N-sight Reviews

Solarwinds is building a very broad set of tools helping MSPs and admins manage corporate IT users, networks, and assets. I really like that a big part of their strategy consists of recurring available trainings of not only their own software, but best practices. I have already learned a great deal working with their platform.

They are still growing and adding on. It sometimes gets a little frustrating that all the toolsets are not directly integrated into their RMM platform.

The initial price of $99/mo for up to 3 users seemed very attractive to us as an affordable entry into the space. A unified platform for all RMM tools also seemed attractive to us. However, we were very wrong with assuming it was unified.

The "N" in "N-ABLE" apparently stands for "Nickel-And-Diming" as that's exactly what they did at every turn. After an exciting trial period with the platform (which was kicked off with great sales people), all of the features that were represented to us in the sales calls were suddenly stripped away and pitched as "add-ons" to the introductory price that we should have known was too good to be true.Beyond that, N-ABLE continuously over-billed us for 3 of the 6 months we had the service. Two of those times were because we had the audacity to deactivate one user account and activate a new one - but the fact that two different users existed in a month meant that it was an added charge.The charge? It was an extra $49! Half the cost of what they billed for their $99-for-3.This made it a nightmare for us when we turned over staff, as they weren't billing on ACTIVE LICENSES but instead they billed you on any time you added someone new - despite if you deactivated the old user first.Beyond the billing nightmare - EVERYTHING is an upcharge. Your fee is giving you access to an RMM and a really antiquated ticketing system that feels like you're working in a platform that was developed in 1992.Every single module is segregated and requires you to log in again (with MFA). This ultimately didn't make a huge difference, because we quickly found out that you had to pay hundreds of dollars for every other feature, anyway.

Starting using SolarWinds shortly after they offered a reseller solution for RMM and MSP's. The features are wide and the prices is mostly on par with other mid tear offerings. The ease of loading the remote client software is good, and better than many others. The broad range of addons is nice, but can be costly fast! Tailoring to each client is what we do, so we add the features based on the broadest range of use of that feature.

We spend many weeks evaluating RMM software. Coming from more costly software solutions to SolarWinds we felt that for many of the clients we had, they offered to most advanced solutions which could grow with us. The reporting features, and remote monitoring, and the anti-spyware was key features we needed. Recommend SolarWinds for any level MSP or MSSP.

The user interface needs work to be easier for entry level staff. The reporting details in some modules seem to be incomplete. The cost structure for each item, needs to be redone. Very hard to determine exact pricing for wholesale cost versus retail selling price.

The trial period is a full 30 days. The sales and support teams are available to help with setup questions and problems during that time. My experience with sales was overall positive - they were not pushy.

The product is cloud hosted, no option for self-hosting (they offer another RMM that can be.) The monitoring agent is unobtrusive on the target PCs. It's possible to remotely manage most of what you need to manage on a workplace PC. They offer integrated AV which is a must for MSPs. A documents-only backup is also available, although for full system backups you will need to use theirs or another add-on backup application.

A large body of knowledge is available online, much of it from the days when the individual components were stand-alone companies. Once you learn the history of SW RMM, you can find answers to most problems in forums and blog posts. I can't comment on their phone support, as I only used it once or twice.

I thought the pricing was quite fair. You can easily charge enough per PC to make the RMM cost small change. They offer month-to-month billing, which is great for small startups.

Running tasks and scripts is anything but real time. You might wait hours to learn if a script had run or not, or what the output was. Patch management gave the appearance of being complete and granular, but again, for me, confidence in the actual state of systems was not there, needed lots of double checking. AV and backup were reliable.

Easy to get setup. Install the windows agent on a computer or Server and then add a discovery job to find that device. Can also be used for cell phones, printers and any network device you need to monitor. Allows multiple options form Take Control to Remote Desktop, Java web control.

Can sometimes be flaky. The biggest problem is that the agent can really take over CPU and memory. Sometimes to the point of making the device you are remoted into really slow. Tried everything suggested on SolarWinds website to mitigate this to no avail. Location tracking for cell phones is also buggy. Soem phones report location correctly, others will not report at all, so if soemone loses a phone, good luck trying to find it. Good thing for Google tracking.

A wide array of sensors to monitor servers and workstations. A powerful dashboard provides a quick look at the state of systems being monitored. Integrated file and SQL backup and antivirus provides a one stop shop for protection and monitoring.

It can be challenging to resolve issues when they arise with the software, or underlying issues that affect the software. Given the complexity and nature of it, this can be expected to an extent.

Complete solution: rich monitoring features including SW updates management and backups
Easy to deploy: o need to spend lots of time reading the documentation
Flexible: it does what you need to do

Nothing really!
The backup/restore option could probably be more user friendly
The Android version is a bit disapointing today

Patch Management
IT Asset Management
Control
Reporting

nothing that comes to mind - the product so far fulfills all the needs