We performed a comparison between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Intune based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, ManageEngine Desktop Central seems to be the more favorable product. Its ease of deployment, its solid set of features, its affordable pricing, and its service and support all top Microsoft Intune’s offerings.
"The patch manager is good, and it's easy to use."
"The product works perfectly for patch management and software deployments."
"ManageEngine Desktop Central's most valuable features are remote desktop control and image management. We can send things out from the desk here, it is a very good tool for us."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"Has good functionality and is user-friendly."
"Honestly, I have to say all features together have become the Swiss army knife of desktop management. They all work hand in hand. Software deployment saves an unbelievable amount of time installing an application on hundreds of computers."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the Patch Management."
"It's a complete product that allows you to remote troubleshoot, has an inventory of systems."
"The biggest benefits of Intune are the ability to push changes and the added security. When we moved forward with Defender, we onboarded all those machines automatically. That helps dramatically. For a while, we were left with machines that weren't protected. We could see where people had done things they shouldn't have done, and Defender saved our skins a few times. It didn't happen a lot, but it happened enough that it made us glad we made that decision."
"The main advantage is that Intune performs its intended functions effectively."
"Intune's feature that I have found most valuable is its auto-pilot feature."
"The features I found most valuable in Intune are its user visibility and troubleshooting options."
"The stability is good."
"This product offers an alternative solution to other UEM (Unified Endpoint Management) solutions."
"We already use a lot of Microsoft products in our company, and therefore, it made sense to also use this product."
"It provides control over all mobile devices that are being connected to the corporate network."
"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."
"I would like to have the option to install the agent remotely."
"The reporting analytics could improve in ManageEngine Desktop Central. However, there are some third-party add-ins or modules you can purchase to do reporting analytics."
"The Deployment scheduler needs updating to support various methods for deployment."
"We would like to see options for deploying Microsoft 365 accounts into Outlook. For now we only can use it to deploy exchange accounts. Also we would like to see an option do decline Windows 7 ESU patches in a bulk."
"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."
"The performance sometimes lags a bit because the solution is demanding on system resources."
"In relation to ManageEngine Endpoint Central, ManageEngine NGAV seems to be completely useless right now."
"It doesn't economize when you scale up. We have over 14,000 employees, and we have between 7,500 and 8,000 city-owned or personal devices being used to conduct city business. Its price can be improved. It is not a cheap solution."
"There could be more wizard-driven policy development or creation. Some of the policies can get quite complex. If they have a wizard that assists the administrators in creating the policy, that will be a great job."
"One area for improvement is app deployment. Another is the Windows update rollout. If you're rolling out an object to a device that's offline, Intune stops trying to reach this device after it sits idle for a bit. We are forced to find a workaround that could help manage that."
"We faced issues with macOS support. The product should have better inventory and asset management."
"Intune's areas for improvement revolve around security and certificate management."
"I wanted to check if there is any provision at the Intune level to restrict certain things, such as a website, but unfortunately, that feature is available only in Microsoft Defender. Intune has web filtering capabilities, but they are only useful for protection from malicious websites, whereas we would like to be able to restrict a website. For example, YouTube is a clean website. No one would identify it as a malicious website, but if we want to stop the end-users from going to that website, we have to go for another product, such as Microsoft Defender or another third-party proxy solution. It would be great if this capability is included in Intune."
"From a new user's perspective, it may be a little overwhelming because there are quite a few things to look at in the console, however, once you are sort of acclimated and are familiar with your core functions, it's fairly simple and straightforward."
"One big problem with Microsoft is that they're changing the names of the products quite often, or they're quite consistently doing so. Intune is now Endpoint administration. Constantly switching the user interface or the administrative interface makes it quite hard to keep pace. If you are on a two-week holiday and you come back and look at the same screen you have looked at for the last couple of months, it looks different, which is annoying. Changing things around all the time doesn't make it easy."
More ManageEngine Endpoint Central Pricing and Cost Advice →
ManageEngine Endpoint Central is ranked 4th in Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) with 59 reviews while Microsoft Intune is ranked 1st in Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) with 163 reviews. ManageEngine Endpoint Central is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Intune is rated 8.0. 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 Intune writes "We can manage all aspects of our devices from a single console, easy to scale, and quick to deploy". ManageEngine Endpoint Central is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, VMware Workspace ONE, Jamf Pro, ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus and SOTI MobiControl, whereas Microsoft Intune is most compared with Jamf Pro, VMware Workspace ONE, SOTI MobiControl, Microsoft Entra ID and IBM MaaS360. See our ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs. Microsoft Intune report.
See our list of best Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) vendors and best UEM (Unified Endpoint Management) vendors.
We monitor all Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) 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 has a great patch management feature. It is actually one of my favorite features because it allows you to approve or decline whichever windows or third-party patches you want. You can also schedule them during off hours, force reboots, or even wake devices up for patching. ManageEngine also has a very small yet powerful installation file, which I found very easy to deploy across the network even though I have several remote locations. Considering that ManageEngine is a multi-asset and IT process manager, it enables you to effectively manage all of the assets very well and has a very intuitive and dynamic interface.
One thing I dislike about ManageEngine is their software deployment tools. It’s great for mass deployments but I wish it included one-off deployments to a single computer. Also, in order to enable the file transfer option when you are using it for the first time, you have to install a plugin. Sometimes the control center can be a little slow, too.
Microsoft Intune is robust and it allows you to deploy applications to its enrolled devices. This makes it a beneficial solution in asset management and also patching machines. It also gives you the ability to restrict user actions on their machines, which I find to be very helpful from a security standpoint. In general, Microsoft Intune’s enrollment process on devices is straightforward and easy. You can set policies, and administrators are able to guide users on how to enroll their machines. One major downside of Microsoft Intune for me is that it has inferior and poor quality device reporting.
Conclusion:
Overall, I would recommend ManageEngine because not only is it a well-developed tool, but it also provides an excellent adaptation to its interface, and I have found its implementation and use to be nothing less than exceptional.
Hi . I use both systems . Intune is simply too good to configure a system via autopilot and enforce AD/ Azure AD policy whereas Desktop Central is excellent for patching
Desktop Central is great for patch deployment and software deployment but falls short on many other fronts like correctly reporting information - I had to raise tickets to their support to get it fixed
Intune too has its issues - I does not have an inventory reporting functionality
The company portal is an app which has to be installed on the endpoint . The reporting mechanism is not on par with Desktop Central.
DC does not have the OS deployment capability ( OS Deployer is an add on) whereas Intune has the Autopilot capability built into the system to remote install the laptop including enabling bitlocker encryption
DC has strong patch deployment capability whereas its bit vague on Intune
This list goes on so Im stopping here