Atera vs. SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD)

Atera is doing well in the monitoring part as it is informing the real time ping of running devices and if any device goes down, it is informing us on the real time. It is helping us to monitor the last reboot status, current logged in users, time zone, IP addresses and other things so that we can track our end devices status. In the patching part Atera is pathing our all devices with the notification stating user to restart device at their convenient time. It is also patching our third party applications. It is good in installing and uninstalling of the third party application but limited to availability in the Atera inventory. Atera is not good in some parts such as in the patching part of applications, sometime it fails to update all 3rd party applications that were not installed via Atera. It is not good if you have to transfer a file to multiple systems at the same time.

Incentivized

If you are looking for a way to support a company and bill based on the outcome this software works really well. If it's a quick password change there was no charge, but if it's troubleshooting things you click the box to charge. It works really well for this. Also bringing all your assets into this and associating them to a client works well. I can't think of anything that this software would not be less appropriate for. It works well for what we use it for.

Incentivized

• Remoting in from anywhere, even on my phone or tablet, has enabled me to quickly diagnose, or even fully resolve, problems.
• The ticketing, once users are set up, is a breeze. It also keeps everything in one place for them.
• With Atera the need to travel on-site has been dramatically reduced.

• Approval flows: You can have multiple layers of approval required for the tickets and service requests you design. This helps us show auditors that access to privileged systems and data was formerly reviewed and approved by the appropriate managers.
• Easy to design forms: You don't need to spend hours reading the documentation to figure out how to create forms. It's simple enough that you can just jump right in and start creating them with minimal training.
• Lots of options and features are available for you to include in your forms.
• Integrates well with SAML-based SSO and has capabilities for MFA.
• Easy and useful search function. Need to find that ticket from last year that you worked for a particular user or issue? Just search by keyword or username, and it'll quickly find the ticket.

Incentivized

• Some basic functions need some extra work
• Some basic things are behind paywalls
• Feature board is not credible. Ideas taking very, very long to implement
• Atera has no clear road map
• SNMP monitoring needs a make over and needs more options

Incentivized

• Being a web platform, some of the refresh is problematic. Not sure this can be solved in the tool, it's important to have a clear understanding who owns the ticket.
• Some time the performance / update speed is slow, but I have to give them credit, this has never resulted in an outage and in general it is solved within a couple of hours.

Incentivized

As of right now, we have found nothing that can offer as many features as Atera does along with the affordability. They are doing monthly releases each month and not just making small changes (shared scripting library, chocolatey support, Install packages, Splashtop SOS support, Scheduled tickets to name a few). The uptimes are great and accessibility to the dashboard has yet to be limited. We are a happy customer and bordering on fanboy status now

Incentivized

My renewal is soon coming up, it is fairly likely I will renew again for the 5th year. I may consider evaluating what else is out there, It was requested by my staff to not make a change. They feel that SSD fits our needs, is easy to use and should keep it.

Incentivized

Atera has a user-friendly interface that improves navigation. Support staff can quickly access real-time alerts and remote devices and manage tickets without much training. ​Atera’s usability has positively impacted our organization by increasing operational efficiency and improving response times to resolve issues.

Incentivized

The stem is easy to use. Having transitioned from Solarwinds Web HelpDesk, the usability change was massive! This has an easy to use interface, common options are front and centre so this makes it simple for staff to dive into. The mobile app makes on the go work easy as well. Being able to snap a picture for a ticket is very helpful.

Incentivized

For the most part the availability is fine. However, every now and then we have an issue where the system is very slow to respond. It can go from 2-5 seconds to load a page to 15-20 seconds to load a page. That doesn't seem like much. But, when you spend most of your day in the system, those extra seconds add up.

Incentivized

We don't integrate Solarwinds with any other software or system so I can't comment on that, but the few times there has been an outage for SolarWinds/Samanage the notification has come quickly that there is an outage and they're working on it. Overall though everything loads quickly and it is very reliable

Incentivized

Atera support provides answers to my questions lightning fast. They have never left me feeling like I'm out there on my own. I can ask questions by email, or by chat, or by opening a ticket with them and they are always on it quickly. They also have a forum where other Atera users can help you if you need it, and you can also add feature requests via the forum.

Incentivized

Only had to use support to help launch the service. Do wish they would have some templates in place that support would have provided. It did feel like we did most of the work even though we paid for a support package.

Incentivized

When we first purchased Samanage (now Solarwinds) they provided us with an informational training session to show us all of the basics on how the service works and showed us everything we were interested in using. There are still some areas of Solarwinds that we do not yet utilize but I know if we choose to use them in the future we would be able to schedule another session with our representative to have them show us what we need to know.

Incentivized

The implementation process for our organization was fairly simple. We set up an email address to receive the emails from the system (for incident creation), and we allowed the system to spoof our IT email to respond to requests. Solarwinds helped us with the rest of the implementation, and it took less than a week to get the system fully operational.

Incentivized

Atera is well designed for remote monitoring and management purposes. The other tools, such as ManageEngine Endpoint Central, are more focused on managing the endpoints and applications, such as installation or removal of applications, and blocking or whitelisting applications. Atera is well structured for core monitoring and management purposes. It works like a well designed monitoring tool and at the same time works as a well designed management tool. Price point of Atera is very low as compared to other applications and the main part is that it does not cost you for the number of devices it covered, instead it will cost you on the basis of admin licenses you have. You can have one license and under that you can manage thousands of devices. Apart from this, Atera has a lot of tools that are integrated with it, and they are really useful.

Incentivized

SSD has more features and simplicity in implementation, and working with it is very important to us. It is also very reputable in terms of company security and safety. Helpdesk software should be designed user-friendly in mind. The SolarWinds desktop is created in the cloud and works in the secure cloud, and is constantly updated for usability and performance. We looked at different platforms, most of them were limited and must buy a separate plugin and module for every common feature, but SolarWinds has all the basic features as standard and by default.

We have over 500 computers and tablets across our organization and this has helped us greatly in keeping track of where computers are and who is currently using it. I can see this product being useful to groups both larger and smaller than us and I really appreciate this product.

Incentivized

• It helped us considerably increase the pace of onboarding people.
• Deployment of updates was easier and seamless compared to before the Atera phase.
• It was easier to control employee laptops to troubleshoot issues remotely since most of our employees worked from home.

• With SLAs, better reporting, and a single incident portal, the productivity of both service desk staff and users has improved. Incidents are tracked and responded to more quickly and fewer incidents "fall through the cracks".
• Purchasing approval workflow has focused technology purchasing priorities.
• Tracking contract expiration ensures services stay available.

Incentivized