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 this solution is the Patch Management."
"I like being able to image over the network. That's a nice feature that it has. Patch management is pretty decent on it as well."
"ManageEngine Desktop Central has greatly improved our organization by utilizing Service Desk Plus to monitor and keep track of issues that our end users report to our Help Desk Department. We also have written in the ode of our company's software to notify Support if an end-user experience an issue and does not report it."
"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 centralized control of all of our Windows hardware that this solution offers has been most valuable to our organization."
"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 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."
"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."
"The product is useful for patch management."
"There have to be made some improvement in WSUS and control in other non-Microsoft products updates."
"Microsoft Configuration Manager helps with patch management."
"Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is valuable in keeping our systems updated. We are able to send updates to all the systems. Additionally, the Intune integration is helpful."
"The tool's most valuable features are easy patch management and software deployment."
"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 ability to make collections and deploy to them has been great."
"The solution effectively handles inventory management, deployment, and reporting."
"I would like to see them include the ability to find out the network usage but I believe that might be a feature of it already."
"Tech support is mediocre at best."
"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."
"Desktop Central has very good information, however, you can't customize the dashboards."
"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."
"We are looking for a complete solution for patch management with central management and the cloud which ManageEngine Endpoint Central does not provide."
"I would like to see them come out with a SaaS version of the product in the future."
"The tool's security can be better."
"I currently need to increase my compliance level in the patching processes which this solution could improve on."
"I would like to see some improvements in WSUS and control of other, non-Microsoft, product updates."
"The reports are too busy. They could be simpler. I'm a technician, so I don't care how pretty the reports look. They should be easy to read. I'm designing this for production folks. They need to read the reports quickly when they're patching in the middle of the night."
"It needs to be able to load faster during deployment."
"It would be nice to have everything in one place. Now they have Intune for the desktops and SCCM to handle their servers."
"SCCM does not scale well, which is one of the reasons we are not going to continue to use it."
"I would like to see more automation."
"SCCM can improve on third-party application support."
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 59 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.