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NinjaOne earned its name in remote monitoring circles. It does RMM well enough — until you need to do anything beyond that. It can’t ship 200 laptops across five countries on day one, recover 97% of them when employees leave, or reconcile the freight costs Finance gets stuck with later.
Users say it’s expensive and still misses key features. For example, you can’t run custom SQL monitors. There’s no easy way to pull detailed reports and device patching is more limited than you’d expect from a platform with this much hype. Yes, they ship regular updates. But core gaps linger.
So why is “NinjaOne alternatives” a breakout search? Because most of them ignore the mountain of manual work IT is stuck with: global shipping, customs, compliance paperwork, chasing down lost devices, and praying you pass the next audit.
If you want to save hours on global logistics, stop losing devices, and actually measure outcomes, patch management alone won’t cut it.
In this blog, we’ll compare today’s top platforms and show why thinking beyond RMM is where modern Ops teams actually win.
Teams using Firstbase have reported a 97% retrieval rate for offboarded devices and audit-ready chain-of-custody documentation in every region they operate. Take a self-guided tour and see how.
Worried about the migration?
Firstbase runs a 14-day shadow pilot alongside your current provider, without agent downtime or data gaps. Setup takes about 90 minutes with your admin for SSO and API integration. And there’s a 30-day rollback window, so you don’t switch fully until performance meets your benchmarks.
Say you signed the deal, deployed the agents, and ticked “monitoring” off the list. Yet the hidden costs, like the ones below, will drain your time and budget quietly.
Every cross-border device shipment carries VAT, duty, and classification risk. Customs authorities often reject declared values that seem too low, triggering revaluation or audits. That adds days in transit and surprise fees.
For example, in markets like India, values below benchmark pricing are flagged and taxes escalated. The invoice doesn’t stay sacred at the border: import costs, insurance, and freight (CIF) often get added in after the fact.
Loss rates for devices not actively retrieved range from 50% or higher. Every device that doesn’t come back is pure loss: hardware cost, licensing, reimaging. Add in the hours spent chasing people, dispatching kits, tracking shipments, and you’re paying unseen labor.
Meanwhile, lost devices carry an elevated security risk. HP estimates organizations lose $8.6 billion annually to lost or stolen devices.
A laptop returned in good condition can recoup 20–40% of its original value (or more in tight markets). But without a disciplined retrieval and grading process, you forfeit that upside entirely. Instead, you incur depreciation, disposal, and lost recycling opportunities.
And because many teams don’t track this systematically, those losses hide in “miscellaneous IT expense.”
Note: Customs creates predictable friction, retrieval gaps create hard losses (and risk), and missed resale is money left on the table.
When your operations teams finally tally the lost hours, failed retrievals, and budget drift, it all becomes clear. Monitoring is just one small aspect of endpoint management. The real differentiator is in how well a platform handles the entire device lifecycle.
Unlike traditional RMMs that start tracking only after the agent installs, Firstbase manages everything before and after that point. It’s the operational layer that removes the manual logistics, vendor sprawl, and compliance blind spots RMMs can’t reach.
Where most RMMs stop at agent health metrics, Firstbase extends control across the full lifecycle: procurement, deployment, monitoring, retrieval, and reuse/disposal. This gives IT and SecOps real-time context on where each device is physically located, who it’s assigned to, and whether it’s compliant with data-destruction or retention policies.
Pricing can run slightly higher than lower-tier vendors, but the ROI in reduced labor, fewer vendors, and measurable recovery rates far outweighs the difference.
Atera is built as an all-in-one platform for IT departments that want a single pane of glass for remote monitoring, helpdesk operations, patching, and reporting. It brings RMM, PSA, and AI-driven automation together so teams can manage networks, devices, and users from one dashboard.
The design focus is clear: give IT teams better visibility, faster response times, and measurable efficiency without a heavy setup.
Users report limited visibility into the product roadmap and delayed feature rollouts. Technical support response times are slow, and it takes many days to resolve issues. Documentation sometimes includes features not yet available to all users. And that causes confusion during setup and integration.
ConnectWise RMM is designed for IT teams that prioritize automation and centralized visibility. The platform brings together remote monitoring, patching, and alerting under one console, allowing administrators to identify and resolve issues before they escalate.
Its intelligent automation, combined with integrated NOC services, helps reduce manual workloads while maintaining strong endpoint control. The flexibility to leverage expert services or run deep network diagnostics makes it a fit for MSPs and in-house teams scaling their IT operations.
Users say the reporting is on a separate platform, which requires extra steps to analyze data. And the agents sometimes lose connectivity unexpectedly. The application patching features lack depth and reporting. Some teams note limited automation depth and integration flexibility, with long-standing feature requests (like UI adjustments and expanded patch reporting) that are still unresolved.
Kaseya VSA is a full-scale remote monitoring and management platform that gives IT teams complete visibility and control across every endpoint they manage. It brings patching, automation, remote access, and reporting into a single workspace, reducing the sprawl of tools many teams still rely on.
IT managers use it to monitor performance, fix issues before they escalate, and automate repetitive work that drains time and attention. The system supports physical, virtual, and mobile devices. So it’s suitable for organizations managing distributed networks or client environments at scale.
The licensing structure is rigid. Once seats are purchased, they remain billable even when not in use. It makes the platform expensive during scale changes. Many users also describe the setup process as slow and unintuitive, with an older interface that adds friction for new administrators.
If your organization wants to manage and secure every endpoint from a single console, ManageEngine Endpoint Central is for you. It combines endpoint management, asset visibility, patching, and threat defense into one interface.
The platform automates updates, tracks device health, and supports remote troubleshooting while enforcing compliance across on-prem and remote systems. Its appeal is in the breadth of coverage. It touches every part of endpoint operations, from mobile device control to data loss prevention and ransomware protection.
Users highlight concerns around security transparency, citing exposed credentials in logs and limited control over custom scripts. API access is mostly restricted, making integrations harder to extend without repeated requests to support.
Customer assistance, though responsive in tone, often delays resolutions, creating a slow path from issue to fix.
PDQ Connect is a cloud-based RMM platform designed for IT teams that want fast patching, real-time visibility, and secure device management without complex setup. It focuses on deploying software, running commands, and troubleshooting devices, all from one dashboard.
PDQ works well for lean IT teams that need fast patching and easy compliance without heavy setup. But it still stops short of giving distributed teams unified control over device costs and lifecycles. It’s particularly suited for lean IT departments looking to standardize patch compliance and reduce manual effort.
PDQ Connect’s main limitation is that it’s still maturing compared to legacy RMMs. Some advanced options (like deeper scheduling flexibility, richer reporting, and broader integrations) are not yet in place.
Another challenge is managing two different PDQ versions (Deploy/Inventory and Connect) in parallel, which adds overhead until full workflow migration is complete.
The six RMMs we just saw keep endpoints healthy, but most of them still expect your team to chase boxes, update spreadsheets, and haggle with couriers. That gap is where a new category steps in: people + device-lifecycle automation delivered as one cloud system.
Firstbase’s SaaS platform connects HRIS, ITSM, and global warehouses so every phase runs without human intervention.
Teams report saving $100k in shipping costs and 5,000 hours of labor. Want to know what the metrics would be like for your teams? Use the ROI Calculator to see how much you can save.
Use this checklist to evaluate any modern IT operations platform against what top-performing teams now expect.
Now that you’ve got the checklist, the gaps in traditional RMMs are clear. We’ve seen how most platforms excel at monitoring, but still leave teams juggling logistics, retrievals, and cost surprises.
Firstbase changes the equation by unifying people and device lifecycles into a single system. With 48-hour global delivery, NIST-compliant offboarding, and 97% retrieval rates, it’s built for IT, HR, Finance, and Security to move fast, all without the manual baggage.
With Firstbase, companies have cut IT ticket volume by 50%, automated 75% of manual asset work, and achieved full visibility across global operations. Book a demo and see how unified lifecycle automation scales without friction.
