Ninite is excellent & above bar.
They do exactly what they say, don't include spyware of any kind, and are so well done that I have paid for the Professional level to show my support.
You go through the list of programs the installer supports (and it's a long list), check all the boxes that you want, and click the "Download" button.
The regular version is just a small auto-fetch file that goes out, finds each of the programs you checked, grabs their latest version, and installs them one by one until it's done. You may need a reboot or two, depending on the software being installed, and a check of Windows Update afterwards is a good idea.
The Professional allows you to grab specific versions of the program(s) you've checked, so it installs the prefetched versions instead of the latest version(s). This is useful for offline installs (like after reformatting a machine & bringing it up to speed before letting it go online). The Windows Update after is still a good idea.
In either case (free or Pro), if you run the installer again, it either fetches the latest (if the Free, or the Pro if told to do so) the latest versions, and installs them over the old versions, thus updating you.
For a free program, you can check off a bunch of software that you normally use, and with a single click of the installer, update all those programs without a headache.
This is in addition to, not instead of, Windows Update.
Ninite is definitely an excellent program. They are one of the few companies out there that are worth the effort to support.
No I don't work for them, I'm just a *very* satisfied customer.