OpenNMS Meridian vs. Pulseway

Large network environments with few types of devices. The system is great but getting all of the MIBs loaded and to try and create unique rules /alarm type. Alarm correlation is doable but it takes too much manual work and XML configuration. I do enjoy the dashboard and surveillance categories.

Incentivized

Pulseway is well suited for just about any situation where there is a need to remotely monitor and manage computers. The most basic features are available to anyone with a free account, so even a home user can set it up and use to keep an eye on computers. The more sophisticated features require a fairly inexpensive subscription, but are well worth the cost for a business wanting to monitor the health of their servers, etc. My experience with Pulseway is limited to using it in situations where there are fewer than a dozen or so computers/servers being monitored. I'm not really sure how well it scales up, so I can't say if it is a good solution for a large corporation with hundreds or thousands of machines that need to be monitored.

Incentivized

• When we used OpenNMS you could download the base package for free and configure it fairly easily for your own environment. You can't beat that kind of price break.
• OpenNMS had a very nice looking GUI that was easily navigated and fairly straightforward to understand and configure.
• There were a wide variety of add-ons available for download and implementation.

Incentivized

• Running windows updates: Pulseway really helps us keep our end-user devices up to date, without the need to handle each device individually.
• Sending notifications on our servers really helps with taking care of issues before they cause downtime.
• Pulseway's remote desktop client works very well, even over slower internet connections.

Incentivized

• It takes a fair amount of experimentation to fine tune information collection.
• Configuration can be quite cumbersome with a steep learning curve. It would be nice if more of this could be done via the web dashboard.
• The reliance on Java will put some users off. However, in fairness, it does mean it runs on a wide variety of hardware.

Incentivized

• File transfer
• There are a couple of computers that I keep ScreenConnect around for - as I lose connection with Pulseway and have to reestablish with ScreenConnect. I can't seem to get tech support interested in resolving this issue and it cost's me many $$ just to keep ScreenConnect running.
• There is an issue with Webroot, their new endpoint solution. I can't get it to work - again, no help from Pulseway - they ignore my emails.

Incentivized

The tool is easy to use however it is can be daunting with the amount of features available in it. Last I checked, their knowledge base was not very expansive and they relied a lot on the changelog for how to do some stuff. This can make it hard to learn how to do some more advanced things like the automation.

Incentivized

I have never had to use the support for Pulseway. However, when initially starting out, we would receive emails every so often asking how we are doing and if there is any support that they can provide. I would imagine that any request would be supplied with the same great support!

Incentivized

Although Grafana is in no way an alternative to OpenNMS's full functionality, it can be integrated with other solutions (including OpenNMS itself) to offer the graphing and data visualisation aspects of OpenNMS. In this regard, Grafana is more flexible, and some would say prettier, than OpenNMS's graphing. For the best of both worlds, I'd recommend using them both!

Incentivized

The 2 major factors were: 1. The fact there was no contract, we believe vendors should have to validate the usefulness of their product and their support to their customers every day, not just 1 or 2 months every few years. This is the same reason we allow our clients to leave at any time if we fail to meet their standards. 2. The ease of managing the product, we demoed other products that would have almost required a full time employee just to manage the RMM tool itself. The ease of use of Pulseway meant a tech could manage it as part of their other duties much improving the ROI. Note: We also felt NinjaOne met these same conditions but we evaluated it after having used Pulseway for a few years and while we found it a great product, possibly even superior, we didn't find enough reason to go through all the work and retraining to change over.

Incentivized

• We've been able to improve our customers' experience.
• Because we're able to respond to issues quicker, we're able to better meet our SLAs.
• We are able to see smaller problems and address them before they become big problems.

Incentivized

• Problems can be dealt with more rapidly because I have access to systems from anywhere. I don't have to carry a computer with me nor do I have to find a location with potentially non-secure wifi to gain access to my systems.
• I can handle 99% of my system admin tasks using Pulseway and never have to touch a system or connect to the console.
• Pulseway gives so much control over a system that I don't need to spend extra money on other software to perform management tasks.

Incentivized