Apple Remote Desktop (ARD), from Apple, is a remote administration tool for managing Apple computers running OS X across a network.
$79.99
one-time fee
ISL Light
Score 8.7 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
ISL Light is remote support and remote access software that enables SMBs and large enterprises to offer fast and efficient support and maintenance for Windows, Mac and Linux computers as well as mobile device support for Android and iOS.
$418
per year (1 concurrent user)
Pricing
Apple Remote Desktop
ISL Light
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$34.90
per month (billed annually) per concurrent user
Self-Hosted
$44.90
per month (billed annually) per concurrent user
Premium
$54.90
per month (billed annually) per concurrent user
Enterprise (Managed Private Cloud)
$23,976
per year 20 concurrent users
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apple Remote Desktop
ISL Light
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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ISL Online's pricing model considers the number of licenses purchased, which determines the maximum number of concurrent users within the organization. A concurrent user is defined as anyone running one or more sessions simultaneously from any device. There are no restrictions on the number of ISL Light users within a company or the remote devices managed.
For example, with three licenses, an unlimited number of people in a company can use ISL Light and can access an unlimited number of remote devices, but only three users can use it concurrently. When one of these three users ends their session, a fourth user can begin their session, and so on.
None of these work when trying to connect from my personal computer. Guys in our IT offered to use ISL Light and it worked without a glitch ever since.
Features
Apple Remote Desktop
ISL Light
Remote Administration
Comparison of Remote Administration features of Product A and Product B
Apple Remote Desktop
6.1
26 Ratings
26% below category average
ISL Light
8.1
90 Ratings
2% above category average
Screen sharing
9.026 Ratings
8.684 Ratings
File transfer
9.025 Ratings
9.384 Ratings
Instant message
9.021 Ratings
7.467 Ratings
Secure remote access with Smart Card authentication
I would rate this higher if I was confident that Apple is continuing to develop this utility. It has only received minor updates for quite a long time, and is not featured much in any of Apple's online material. It really is a useful utility, but it is starting to show its age and is fraying a bit around the edges in some respects. It could be very useful when integrated with the various MDM solutions (in our case, Jamf Pro) especially when an engineer needs to force something immediately and can't wait for a check-in, and also can't depend on the end user being able to (for instance) do a sudo jamf policy or sudo jamf recon.
ISL light is suitable for anyone who plans to provide remote assistance services on a medium to large scale. Due to the high entry price, it is less suitable for consultants with a smaller number of clients or remote stations that need management. Their smallest package in which minutes are rented does not seem suitable for most cases.
I would like to see more included Unix scrips that can be pushed to clients.
Inclusion of a way to remote control or screen share with Windows machines would be useful, as I manage a handful of Windows machines. While this would be possible using VNC on the Windows machines, including the ability to connect using Windows terminal connections would be awesome, for me.
Need a control toggle at least on AlwaysOn. User moves the mouse and you lose all control instantly.
Clipboard features are a bit wonky still, and your clipboard seems to get emptied a lot. So if you're trying to copy and paste you might lose something
Passwords for the systems are saved per machine, so if you work from multiple devices it can be tricky if you have complex passwords
It is a fairly unique tool in the level of integration it has with Apple Desktop products. It definitely needs some engineering attention, and it should be expanded to the iOS arena. It is not perfect, but it is very useful and fills an otherwise fairly empty niche in the support toolkit realm. The built-in screen sharing app in macOS handles the direct screen control or viewing function fairly well, but it does not have all of the other mass control features that Apple Remote Desktop supplies.
Once it is set up, it is quite straightforward to use. However, currently, it requires both a script to run to set up permissions and controls, AND a command from the MDM to authorize it to be active. The MDM management command is manual. This is not conducive to an automated workflow, and sometimes gets forgotten. Then, the endpoint is not contactable until someone realizes that the MDM command was not sent or was not successful.
Everything works well and quickly, and that's all we need. ISL Light always works, and we've never had a situation where the server was inaccessible or the website was down. It simply gives us a 100% guarantee that we can always log in to our customers' systems. We can install the ISL Light client at our customers' sites without any problems, even though security is high.
We had issues with mouse skipping on mobile devices. Support is immediatly availabe, they examined our case and in one of the new versions of the app this problem was gone.
I would feel much more comfortable having one of these alternative solutions as our Remote Desktop management tools. Each has their drawbacks and expenses associated with them, but we simply have too large of a deployment to not be considering alternatives. If it is the only solution you can afford, it is OK to start here. I could see where this would have a return on investment, but it is really only suitable for a very small and localized scale. If employees are at all mobile, the duct taping of products necessary (VPN, distribution points, script repositories) would be very cumbersome.
Multi-monitor handling is super easy with ISL Light. The licensing model of ISL Light's self-hosted version is unbeatable. Great technical support, which often used before I purchased. The unbelievable price increase during and after the covid time of remote tools, has ended, when I found ISL Light. ISL Light is really a underdog in the remote utility market. I'm glad that I found it.
Apple Remote Desktop has a positive return on investment because for the expense to the school, the value it brings to teachers is important. The return on improved student performance is very difficult to measure financially, but there is a definite return.
The overall objective of education is to increase student learning, ARD does that phenomenally. Parents see the tool used and are impressed at what the capabilities of the tool can do and how it impacts how active their students are as well as how well they can learn.
One negative impact is that teachers rely too much on this tool rather than on actually teaching sometimes.
