The video on this page shows the on-premises ritual: check the build, stop the service, run UpdateManager, verify. If your Endpoint Central is the cloud edition, none of that is your job — and that one difference shapes far more than update day. Here is the honest comparison.
Endpoint Central is sold both ways: installed on your own server, or as a cloud service run by ManageEngine. The features largely travel together; the working life of the admin does not. Updates are where the difference is felt most — who applies them, when new capabilities arrive, and who loses a Saturday when something needs care.
The on-premises edition gives you the controls and the chores. You decide when a build lands — inside your maintenance window, after your patch cycle, or held back a week because the office is mid-audit. In exchange you own the whole ritual from the video: backup, stop the service, apply the matched PPM, verify, and keep the change log.
For many offices that trade is worth it on its own terms: the data stays in the building, the server works on the local network, and no outside service's availability stands between you and your fleet.
On the cloud edition, ManageEngine applies updates on their side. New capabilities reach you without an UpdateManager session — the August 2025 DEX launch, for instance, also exists as the fully SaaS product DEX Manager Plus, a sign of how cloud-shaped additions now arrive.
What you give up is the timing. A change lands when the rollout reaches you, and your job shrinks to reading the announcements and confirming your agents and policies behave as expected afterwards. For a small team with no spare admin hours, that smaller job is the entire argument.
Cloud tenants tend to see new capabilities as they are released; on-premises customers receive them through the service-pack rhythm, with add-ons like DEX licensed on top. An on-premises server a build or two behind the cloud is not neglected — it is on a different clock, one you chose.
What matters more than the clock is that both clocks keep moving. An on-premises server whose admin never applies service packs falls behind in the way that counts — missing security fixes like the ones in the 2025 line.
Moving from your own server to the cloud edition means migrating agents, policies and data so the fleet lands cleanly on the other side. It is a planned project — ideally with ManageEngine's guidance — not a setting you flip on a Friday afternoon.
So decide the question on its real grounds: data-residency and compliance needs, how much server care your team can honestly sustain, and how much you value controlling update timing. Frustration with one awkward upgrade is not, by itself, a migration case.
If nobody in the building truly owns server care, the cloud edition removes a real and recurring burden, and that is a legitimate, grown-up reason to choose it.
If you have an admin who likes control, local-network or compliance reasons to keep data in-house, and the discipline to run the update ritual a few times a year, on-premises remains a fully supported, entirely sensible choice. ManageEngine sells both because both are right — for different offices.
The full on-premises routine — build check, service stop, UpdateManager, verification — done live.
▶️ Watch Full VideoNo UpdateManager sessions — the vendor applies updates on their side. Your job reduces to reading their announcements and checking afterwards that agents and policies still behave as expected.
ManageEngine announced DEX as an add-on for Endpoint Central and also as the standalone SaaS product DEX Manager Plus, so both on-premises and cloud-leaning customers have a route to it. Licensing details are on ManageEngine's site.
Yes, but treat it as a migration project with a plan for agents, policies and data — not a settings change. Talk to ManageEngine before starting so the fleet lands cleanly.