Papercut Hive vs PrintDirect.io

[CHiLL]

Following a post I made in a different thread, we are a small primary that has gone cloud-first. We have a local AD server, with users provisioned and synced to Entra, but all devices are cloud-only joined and don't communicate with AD/Group Policy. We also have a local Papercut MF instance, but it's been problematic with us being cloud-first. Our alternatives appear to be Papercut Hive and DirectPrint.io. Our managed print provider is pushing for DirectPrint, but I've only had experience with Papercut MF.

 

Since DirectPrint.io appears to be relatively new to the print server industry and there's not much info about them, I am unsure whether it's worth taking the risk compared to a more established player like Papercut.

 

If anyone is with them, could you shed any light on how it's been and if you think it's worth moving to it over Hive?

[itskdog]

This is one of the reasons we're considering moving away from Riso (large primary) ourselves, in a similar situation to you (currently using MF connected to Entra ID on our old AD server which we're trying to retire).

 

They support Hive, but only for print release - it can't report copier usage to charge to the print accounts (and we use a lot of copying for test papers), so that's not suitable for us, and are pushing us to DirectPrint RED, also, which can track copying.

 

Their support site is certainly lacking in detail compared to PaperCut's very comprehensive documentation (I like to read the product documentation before purchase to get screenshots and a feel for what the product can do). Will probably ask Riso for a demo/trial of DirectPrint as our lease ends this summer.

[TechMonkey]

Have to say, I have been making comparisons too so will be watching this.

[pipsyp]

Papercut MF is the de-facto print solution IMHO.  There are others, but I'm sceptical that they'd match MF for functionality and general reliability.

 

I've never really had to leverage their support directly (either issues I've managed to address myself, or via our MPS).   I've not looked into Hive, as our company is cloud-first, but was always led to believe it is lacking some key functionality vs MF (possibly the gaps closed but I don't know), also I'm unsure how well it deals with loss of internet connectivity (with MF at least people can still print without concern).

 

Funny RISO is mentioned, as whilst I've had relative dealings (from a support angle) with Papercut with other schools customers in the past (all my schools customers now use it); I only recently deployed it in anger myself at the MAT I work for day to day, over the summer, and with a relatively large RISO copier estate. 

 

We have several existing RISO devices, and took on a couple of new Ricoh devices as part of a separate MPS agreement, and the RISO's by contrast were nightmarish to set up.  They are also not truly "embedded" Papercut devices, even with the relevant firmware, so do miss functionality such as managed copying and scanning (copying IMHO is less of a drama, but scanning is fairly crucial).

 

The RISO's feel like they were born in the 90's - the software and UI is not great and I suspect hasn't fundamentally changed in years, where the likes of Ricoh, Kyocera etc are breaking the mould and offer truly "Papercut managed" devices.  Being effectively Inkjet devices (more to it than that, but they are of course cold print), there's the argument they save money vs a traditional laser, but my experience with them is that they are not exactly reliable (I reckon our admin team are calling RISO out at least once every other week on average to fix a downed device).  Kind of odd, given they are a long-running, well regarded (if not very well known outside of Education) Japanese printer manufacturer, who were once leading edge where cold print was concerned (Epson are now trying to take that mantle, but don't get me started on their so called "Enterprise grade" devices!).  I will say this for them though that their UK sales and support teams are very nice people, and always do their utmost to help/advise; and their on site engineers are some of the best I've experienced.  Shame the product itself isn't better though.

 

Back to Papercut though, like anything MF is not without it's quirks, and of course its another on-premise service that needs to be looked after and maintained day to day, but its a pretty wonderful thing (it tends to just run and run without much issue if set up well), and worth the pains of standing up a server/VM for.  If Hive reaches feature parity eventually and can be proven to be reliable during an internet outage, then I might start looking at it.

Edited January 15 by pipsyp