OpenPanel
OpenPanel's 3.x line hits six builds in 36 hours, still without release notes.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Hex and ManageEngine M365 Manager Plus — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
| Feature | Hex | ManageEngine M365 Manager Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Sector | Analytics | Analytics |
| Velocity score | 6.3 | 5.0 |
| Sparks · 30d | 0 | 0 |
| Top themes | ai agents, generative apps, agent governance, evals | microsoft-365, identity-management, on-premises, automation |
| Last editorial update | 18d ago | 2mo ago |
| Website | — | Visit → |
Hex turns its agent from a query helper into a governed app builder.
Hex now ships weekly around two surfaces: the Hex Agent and Generative Apps. The agent builds projects from chat, runs under published eval suites, and works through Slack, CLI and API; Generative Apps have gained chat, scheduled exports, direct text editing and targeted chart edits. The latest release adds classifications of agent activity, giving admins a view of what the team actually asks the agent to do.
Steady administrative depth for M365, punctuated by a run of serious security fixes.
M365 Manager Plus handles reporting, management, and automation for Microsoft 365 tenants from an on-premises install, shipping numbered builds that share a train with its sibling M365 Security Plus — the two carry overlapping notes at the same build numbers. Recent builds mix genuine administrative additions with security work: shared, guest, and resource mailboxes now count as free across all modules, group memberships can be assigned from template rules, and mailbox management actions became available inside automation policies. Builds 4817 and 4818 fixed a predictable-SSO-ticket CVE, a privilege escalation in delegated technician administration, and remote code execution via PowerShell embedded in CSV input.
Hex now ships weekly around two surfaces: the Hex Agent and Generative Apps. The agent builds projects from chat, runs under published eval suites, and works through Slack, CLI and API; Generative Apps have gained chat, scheduled exports, direct text editing and targeted chart edits. The latest release adds classifications of agent activity, giving admins a view of what the team actually asks the agent to do.
The work has shifted from adding agent capability to making that capability manageable: evals, approval skipping, bring-your-own-provider, model visibility, and now usage classification. Generative Apps are being rounded out in parallel so that agent-built output can be edited, shared and scheduled like a regular Hex app.
Expect the activity classifications to feed further admin tooling, such as usage reporting tied to credits or evals, alongside continued weekly iteration on Generative App editing.
M365 Manager Plus handles reporting, management, and automation for Microsoft 365 tenants from an on-premises install, shipping numbered builds that share a train with its sibling M365 Security Plus — the two carry overlapping notes at the same build numbers. Recent builds mix genuine administrative additions with security work: shared, guest, and resource mailboxes now count as free across all modules, group memberships can be assigned from template rules, and mailbox management actions became available inside automation policies. Builds 4817 and 4818 fixed a predictable-SSO-ticket CVE, a privilege escalation in delegated technician administration, and remote code execution via PowerShell embedded in CSV input.
The product's direction is administrative depth rather than new surface — more reports, more attributes exposed to bulk operations, more management tasks reachable from automation policies rather than clicked one at a time. That is the right axis for the buyer, who is a tenant administrator doing the same operation across thousands of objects. Running underneath it is a security-hardening pass that has surfaced three distinct classes of flaw in two builds, all of them in the delegation and integration machinery that lets one console administer a whole estate.
Automation policies have absorbed mailbox tasks and template rules now drive group membership, so the next candidates are the remaining manual bulk operations — license assignment and user lifecycle actions are the ones the reports keep pointing at.
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Hex or ManageEngine M365 Manager Plus.
OpenPanel's 3.x line hits six builds in 36 hours, still without release notes.
OpenHouse starts simplifying replication by making its catalog, not Iceberg metadata, the source.
Basedash adds view-only seats so whole departments can read dashboards without editing.
OpenReplay adds offline license tokens so air-gapped installs can run licensed.
Tinybird switches off Classic for Free and Developer plans, leaving Forward as the only path.
OpenCTI's weekly train now merges entities in the knowledge view and reads defanged IOCs.
See all Hex alternatives → · See all ManageEngine M365 Manager Plus alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Hex is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Hex is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
Top Hex alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Hex alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/hex for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top ManageEngine M365 Manager Plus alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ManageEngine M365 Manager Plus alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/manageengine-m365-manager-plus for the full list with editorial commentary on each.