Lansweeper vs. Progress WhatsUp Gold

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

[Progress WhatsUp Gold (formerly Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold)] is good for what it is. An inexpensive but accurate monitor for alerting on systems and services. However, it is time consuming to configure, The GUI leaves a lot to be desired and the formatting for txt alerts stinks (I just use it now as an alert to check my email to view the actual alert.)

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

• Easy to install and manage.
• While it does require a whole server with IIS and a SQL db it is low impact on resources but still quick to respond.
• Great for quick notifications about a server going above a configured resource threshold. We don't have to look at every server's resource utilization individually anymore.
• Quick and easy to setup a service up or down notification.

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

• While it is easy to get up and running, I know I could utilize the software better if I had some formal training on it. There are a wealth of features available, but I don't have time to learn them all in depth.
• The training classes offered are very expensive. I'd love it if IPSwitch offered some kind of reasonably priced training options.

Incentivized

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

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

Not too much to support as it doesn't do that much.

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

WhatsUp Gold gives you a much better in-depth analysis and understanding of both your network and endpoint devices but the emphasis should be laid more on report generation. WhatsUp Gold has the ability to generate a report (e.g device uptime, bandwidth utilization, device health etc) and track events that took place even as low as 5 minutes ago.

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

• As I mentioned earlier, the monitoring of the external environment and uptime is a necessity. An hour down is a 1% loss of revenue per day which may not sound like much but in a million dollar company, that 1% is a huge chunk.
• The backup configuration has been very handy in turn around time for failed equipment. I did have a homegrown way of backing up configurations but had to check daily and verify every backup. This becomes very time consuming and a waste of company time.
• Only negative is the mapping. In the Cisco world CDP is a great way to map connections and they don't seem to do it that way.

Incentivized