KACE Asset Management Appliance vs. Lansweeper

We are a small to mid-size County Government and this has been fit great for our IT HelpDesk needs for tracking tickets and creating a How-To data base for users issues. If you have a system on your network DAM will find it and report back to you on its current status and any issues or items that may need to be addressed, such as patches or updates for MS or AV!

Incentivized

Because of its slowdown as we have acquired more equipment, I think LANSweeper may be better suited for smaller environments. We have 3000+ users and over 1500 devices on our WAN. It has shown considerable performance issues as we have grown. Maybe moving it to a full blown SQL instance will make things a bit better. But as it stands, it has gotten tiresome waiting for it to update and refresh.

Incentivized

• Monitors remote computers and tracks software installed on those computers.
• Smart labels allow for automation of software installs/upgrades using analytics.
• Contract monitoring system with alerts when a third party contract is nearing expiration.
• Comes with a ticketing system, that can have multiple ticket queues, to manage incoming requests for support.
• Using processes, you can automate opening multiple tickets for work needed on a task. (ie. open multiple predefined tickets for a new employee hire).
• Kace has had substantial improvements since Quest assumed ownership from Dell.
• You can configure notifications for almost anything, since you can utilize their wizard or manually write your own SQL queries.

Incentivized

• Lansweeper is grabbing lots of data from the machines without slowing the network and the client machines. We can easily get all the installed software data, hardware and linked hardware and all the user you can grab from the AD (computer and user).
• Lansweeper can now scan Windows, Mac and Linux with an agent installed (or not if you want that the server is the one pulling the data).
• The web interface is really friendly user and offers lots of possibilities to personalize your dashboard as you see fit.
• Reports engine is really powerful and easy to monitor your machines and also your security issues.

Incentivized

• As with most items in IT there is a learning curve to using this product. But once you get the general idea of how this software flows it is quite easy to navigate and get information.
• Has a good reporting base but it was easy to learn how to make your own specific reports!
• I would like to see more color options for dash board setup is sorta blah!!

Incentivized

• Ease of use - pushing software can be a complicated process.
• Detecting assets sometimes means going to each machine on opening ports on the firewall.
• Reporting can be hard to figure out but you can ask on their forum. I find that a lot of my questions already have been asked.

Incentivized

The price to function scale is so far towards function it would be stupid to get rid of it

Incentivized

The appliance and software does its job, as it's intended to. There aren't many other bells and whistles. integrates well with MFA (okta), integrates well with KACES SDA. The modules it has will suit most needs. If you have the money in the budge, i'd suggest going with professional services to help with the setup/integration. There are some parts that are cumbersome and may require support. Save yourself the headache

Incentivized

Lansweeper offers a variety of customer support options (including KBs for self-serve and get in touch with them via email), and most importantly, it's a matter of dialing within their allotted supporting time frames. However, I always make sure to provide the following information:

- Screenshots of the issue (if available).

- Program Files (x86)/Lansweeper/Service/Errorlog.txt, as present on your Lansweeper server.

- If it exists, the error log present in Program Files (x86)/Lansweeper/Website/App_Data.

Incentivized

We were not able to get SCCM to stabilize and work, it would continually fail to add computers to groups and fail to install programs/updates to computers in a defined group. Continually, user community forums kept recommending to replace it with another solution. JIRA is a much more efficient ticketing system, and we migrated the ticketing system from KACE to JIRA.

Incentivized

Lansweeper is DRAMATICALLY cheaper than KACE and provides the same level of reporting and inventory of asset data. Where KACE outshines Lansweeper, is Lansweeper has a very minimal software deployment system that requires clients to have direct access to a common file share. KACE allows you to upload files directly into it's environment, and assets can download over HTTPS those files for installation anywhere. Spiceworks was a great inventory and helpdesk system for free - but the product I feel has gone stale and not nearly as powerful as it use to be - for that reason Lansweeper appears to have taken up the charge and utilized a lot of Spiceworks was going for

Incentivized

• Implemented inventory system without having to purchase a secondary product, cutting down cost.

Incentivized

• I would consider that ROI has been achieved - it wasn't expensive. However, Spiceworks could have done the same for free.
• Too much manual intervention. Not strong beyond basic Microsoft products so we had to keep an eye on everything.
• Great sniffer of hardware on the network including switches, routers, printers.
• Lack of features that are essential for enterprise ITAM.

Incentivized