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 stability is very good."
"Everything is easily centralized and managed under this one product."
"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 solution is definitely scalable."
"The ability to run event viewer, task manager, services, command, file browser, certificate all remotely without interrupting users is the most valuable aspect. Software deployment and prohibiting, allowing us to standardize on the software that has been deployed through the environment and then prohibiting illegal software such as torrent applications has been valuable."
"The most valuable feature of ManageEngine Endpoint Central is the central management console. Additionally, inventory tracking is helpful for knowing where our assets are."
"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."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."
"Easy to use."
"Intune provides full visibility into all active mobile device users. If their devices are noncompliant with our security policies, I have the flexibility to update them remotely."
"The ability to send configurations to our systems is valuable, particularly as we don't have a regular Windows AD server. Our current environment doesn't have a Windows AD, which limits our ability to push GPOs. However, this is where the solution can step in and help us push policies."
"It is quite policy-enabled, so you can build pretty much any policy to manage remote endpoints."
"Intune provides full endpoint visibility and IT control across device platforms. You can individualize it for your company with the Intune Company Portal app."
"The most valuable includes managing everything from a single console."
"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."
"Some difficulties with setup for multiple locations."
"We are looking for a complete solution for patch management with central management and the cloud which ManageEngine Endpoint Central does not provide."
"The only problem with it is that the setup isn't very intuitive. I know that they just upgraded the product to make it a little bit easier to use, but compared to some of the other platforms, it is not easy to configure it, set it up, and get it running. However, once you have set it up and got it running, it runs great."
"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."
"The team should work on improving the stability, particularly with massive patches deployment, clients are not 100% getting patches and the information provided by the system does not help; more detailed report would be very useful."
"The pricing is lower than other well-respected solutions in this category."
"The reports provided by the product are an area of concern where improvements are required. The visibility provided by the reports is not very attractive."
"The pricing could be a bit better."
"The biggest problem we ever have is when something goes out of date after 30 days when nobody has logged into it. We do have a problem trying to get those back online. We've been working with Microsoft to resolve that problem, but that's been the only issue that we've had in the last few years."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like a feature to be able to properly lock down the device. For example, if an attacker or somebody steals the phone, you can be sure that the pin cannot be broken."
"I know that their AI pieces are at the infancy stage, but allowing users to do more tagging for information would be an interesting thing because Intune also directly integrates with Azure. Because a lot of the devices are hosted with that, you also get a lot of tagging of user data and other things like that."
"The reporting and cost have room for improvement."
"The difficulty of the the roll out is surprisingly difficult considering this product is supposed to be an integrated part of the 365 suite."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in terms of compatibility, extending beyond the well-known major brands."
"There are some issues using the solution with macOS and iOS, and it offers limited granular control with them. Intune works better on Windows and Android."
More ManageEngine Endpoint Central Pricing and Cost Advice →
ManageEngine Endpoint Central is ranked 3rd in Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) with 59 reviews while Microsoft Intune is ranked 1st in Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) with 165 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, Microsoft Entra ID, SOTI MobiControl and IBM MaaS360. See our ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs. Microsoft Intune report.
See our list of best Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) vendors and best Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) vendors.
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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