This is a sponsored article and was made possible by ManageEngine. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author who maintains editorial independence, even when a post is sponsored.

A patch manager helps you maintain the health of all the computers in your network through timely delivery of patches and updates. It helps you reduce the incidents of bugs and failures by keeping everything up to date, eliminating the time to manually patch each program and application. From a central location, you can protect all your PC devices from malware and ransomware.

Patch Manager Plus is an all-around patching solution by ManageEngine that protects all the laptops and desktop computers at your home or office. It scales up to manage a large number of Mac, Windows, and Linux devices and is easy enough to use to not require any network admin skills. In this review we will examine the software’s suitability for your patch management needs.

Here’s an advanced tip for those struggling with Windows 10: a patch manager solution such as this one just might solve those pesky rollback issues.

About Patch Manager Plus

ManageEngine is an IT division of Zoho and offers several solutions in networks and servers, IT security, analytics, cloud, MSP, and much more. The solution is offered both as a cloud and on-premise deployment.

If you’re going to use it at your home or small office, the cloud service is more than enough for your needs. This review examines how it applies to personal use.

Installation

To start using Patch Manager Plus, click the “Free Trial” option at the ManageEngine official website. You can either create a separate account or give Zoho the permission to sign in with Google. A free 30-day trial option is immediately available. It does get most of the patching done for free.

It is very easy to get your Patch Manager Plus account running. Your account is created in just a few seconds.

To run the patch management software, you will require one of your computers as a distribution server. All the remaining client computers will need to have an “agent” installed on them. With these agents, you can easily manage Windows and Mac endpoints from a central location. However, if you wish to manage Linux endpoints, you can try the on-premises version.

Once you download the agents on the client computers, you should be able to view them on your central device.

You can also manage the client computers from an iOS or Play Store app. While the features are slightly limited on a mobile device, it’s still a good way to send patch updates to remote PCs right from your smartphone.

How to Use Patch Manager Plus

Learning how to use Patch Manager Plus is the most important step, and they’ve made it incredibly easy. There is a system guide and plenty of supporting material, but I was able to navigate all the way on my own.

Once you get the client systems running, it’s very easy to send them patches and updates. You will just have to deploy and send the required patches. The moment they turn their systems on, the patches will be implemented.

As soon as it’s on, the client computer gets a right system tray alert, and the patching will occur in the background. Beautifully done, I say. In the past, I often used to have heated arguments with network admins for slowing down my PC. This just makes life so much easier for everyone.

You can restrict client users from uninstalling the agent from the control panel, enable their firewall settings and more. However, these features are not available for Mac clients.

The dashboard feels very intuitive. On the home screen you can take a snapshot summary of critical threats and system errors. Here I fixed a patch issue on my Mozilla Thunderbird email client by simply clicking the patch description.

In the next screen I was able to push the missing Mozilla Thunderbird patch to my target laptop. I was happy to have an updated Thunderbird client without checking for it manually.

To secure your entire network, simply click on the “patches” menu. Here you can see a list of all the patches installed on your system.

For example, here’s a patch for Ocenaudio, an audio-editing tool I often use. Installing the patch only required me to “apply a deployment policy.” The software took care of the remaining requirements.

Once the patch is pushed to a remote client, you can see a success status through a “ready to execute” message.

You can also review each patch report separately. All the details are transparently visible.

Other Features

There are plenty of other features with Patch Manager Plus that are interesting. You can test and approve the patches in advance to eliminate the probability of failure with client systems. You can also configure the active directory, which automatically discovers all the domains and workgroups available in your network.

Of course, adding and removing computers is very easy with the software. You can also shut down and restart the client computers whenever you want.

Patch Manager Plus has some advanced enterprise features, such as patch compliance reports which make your organization 100% compliant with regulations such as HIPAA, SOX, and GLBA. This is probably one of the most advanced patch management solutions I have seen thus far.

Pricing

You can get a pricing quote for Patch Manager Plus once logged in. Just click “upgrade” select a “Professional” edition of Patch Manager Plus. There’s a more expensive enterprise edition available with a minimum of 50 computers for $345 (including AMC). For five computers, and no technicians or servers to be managed, I got a discounted quote of only $34.50 paid annually. This is definitely worth a consideration.

Final Verdict

Patch Manager Plus is a fairly intuitive and trouble-free patch management solution. It does not take very long to learn the ropes, and you can easily streamline all the computers in your network to work harmoniously. If you are looking to keep all your computers healthy and reduce stress due to software failures and errors, Patch Manager Plus delivers perfectly. Zoho is generally reliable for software upgrade requirements, and you will not be disappointed with this one.

Are you willing to consider Patch Manager Plus to secure all your computers? Do let us know in the comments.

Sayak Boral is a technology writer with over eleven years of experience working in different industries including semiconductors, IoT, enterprise IT, telecommunications OSS/BSS, and network security. He has been writing for MakeTechEasier on a wide range of technical topics including Windows, Android, Internet, Hardware Guides, Browsers, Software Tools, and Product Reviews.

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