PDQ Deploy & Inventory

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

Reasons for Switching to PDQ Deploy & Inventory

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

Reasons for Switching to PDQ Deploy & Inventory

Pros

The ability to use tools and deployments remotely as well as how well the two products work with each other.

Cons

I don't like how difficult it is to add multiple PCs to an inventory collection or deploymwnt.

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

You can setup automated scheduled tasks to patch systems at any time during the week or weekends. Allows patches to automatically be pushed out afterhours to avoid any system downtime.

Cons

It is mainly intended to only inventory and patch Windows products. It would be great to have more integration where it could go out and inventory printers and linux type devices.

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

Ease of use and ability to do the tasks needed for managing devices. A huge time saver. A huge travel saver as I do not need to be on site to push programs, add printers, etc.

Cons

It's not free. Seriously, I don't have a con that I can think of. It meets my needs,

Pros

Ease of use. This is a product that actually does what it says.

Cons

I would like the ability to connect 2 instances of PDQ Inventory to create a baseline configuration of each machine so that I can track and report changes.

Pros

As a small IT shop PDQ helps me stay on top of updates and schedule them where it does not inconvenience the user.

Cons

Sometimes confusing creating an inventory collection.

Pros

Best thing is that it is very easy to use and guides us with the maps of printers and deployment of updated softwares.

Cons

Sometimes some error occurs in the deployment that is not so clear...On large scale it's speed slows down

Pros

This is a great solution to deploy software and scripts remotely.

Cons

Sometimes you will get a success message even though the task did not complete.

Pros

Automating Software and Patches for Desktops.

Cons

Wake on LAN does not work. Also, the package library is limited. I do not have the option to add different software to the package library so It can auto-download/ approve the latest version,

Pros

Easy to implement and use. This project just works as intended. There is no hoops to jump through.

Cons

Does not have an agent, some scans take a while over a bad connection

Pros

Dead simple setup, with quite powerful tools.

Cons

Lack of remote client aside (Connect would resolve that) , lack of information for connection errors, and the basic reports with certain fields limiting other fields is quite annoying.

Pros

PDQ is an easy to use tool to scan machines for information on each machine as well as deploying apps. We use it with our deployments to segregate different builds for machines. The ability to deploy powershell scripts, install .exe files and copy files is amazing and very easy.We also calls PDQs API to deploy different things making it a central hub for app deployment. The future will be making a service that users can just call PDQ to deploy an app to them.PDQ connect has a lot of promise, which will allow us to deploy apps that are not connected to our network. Giving us more control beyondAnother plan soon will be to use PDQ for software license counts.PDQ was also easy to setup and migrate to a new server when we wanted to increase the specs of the machine it was on.

Cons

They are working towards it now, but the ability to deploy to machines beyond our network is amazing. Giving us information too and status updates on those machines so we can monitor them.Not a con but I do hope they continue adding to their PDQ inventory and API. A future request/project for us is to beable to use PDQ to keep an accurate license count of software. We have some long ideas but would love to use PDQ to keep tabs on everything for us rather than relying on basic data entry.

Pros

We like being able to perform the same repetitive task, deploy configurations and installations, and keep consistency across our computers. We reclaimed so much time with how fast we can now do these tasks! It is straightforward to use, and there are so many ways to perform my tasks that I only need to choose the easiest way that I know to do them. The community and knowledge base articles are a treasure trove whenever I need to do something new that I don't yet know how to do.

Cons

I think the only improvement that I would like to see is a way to know that a failure to deploy is something other than the network path was not found. If I deploy a package to multiple computers and some of them fail with an error code and some where network paths can't be found,, I need to look at each failure across multiple failed deployments to make sure that they all did not fail with an error.

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

1) LAPS Support2) LAPS Support3) LAPS Support!!!!PDQ is the only deployment + update tool which does support LAPS. Even Microsofts own tools do not support LAPS. This is major game changer and big thank you to PDQ that they invested into security by supporting LAPS.- 3rd Party + Microsoft Update Library- Easy deployment of new software- Fair pricing- Very easy to use, also for Juniors- Excellent documentation

Cons

Missing Agent for updates.Windows Release Upgrades not supported

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

PDQ is a fantastic tool and one I'd demand to have if I was to start over somewhere else. Smaller/midsized companies this is a fantastic tool. The pre-baked deployments are great! I think with PDQ for deployments and patching, and MDT for imaging, I'd feel like I have my computer imaging and management well under control.

Cons

I'm a log nerd, and I do wish I could see more logging on what is happening on a deployment, and better reporting of it when its all done. There is logging built in, and maybe this is to my own fault of not configurating the software correctly, but I want to see steps and messages both for successful and failed deployments.

Pros

Honestly I use it every day, multiple times a day. I wouldn't want to work somewhere that didn't have this software. My life is so much easier. Quickly find and patch computers & push out software and updates. Pair this with PDQ Inventory and you're golden.

Cons

I've honestly never had a problem with this software and I've been using it for probably 7 years at least.

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.

Pros

I like the packages that are already built, I also like how easy it is to build a package into the program for deployment.

Cons

I really did not have any cons with this software, maybe a few more integrations.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to PDQ Deploy & Inventory

Pros

This has saved us so much effort in maintaining the integrity of our software products on our domain endpoints. In addition to the pre-built library, it has been a godsend to be able to create customized packages and get them deployed quickly. When we were hit with Hafnium on our Exchange server and moved to O365, I created a customized package to remove our previous suite and get out the latest O365 suite to our endpoints with about an hour's work on PDQ Deploy.

Cons

Nothing comes to mind, to be perfectly honest.

Pros

I like the ease of implementing this product in an environment combined with it's affordability.

Cons

I can say confidently at this time that there is nothing I like the least about it.