature that can provide support to customers even if they are not connected to a computer."
"The solution is scalable. However, in the past, we did have some issues."
"Customization could be improved."
"Having more freedom to perform identity access management would be great."
"They are working on an update, and I would like to see more stuff outside of just computers and servers. Increasingly, we need to be able to monitor and manage network devices. Atera is improving on that already, which is one place that it is currently lacking."
"Troubleshooting in general needs improvement. There's just a ton of logs to go through, and so finding the error log that corresponds with that you're doing can sometimes be difficult."
"SCCM can improve on third-party application support."
"It would be better if automation options were available. For example, in Nexthink or SysTrack, there is an analytical tool. Creating dashboards would be very easy if you implement the same thing in Microsoft. That report will be a daily cost to the customers and good revenue for our organization. The price also could be better. In the next release, we need to include some features like tables, dashboards, surveys, services, and metrics in the dashboard. Whatever we are implementing will be downloaded by a report. Apart from the report, we will telecast from the dashboard. It's very easy to compare, and it will be easy to telecast to the end-users."
"Regarding this, I'd like to mention the agent situation. When the agent on an end-user device is not functioning correctly, it can be quite problematic. It would be highly beneficial if there were a self-healing mechanism in place. Essentially, if the agent becomes corrupted or encounters issues, it should be able to rectify itself autonomously. This is particularly critical because, in order to utilize a tool like MECM (assuming you're referring to Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager), we need to deploy agents, known as AsMs, on all the devices we use, such as Windows 10 or Windows Server. Sometimes, when we deploy configurations or updates, they don't apply properly due to agent issues. This issue has been present since we began using MECM around 23 years ago. Unfortunately, there is currently no built-in mechanism for the agent to detect its own problems and initiate self-repair. Microsoft doesn’t have any feature to scan vulnerabilities and hence, they could include those."
"The main room for improvement is the on-screen display. I think it would be good if some improvements were made."
"The App to upgrades to the server needs to be improved."
"The assets have reached their end-of-life, and patching them is a complex and laborious task. It would be highly advantageous if there were an integrated solution that provided distinct options for each end-of-life asset, streamlining the process and facilitating comprehension."
"Not everything is readily available, and there are a lot of commands that are only executable via PowerShell."
More Microsoft Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
Atera is ranked 10th in Patch Management while Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 1st in Patch Management with 78 reviews. Atera is rated 9.2, while Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Atera writes "Pay just one price for unlimited devices and remote features enable easy access to all end points regardless of their location". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Affordable, easy to use, and easy to understand". Atera is most compared with NinjaOne, Datto Remote Monitoring and Management, N-able N-central, SuperOps.ai and LogMeIn Central, whereas Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, ManageEngine Endpoint Central, BigFix, Tanium and Microsoft Intune. See our Atera vs. Microsoft Configuration Manager report.
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