N Central for MSPs

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Software Nightmare N-Central
Rating: 
 
1.0
Bottom line - N-Central does not do what it's sold to do. It is supposed to provide remote management of devices but falls on its face 80% of the time. Many computer problems can not be repaired through N-Central, you have to actually go to the computer and do manual fixes on a regular basis. If you have more than a few computers you quickly discover that N-Central is useless. And, worst of all, most of the fixes required are do to malfunctioning N-Central monitoring software and their AV Defender bugs.
And even worse yet, their tech support is ridiculous. Trying to get answers to simple questions is bad enough but pose them something a but tricky and all bets on getting a solution go out the window.
On a scale of one to ten, this software and its support, get a two.
JW
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful to you? 9 9
Expensive for what it is
Rating: 
 
2.0
We've been using the product for a few years now. You pay support and maintenance and they don't really release any amazing improvements or features. When they do have something that looks good it's always a chargeable extra. Every new version release is always a mess up and takes ages to resolve. We'll be looking elsewhere over the coming months.
R
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful to you? 10 7
Solid tools, unbearable sales process and a good bit overpriced.
Rating: 
 
2.0
I would buy N-able tomorrow if two things happened.

1. I could just buy the product without so going through such an unbearable sales process.
2. Even if it cost more than GFI, Centrastage and others it at least did the same thing buy only charging for agents I used and did not tie me into incredible ancient contracts.

I like the feature set and it overall abilities, but while the sales guy was likable in a friendly sense, his approach was off the mark and not in tune with our needs.

Again, I would pay more for something with more features/bells and whistles, but these overly complicated/tie you up for life contracts are going extinct as the volume GFI and others have shown.

Come on Solarwinds, get your N-Able house in order, I want to buy and you just have to sell it based on usage.

Right now most interesting option on the radar is Autotask purchase of Centrastage. Solid platform and seeing what Autotask has done with their new UI and plans to integrate Centrastage looks to make my investment in Autotask even more interesting in the near future.
R
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful to you? 18 4
Powerful but takes time
Rating: 
 
4.0
We've been using N-able for nearly a year and were one of the first users on version 8. Whilst we had numerous problems with our initial deployment (deploying the agent via AD/GPO/MSI, which is an approach now no longer supported) we are now in a position where we have over 4000 devices out in the field spanning over 150 different customers. We also use Autotask as our PSA and have N-able (N-central) automatically logging tickets into Autotask when an issue is detected. For example, we've got about 40 servers running BackupExec in a variety of versions that're logging a ticket into Autotask automatically when a backup fails. Other checks log tickets when the check fails and automatically close the ticket when the check returns to normal either by the triggering of a self-healing script by the software agent or after intervention by our service desk team. The latest version of the Remote Support Manager is a heck of a lot better than earlier versions that were included in v8 and we're happily monitoring a whole raft of services and applications. I've added some custom checks and scripts of my own and have also added a handful from the shared community repository that N-able have.

We are intending to expand our usage of N-able's products. We've already rolled out the Endpoint Security software to a few customers and are going to be starting to offer patch management to customers too. In addition we're looking at the anti spam and integrated backup parts.

Support is not a problem. We have a regular bunch of engineers that attend to our calls and are always knowledgeable and happy to help. A number of our feature requests have been added to the product and bugs that are picked up are resolved.

Overall, the product DOES work well. However, it needs careful planning and deployment. Don't just bang the agent out on to as many devices as you can get your hands on. Out of the box the product tries to monitor too much stuff and you'll end up with a sea of red crosses. You need to carefully decide what services you NEED to monitor and decide on the thresholds for those services. Like with a lot of big products, if you take the time during planning and deployment you'll reap the rewards in the long run. Don't rush it. Take your time and do it properly. N-central now drives our service desk and has helped us provide a better service for our customers.
TW
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful to you? 8 6
CEO
Rating: 
 
5.0
Unbelievable impact on my business. Been a partner for 3 years and haven't looked back.

I am currently on the beta version of 8.2 and the new direct connect remote control feature is a game changer. When the sales rep first sold me on the essentials strategy I was slightly hesitant because I didn't feel that it fit into my existing RMM model that I had build around Kaseya. I took a long hard look at my customer based and realized that there was tremendous ooppourtunity within my T&M clustomers that I wasn't taking advantage of. I mandated that all my clients get on at least my essentials program so that I could consolidate all my customers into my dashboard. I had to fire a couple of clients but the end result had a huge payoff. All my clients are in my dashboard and I'm activly flipping essential clients onto fully managed programs. THE STRATEGY ACTUALLY WORKS!! I didn't have any means of achieving this with Kaseya without pricing my customers out...

Have I had any issues with the platform? yes there have been a few hick-ups along the way but their tech support has been curteous and quick to respond anytime I run into an issue. Still waiting for third party patching but all in all I would recommend N-able to anyone who is serious about becoming an MSP and wants a longterm platform that will support their business as it grows. Hope this helps! good luck
T
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Nable User for 2 years
Rating: 
 
3.0
To date, I've been using Nable for two years and really enjoy what the product has to offer and have never thought ill about it. Sure, the price tag was steep to get in but Kaseya was higher priced and I heard too many horror stories about their support.

When looking at any product for our use or for our clients, we look at what a product has to offer, what it lacks, and narrow the field accordingly. The two things that help solidify our choice are: 1) Customer Service and 2) Technical Support. Both of these elements are well represented by Nable and our firm can attest to it because we've used both..and still do!

My constructive criticism for Nable is their product is heavily deep in terms of configurations and settings. Without fully reading the materials and learning the product before launching it on paying customers, one can easily get eaten alive by all the configuration items. My best advice is to start small, use it internally to gain a baseline, which from there templates can be created and global settings can be propogated to all customer sites. By taking this approach, we're able to pull off some awesome RMM functions and provide monthly/quarterly reports that impress. The other dig I would give is with the reporting. Sure, we always want more and NAble gives us access to the database to use our own reporting tools; however, it's a lot of work to get going.

The monitoring side can lead to a lot of false alarms, but that's where careful consideration of what you monitor and when it notifies come into play. The self-correction feature is great and getting notice when something corrects itself is great.

We integrate with AutoTask PSA and both of these tools working together gives us so much more information than we ever thought we'd ever need.

Scripts are always a work in progress for any RMM, but there's times I wish Nable had more to go on. Pushing software to our client computers is fairly straight forward, even if they're not on a domain where we can use group policy.

I would highly recommend this product to other MSP's.
NC
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Honest Reviews
Rating: 
 
4.0
We have been using N-Able for over 3 years now. The Server side has been offline once during an upgrade from one version to the next. We are extremely happy with the software, except the pricing could be a bit better.

We started our operations using OpManager .. but realised quickly this was not a good choice seeing that the software was offline more often the customer Nodes. How could we monitor customers when our monitoring software doesnt respond. THis is a problem we have not faced with N-Able at all. They are constantly improving the product, help out with the basics right down to even auditing your company see if you understand MSP and what it means.

If we had to choose again we would defnitly choose N-Able. Even local support in Holland. Only thing we would like to see is more support for FreeBSD in the future. Software comes in variuos versions from probe / agent . The probe and agent do not use a lot of CPU / mem on the Node side.



WW
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful to you? 7 2
Question legitimacy
Rating: 
 
4.0
I'd like to point out both the articles written for N-able have been written by separate users on the same date and yet nothing since?

Im currently looking for an MSP / PSA /RRM and i continually find it odd, that labtechsoft gets such a plug and other MSP's are degraded online, i get the feeling there are some employee's of labtechsoft rubbishing other products because i cant seem to find many reviews of other products which don’t instantly say afterwards..

"but we tried labtechsoft and they are super human"

I think any MSP implementation initially is going to be a headache, but if you're going to write an honest review you surely wouldn’t instantly plug another product after you have just dropped 25k? I want to point this out I have no affiliation with ANY MSP, im a customer looking for an MSP without a STUPID pricing model. Why should I have to negotiate to get a price for an MSP? I just want a dam price not some “you may get ripped off if you don’t haggle” approach! It leaves me with a sour taste before ive even had the chance to look at the product. I have looked at labtech's reporting tools and they are hopeless, i have looked at n-able's pricing and i can't figure out why the hell they say a price and when you get the contract it shows more? Because of xyz they didn’t explain clearly when doing the sales pitch. Kaseya seem to have a bad rep but they also have more users because they have been in the market the longest, and as we all know in IT you only hear about it when it goes wrong.

What im saying to you is be wary of all the positive hype people say about labtech, i strongly get the feeling its employee's not honest reviews, if it was honest why don’t people mention how ugly the GUI is?

N-able to me seems to be the better product and their support seems WAY better than labtech soft which leaves me weighing up the cost because they for us are an extra 12,000 than labtech? Not to mention ongoing?, but N-able lacks 2 features which labtechsoft have 1. a desktop ticketing system 2. history logger.

N-Able is quite pushy in their sales which i dislike, but they seem eager to give support which is important when dealing with a product like this. I feel labtech support is average, even speaking to a sales and asking to speak to a tech regarding technical issues, has turned out to be hard, i have asked several times to speak to a tech and i havent spoken to one yet, i just get a sales person full of promises with minimal information about technical aspects.

I think its interesting Connect wise has bought into labtech and nod32 is also partnered or looking to with labtech because both have good established companies.

So I’m lost in decisions but it’s important for an honest opinion than these BS reviews.
JS
Report this review Comments (3) | Was this review helpful to you? 13 3
N-Central Recommendation
(Updated: July 14, 2010)
Rating: 
 
4.0
I have been using it, for a few months and I really like the product, quick to get up and running and brilliant support. There is a steep learning curve to take full advantage of the product but easy to get the basic monitoring/reporting going.
Well priced as well.
S
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful to you? 7 6
Look At Other Products
(Updated: July 14, 2010)
Rating: 
 
3.0
I w ork at an MSP and w e bought N-Central going on 5 years ago. At that time, I think it was the best product we had seen. We tried out level platforms, but that was a HUGE resource pig and, since most of our customers are on Windows SBS, they didn't have the resources for Level Platforms agents. We learned a lot on monitoring / providing good services to customers and reports were nice with N-Central. There was a HUGE learning curve and configuration challenges for alerts/notifications. Once we were confronted with the cost of renewing/paying for maintenance, how ever, we decided to look at what else
was out there now that three or four years had passed since we last done this research.

We gave N-Central a fair shake. We set up demos of the new product but they gave us the greenest level 1 tech to give the demo and he couldn't answer any of our questions, and we felt we knew the products better than he did. There was also a fair amount of turnover, apparently, since when we asked for pricing they talked to us like we were a new customer (they didn't realize we've been on their books for >4 years!).

We courted Kaseya and LabTech and ended up going with LabTech. It was a GREAT decision. Yes, there's been adjustments/learning experiences in getting the system in place but we are VERY happy with the additional services we are providing customers and so much of it is automated.

Yes, N-Central did greatly enhance our MSP game 5 years ago but I think there are more cost effective products that provide more services for an MSP on the market today.
J
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