PDQ Deploy & Inventory Reviews

Pros

PDQ Deploy allows you to deploy and install software remotely in bulk
PDQ Inventory allows you to take inventory of obsolete software
it's simple to use!

Cons

You have to buy both software together but the product is very good

Alternatives Considered

System Center

Reasons for Switching to PDQ Deploy & Inventory

the product is really cheap, and it's easy to use

Pros

-> Intuituve
-> Extensive and detailed documentation
-> Good technical support
-> Low maintenance, great performance
-> Fantastic UI
-> Phenomenal integration with external scripting languages like powershell and batch.

Cons

-> Hard to think of anything, this thing WORKS. Reminds me of Windows 7 when it came out, kicked ass out of the box (and kicks ass even today).
We're on a 4 year old version of PDQ and even with all the missing updates, it still works very well.

Alternatives Considered

SmartDeploy, ConnectWise Automate and Microsoft Intune

Reasons for Switching to PDQ Deploy & Inventory

Most intuitive, most easy to understand, most efficient, least least least expensive, best documentation.

Pros

Once you get the platform configured it has tremendous value in the host inventory and custom reporting features.

Cons

Initially, understanding the logic within the data gathering/scan profiles and custom reporting was difficult. It's not the most intuitive, but once you figure it out you can literally do anything you want with it.

Pros

There are no agents to install on systems being inventoried and it is installed locally on your own network (even just a local desktop) which make a it quick to install and keeps all the communications and data within your local network.

Cons

Because it is agentless there are issues when trying to inventory systems that are removed from the local network, e.g. Home workers.

Pros

Most of all, we use PDQ deployment, easy way to deploy software and patches. PDQ deployment is good for script automation, easy to set up any scheduled task to meet your requirements.

Cons

Devices outside the local network are not manageable.

Alternatives Considered

Total Network Inventory

Reasons for Switching to PDQ Deploy & Inventory

Easy to use, cheap, compliant with the requirement

Pros

I like the ability to create nested groups, that can be dynamic or static. I will also enjoy the ability to use multiple compound statements, without limitation in order to drill down and find devices that meet whatever criteria I can dream up or that I've been given.

Cons

The only problems I've really run into is the speed that you're able to scan large scale organizations with a lot of VPN users. Occasionally DNS does not update quickly enough so you wind up with an IP pointing to a different workstation. This doesn't really cause a great deal of problems, it just causes the scan to fail. It's not a huge deal because it will correct itself during the next scan typically

Pros

Ease of use, simplicity, effectiveness. PDQ has nice video based how to dos and that was helpful.

Cons

Two part of deploy and inventory, can they be one?

Alternatives Considered

Atera

Reasons for Switching to PDQ Deploy & Inventory

Demo was promising and trial was exactly what I was looking for.

Pros

The easy way to configure the deployments and schedule that to run automatically on time to time.

Cons

Do not have a client to install and not be able to monitor or deploy to clients outside of the network what nowadays is very normal with remote work.

Alternatives Considered

System Center

Reasons for Switching to PDQ Deploy & Inventory

Yes, for do what I most need and with much better value.

Pros

We've been using PDQ Deploy/Inventory for the past couple of years to manage our employee machines as well as our Windows servers. The ability to push out a new piece of software, or to patch older software with just a few click has been invaluable with how much time it's saved us.

Cons

With a lot of our employee's working from home during and now after the pandemic, one short-coming of the software is that there is a complete lack of management for remote devices. If the workstation is not on the "local" network with the PDQ server it is impossible to manage. Having an agent that phones home to the PDQ server and handles all tasks would be the ideal solution to this.

Alternatives Considered

NinjaOne and ManageEngine Endpoint Central

Reasons for Switching to PDQ Deploy & Inventory

The catered library of software, and the ease of integration into our AD environments was a significant part of the decision, but also the community recommendations and reviews on Reddit and other sources as well.

Pros

We like the fact that they create so many patches and software deployment packages on their end. It saves us so much time, and it just works. I haven't had a single issue with the software and it's very cost effective.

Cons

When we first set up the inventory scanning, we kicked it off and it almost locked up the server we installed the software on. We are a large environment so it doesn't surprise me, but it did take a long time, and I wasn't sure if it was going to work for awhile. We ended up leaving over a weekend to scan though, and it ended up figuring itself out.

Pros

Ease of use, integration with other tools, price, functionality, the overall stability of both Inventory and Deploy and the integration of the two products.

Cons

They ONLY thing that I have found no way to do that would make things perfect, is to be able to pass a computer name or IP address variable to a custom PowerShell script or custom scanner.

Pros

It is very easy to install and using. You can choose if you want client/server or local mode.Has got many (maybe all) softwares for daily use.

Cons

I haven not find anything like that yet.

Pros

I absolutely love the ease and usage of PDQ Deploy. The product does almost everything I can ask of it in a very easy to use package.

Cons

The only con I can think of is that I get hit with a lot of hits on my Vulnerability scans for Microsoft Office products. I know it would be difficult, but it would be nice if Office patches were included in the Package Library.

Pros

PDQ can do literally anything you can think of on Windows PCs you manage. Installing, copying files, executing Powershell, etc. I mean if you can execute Powershell remotely what is there you cannot do?

Cons

Honestly can't really think of anything I don't like about this software. It even has dark mode for ultimate eye comfort, so I cannot complain.

Pros

PDQ is an amazing tool that I could not live without, it provides the helpdesk with one click installation of custom MSI packages, pre-built MSI packages to make software deployment a breeze. It has built in scheduling to ensure all machines across our entire network have all the right software and are always up to date. It was an absolute breeze to set up and we were up and running within a couple of hours. Support has always been next level with detailed responses about almost any question we throw at them.

Cons

I don't like how vague some of the error messages can be on deployment when it fails but these are usually Windows errors that PDQ is simply feeding back.

Pros

It has helped me save time.  Our organization has limited IT staff and your software has immensly helped us to automate patching and installing software on our systems.   We are using PDQ to update some of our applications such as Chrome, FireFox, Notepad ++, and Audacity.As a result of Covid, most of our staff had to move to work remotely. We were able to support our staff remotely using PDQ.

Cons

There is a little learning curve, especially for installations that are more complicated. However, there is excellent documentation, and there is a wealth of data online.   The cost was a bit costly for our organization, but it was well worth it.    Although I don't use the software to its full potential, I'm sure there are some sophisticated functions that others could find useful.    It would also be wonderful to have more software packages included with PDQ right out of the box or at the very least an ability to patch in more commonplace software.

Pros

For us, the patching component was the most important part. We were using another product that we always had to struggle to complete patches and even then it was a pain just to be able to see which machines needed patches. PDQ deploy made our lives so much better!

Cons

There are three things I would like to see them do: first, a cloud based approach for deployment and patching where we dont need the computers on the company network to handle them - this is in the works from my understanding. Secondly, add the ability to capture the last logged on user and store it with the rest of the attributes where we can add that as a column. Finally, add an imaging component where we can setup, build and manage images within the same pane of glass - they recently acquired an imaging software company, so I hope this is on the roadmap!

Pros

The deploy section is very helpfull, giving me speed and time to do other tasks while the PDQ take care of the instalation and actions using scripts. After using this software many of my problems was solved.

Cons

I think pdq need to use clients in the machines for better results in the deployment, sometimes the pdq have trouble finding the machine and freezes in the status "conecting" or return the error "The network path was not found" Maybe a client help mitigate this problem. Another thing, i have some machines in home office modality, and because of that i cant manage this machines.

Pros

Just the ease of use and being able to build my own packages that fit our company

Cons

just how heavily the software relies on DNS to find machines.

Pros

I took over at an organisation with a fleet of servers, laptops and desktops that had been poorly maintained - each seemed to have a random selection of applications on an unpatched OS and there was no central knowledge of what was installed where. I was also on my own so didn't have time to investigate each endpoint individually - PDQ made it easy to automatically catalogue and then remediate all the issues out there - from the comfort of my desk!

Cons

There's nothing that I don't actually like about PDQ - my only issue is that I haven't had time to investigate all its many options and features! It was easy to get up to a good baseline and then I guess I didn't further my knowledge of its capabilities - that's all on me. Reading this questionnaire, it's clear it can do way more than I was aware of.

Pros

In connection with Inventory it is very easy to deploy Updates and Tools with a few Clicks. With Automatic Deployment we get rid of annoying tasks like check and update Clients. It's nearly fire and forget :-)To create Deployment Packages is very easy. I'm able to deploy nearly any Tool within seconds without the need to visit the Desktop onsite.

Cons

Most of the Tools/Programs we're deploy with PDQ automaticaly detect and uses the OS-Language. But there are some Tools (e.g. Firefox) which does not. It was helpful to extend the Auto Download Package so that we can deploy the appropriate Language Pack. Actually we can convert the Auto Download Package to a Standard Package and modify this Standard Package. Unfortunately we lose the advantage of the auto download feature.

Pros

It's very easy to create and deploy software to all connected devices. We are able to quickly create a deployment, determine who needs it, and set it to run. Within minutes we can push new software or updates out to every machine on the network.

Cons

PDQ does not use an agent, so you can only install software on devices on the internal network. It would be nice to be able to "check in" on some schedule. It's also not possible as far as I can tell to deploy when a compute reboots at the end user's convenience and not when we force a reboot.All told, these are minor inconveniences that in no way overshadow the total package.

Pros

What I like most about this software is the ability to push out software to all my devices. Once a package has been built you are set. When you need to upgrade that software all you have to do is update the .exe/.msi file and you can still use the original package you built. I also support multiple domains and it integrates really easily.

Cons

Don't have an option right now for work from home pc's.

Pros

Set up is easy and once you have it set up it just works. Love it!

Cons

I wish it would handle all of Microsoft patches but I fully understand why it doesn't.

Pros

What made me look at PDQ was the cost. What made me keep using it was how flexible I could get with deployments when used in conjunction with their inventory product. You really want both of these to take full advantage and the cost still remains reasonable. It is easy to setup something like monthly patching using the packages that PDQ maintains and updates have it auto update these packages on your system after a delay period such as 7 days then push it out to all systems as they come online. We even use it to deploy out base packages on new PC builds as they come online.

Cons

There can be some quirks with a system being detected online and it is very important your DNS is accurate. My biggest con would really be that it does not do a great job with remote users because there is no agent on the device. This is being addressed though in a cloud version of the product.