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 solution is time-saving and resource-saving."
"Its cross-platform capabilities and the ability to do both OS-level patching and third-party patching are valuable. It is difficult to find a software product that will do all that for you out of the box, and you don't have to do any configuration other than your initial setup. Once you do that, there is a very minimalistic approach to getting it operational. You can have it up and running within a 20-minute time span."
"The patch manager is good, and it's easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of ManageEngine Endpoint Central is the central management console. Additionally, inventory tracking is helpful for knowing where our assets are."
"All of Desktop Central's features are valuable, especially its simplicity."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the Patch Management."
"The solution's most valuable features are its patch management capabilities, especially for third-party applications, along with quick and easy configuration and deployment processes."
"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."
"Microsoft's cloud comes with a lot of extra features that are free of charge."
"With on-premises Active Directory, the main challenge was that we had no control when a user was working from home. We didn't know what exactly a user was doing and whether the AV was up to date or not. Intune provides better control of their machines."
"The performance of Microsoft Intune is good."
"Among the most valuable features are the Company Portal that is built into Intune, and the update rings so that we can manage what types of future updates the devices get."
"I like that it's very good and very simple. I found that we just needed to have a proper subscription for an Intune tenant, and from the subscription, if we have the right role assigned, like the global admin role or the owner role, we can use Microsoft cloud resources. With the help of that, we can do many things like setting up Microsoft Intune in the cloud to create our virtual machines. All these can be done, and the steps are very simple. I really liked it. I like features like Windows Auto-Enrollment. I like it very much because whenever you supply it to the end-user, it will be ready to use immediately. The end-user only needs to provide the user credentials, and then they are good to go. I also really like Cloud PC, which was recently launched on Azure."
"Intune device restriction policies enable me to enforce limitations on the device, like blocking the mobile camera or restricting the employees from using and inserting USB devices, including thumb drives and flash drives."
"The most important thing for me is the autopilot feature."
"It's normally able to meet 100% expectations of our customers."
"Improvement of the chats on the web communication through the WAN would be helpful."
"I really feel like asset explorer should be a component of desktop central. That would make it the ultimate desktop management tool. This would also simplify the asset management role since an agent is already being deployed and assets could be added at the same time."
"There are occasional glitches."
"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."
"The pricing could be a bit better."
"The tool's security can be better."
"The product's remote access manager needs improvement."
"It needs incorporation of Knox, ZeroTouch, etc."
"The closest Microsoft Intune can be to GPOs, the better. There needs to be more granularity on application deployments. However, they have done better recently with the application deployments."
"There can be more logs. I do not have any other requirements."
"Its configuration is fairly complicated. You have to do quite a bit of discovery to be able to deploy it for a customer. You have to ask them a lot of questions. So, its initial deployment is the biggest challenge. They should make it easier to deploy with the use of Wizards or something else. During the deployment stage, there could be profiles for the customers who are particularly wanting to use certain feature sets of Intune."
"Microsoft Intune fails a lot when it comes to device compliance."
"It would be great if Intune offered better data protection controls for BYOD Windows PCs."
"I would like to see micro VPN. I like the way that some of the other providers have done something similar where, as you open that app on an end-point device, it creates a micro VPN straight into your device, which is quite a nice little feature. Also, Microsoft Intune relies heavily on its fellow products in the suite. It would be nice if Microsoft Intune could stand on its own two feet."
"They can improve their MAM policies a little bit more and make them more granular. They should include more granular group policies. They are there, but they need to be more granular. Its stability should also be improved. It is not very stable. Sometimes, it shows some inconsistencies across tenants."
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 164 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