We performed a comparison between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, we would conclude that ManageEngine Desktop Central is the preferred choice over Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. Our users feel ManageEngine Desktop Central is affordable, easily scalable, and offers great patch management. It is a very good functional solution for endpoint management.
"The most valuable feature of ManageEngine Endpoint Central is the central management console. Additionally, inventory tracking is helpful for knowing where our assets are."
"The ability to run event viewer, task manager, services, command, file browser, certificate all remotely without interrupting users is the most valuable aspect. Software deployment and prohibiting, allowing us to standardize on the software that has been deployed through the environment and then prohibiting illegal software such as torrent applications has been valuable."
"All of Desktop Central's features are valuable, especially its simplicity."
"We can scale the product."
"The dashboard has been very useful."
"What I like best about this product is that I can log on to every PC, very easily, and chat with the user via the chat feature."
"The most important feature we found to be useful in the COVID situation is the secure connection, which gives the IT support staff the ability to seamlessly connect with the users remotely and in a secure way."
"Everything is easily centralized and managed under this one product."
"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."
"Technical support was helpful and responsive."
"Patching is very effective and reporting is very good."
"It does the job and meets our needs. With everybody working remotely these days, we are using this solution to deploy everything. The deployment of PCs is easy."
"The tool's most valuable features are easy patch management and software deployment."
"I like the data collection."
"With the SCCM inventory, we found a lot of rogue applications. We were able to identify them, find out who was running them, and either put them on our application list or remove them."
"The main, clear valuable feature is updating the latest, patches and updates from Windows. This is the main feature we really utilize a lot."
"Tech support is mediocre at best."
"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."
"There are occasional glitches."
"Not many things are needed for improvement, everything seems to be great as it is. One thing that would be good to have would be the ability to add MDM to a tablet running Android 5.0 using the EMM Token Enrollment. If we wanted to add MDM to an older tablet, we just have to go the "long route" to get it added."
"The support could be faster."
"The OS deployment could be better."
"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."
"The MDM feature isn't very good. It doesn't support Amazon vendors."
"The setup was complex and I faced a lot of problems initially because I was new to the solution."
"Management of Linux devices could be improved."
"The App to upgrades to the server needs to be improved."
"The solution is a bit heavy on the sources such as RAM or CPU and the software needs to be a bit lighter."
"We'd like the solution to make it easier to manage remote users."
"Initial setup was complex. There's a lot that goes into it."
"There's no way to say, "I want this maintenance window to be on the second Tuesday of the month." It's strict. This window is this and that's it. You can't fluctuate."
"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."
More ManageEngine Endpoint Central Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Microsoft Configuration Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →
ManageEngine Endpoint Central is ranked 1st in Client Desktop Management with 60 reviews while Microsoft Configuration Manager is ranked 2nd in Server Monitoring with 78 reviews. ManageEngine Endpoint Central is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of ManageEngine Endpoint Central writes "An in-depth and intuitive product with good cross-platform capabilities, but they should have a more global support channel". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Configuration Manager writes "Seamless system updates, useful integration, and reliable". ManageEngine Endpoint Central is most compared with Microsoft Intune, VMware Workspace ONE, Jamf Pro, ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus and SOTI MobiControl, whereas Microsoft Configuration Manager is most compared with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, BigFix, Microsoft Intune, Tanium and AWS Systems Manager.
We monitor all Client Desktop Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. What I like most about ManageEngine is that I can log on to every PC very easily and use the chat feature to speak with any user. In addition, using this product has helped me identify outdated PCs and has been very useful when I have needed to assist with remote control and software monitoring. With ManageEngine Desktop Central, I can see what is installed on users’PCs, which is especially helpful for users who have laptops. ManageEngine provides peace of mind for me because it offers exceptional security, which was very important for me when users were forced to work remotely at the start of COVID-19. One downside for me is that ManageEngine doesn’t give me the option to install the agent remotely. And I wish the solution was better for integrating with other solutions. Otherwise, it has excellent performance and is quite reliable.
Regarding Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, I found that amongst all of the features it offers, the reporting tools are one of the best ones to support your environment. It offers package deployment as well as application deployment. Its security management is also excellent at identifying any vulnerabilities so they can be fixed right away. I also really like that Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager accommodates the bandwidth you have available. Moreover, it works well with Windows, it's very stable, and scales well. In addition, I found that it was very easy to implement, with a straightforward set up. The disadvantages of it are that it lacks a good user-friendly environment and needs a much better GUI.
Conclusion: Based on my needs, I chose Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager over ManageEngine Desktop Central because my primary use case was for client and server deployments and software metering, and I felt that it was better suited to address these requirements.
The main question is what are you trying to accomplish, what is the end-game from your perspective when it comes to patching, such as:
- Do you need to meet specific compliance?
- Are you falling behind on the current patch workload?
- Having too many manual processes and trying to automate?
- Security and IT are not connecting?
If you'd like, one of our patch experts will be happy to go over the requirements with you, without any commitment, and help you better define your needs and how they can be met.
Quest's Unified Endpoint Management - please have a look at this solution: easy to manage, best for mass task deployment, comprehensive and customized reporting.
My recommendation is to use MS Intune as a solution and you can drop both SCCM and ManageEngine Desktop Central.
Intune is the best solution for managing mobile devices and endpoints. You can also manage your servers but there will be some difficulty in managing on-premises servers.