I haven’t really looked into 3rd party AE render options because it’s not something I’ve had to set up or do myself.

I’ll get BG Render Max for myself, but it’s not the render manager that the IT guy I’m working with is looking for. The aim is to get something to manage a render farm better than just a watch folder.  So the ability to send jobs out to multiple machines, specific machines, group machines for specific plugin licenses etc etc, and then be able to remotely manage the machines themselves.  I’ve only used Deadline so that’s all I can compare it with.  Personally I’d prefer it if they had something like Deadline because it’s well established and works across loads of different apps, but they seem to like the idea of Render Boss being focussed on AE only.  Ultimately not my decision.

I know there are a few solutions out there for speeding up AE renders, but their aim seems to be all about faster rendering via multiple bg instances.  Managing a render farm is a slightly different thing.  I hadn’t heard of Render Boss but it seems to do a lot of what our IT wants.

-Chris