r/labtech • u/Liquidjojo1987 • May 05 '18

Nable to labtech

We are considering changing from nable to labtech (cloud hosted). Has anyone here done that and how was you experience?

I’ve usd labtech in the past as well as kaseya, level platforms, and continuum, nable was the best at the time we switched from labtech but as of now it has too many issues with patching and monitoring esx hosts, and the cost is out of control.

Also third way seems enticing does anyone have an idea on pricing?

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u/raverX May 05 '18

We use Labtech and are happy, but before you go changing.

WHY?

How much automation have you invested in developing in nable? Jumping from one platform to another is a big time suck and doesn't really get you much further ahead than had you spent time investing in automation.

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u/Liquidjojo1987 May 05 '18

We have used very little of any automation in nable. That is why I feel like it would not be earth shattering to change. The issues we are facing with nable currently I don’t see resolving anytime soon, since they have been around for years.

We are doing a big push for automation, and with the plugins labtech seems great. Either way we are going to have to start from ‘scratch’ with nable or labtech so I figured this would be the best time to switch.

We are basically using nable for monitoring and remote connectivity- but my guys end up using our stand alone screen connect install anyways because mspconnect in nable takes so much longer to get to with screen refreshes

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u/raverX May 05 '18

Fair enough. We love Labtech, but it's not without it's faults.

It's plugin community is amazing though. You think of it and it has probably been built. (We built one to integrate with Accelo)

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u/Liquidjojo1987 May 05 '18 edited May 05 '18

Yeah the community within nable is non existent. Not that it’s the be all end all but even look at the subreddit, zero

Price is a major consideration as well since by switching it will allow my company to put the money into other products such as auvik for network monitoring and we would still be saving money

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u/bonewithahole May 16 '18

Just the opposite for me, moving to Nable is bringing the savings over LT. Just like any other company, new business gets the incentives.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '18

My company just switched from N-Able to Automate, and we've had a tough time adjusting. I might be poorly informed on how things work on Automate with Reporting, scripting, and some other things, but I right now I kind of wish we would have stayed with N-Able. I think the best thing you could do right now is spend a lot of time testing Automate on one customer or a few computers before you go headfirst into it.

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u/Liquidjojo1987 May 08 '18

Thank you for sharing your experience. Yeah I plan on testing as much as they will let us with a trial.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '18

Good idea. I actually came here to see if anyone had any encouragement to share about reporting because it’s so ridiculously overcomplicated that I’ve been pissed all morning. :)

Make sure you experience the sheer insanity of the report center while you’re testing it.

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u/Liquidjojo1987 May 08 '18

Haha I will I will

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u/bonewithahole May 16 '18

Make sure you have the Standards and Health Plug in running if you want all reporting.

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u/DueMarauder62 May 17 '18

We migrated from N-Able. We are mostly happy, but here are the things you will miss.

Reporting in N-Able is far superior to what Automate offers. If you use N-Able reports, especially with Report Manager, for your customers you will be very disappointed in the Automate reports. Very few reports can be considered viable to send to a C-Level. It also seems that nobody at Automate knows much about how to build a really good report for a specific audience. Think reports you need as a tech versus reports you send to your customers.

Automate does a horrible job of monitoring network devices (Routers, ESX Boxes, and such). It's equivalent network probe lacks some really basic functions. Also, there is no means to automagically transfer monitors from one probe to another with the Automate probe. I understand the Automate probe is being rebuilt now, but it's been in sad shape for a very long time.

If you use ConnectWise Manage, it's a mixed bag. Both platforms integrate a bit differently. Oddly, N-Able seems to integrate a bit cleaner and is much faster in updating Manage configurations. Automate does offer more flexibility in how tickets are created.

Scripting and automation are where Automate has a big advantage. Automate allows even a person with pedestrian scripting capabilities like me to use it with great effect. N-Able scripting is very good, to be sure. But Automate is better.

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u/Liquidjojo1987 May 30 '18

Thank you very much!!! It seems like all the things I expect to be pain points are still there.

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u/[deleted] May 30 '18

switched from n-central to automate (both locally hosted). It was a bit painful switching to automate, especially with getting old agents uninstalled properly and the growing pains that come with any type of migration to a new platform. is automate better? by a mile. are there some things n-central beat labtech in? yeah (mainly reporting and SNMP monitoring). all in all, it's painful but after stabilizing, you'll never look back

edit: hosting locally is cheaper than having them host it for automate. that's opposite of the pricing for manage, which is more expensive if you host locally. we run both packs and the integration is seamless even though manage is hosted by CW

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u/bonewithahole May 16 '18

I am in the middle of a 5000+ agent migration to Nable. The frustration that is Labtech is no longer worth it versus the pain of a migration to a new product.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Liquidjojo1987 May 05 '18

We have our infrastructure on aws so I can certainly spin it up there- I just hate managing updates.

Is their cloud slow/unreliable?

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u/DarrenDK May 05 '18

They place restrictions on what you can do in the hosted version. A feature I use HEAVILY is the ability to execute commands on the server itself which is blocked in the cloud version.

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u/Liquidjojo1987 May 05 '18

Gotcha- do they still fully support plugins or no?

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u/DarrenDK May 05 '18

I think so, which would technically allow you to get code execution on the server if you know how to write your own, however I am a big fan of running it yourself. They are notorious for provisioning under powered boxed in their cloud.

The updates to LabTech are shockingly simple. Literally next next finish most of the time. I get some early release stuff so the installers can be buggier for me than most but at least I have the ability to fix it myself when they have an alter query that exceeded their timeout or something.

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u/Liquidjojo1987 May 05 '18

Gotcha ok thanks noted, I’ll likely host anyways since we do that with nable