Since I am working with a person who has a partnership with N-central, I know about N-able and N-central.

We started with about 30 different products and shortlisted seven. Then we narrowed it down further to three. At that point, we eliminated one because it didn't have a mobile component at the time. Datto offered a much better price, and we got Webroot antivirus at a discount as part of the package.

We used N-able and Kaseya in the past. We also demoed LabTech. 

We felt that AEM had the best features with the best Mac support.

I did evaluate other options. It wasn't just out of the book. Atera and ConnectWise were the two predominant ones that I did a comparison against.

Atera was too Windows-centric, and we have a large user base or a large equipment base that is non-Windows. We have Macintoshes. We have phones, and we have Linux computers or servers, but Atera was too Windows-centric, so that was a no.

ConnectWise was a bit on the expensive side. Its price was something I was concerned about. Initial costs are small, but with ConnectWise, it's like buying a fleet vehicle where if you want seats, those are extra. If you want tires, those are extra, and the steering wheel is extra too. It becomes so piecemeal that by the time you get all the pieces you need, it gets to be quite expensive.

We tried Comodo and Kaseya. Comodo doesn't have an integrated ticketing system. Their RMM is really nice, but it just didn't integrate with the ticketing system very well. 

Kaseya integrates with the ticketing system and the documentation system, but I didn't move us to it because it is cost-prohibitive. Once you have a system, you have to pay the startup fees to go to another system. If it wasn't going to cost me to move everything, I would probably have switched to Kaseya.