Apple Business Essentials

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apple Business Essentials
Score 5.5 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Apple Business Essentials is a subscription service that brings together device management, 24/7 support, and cloud storage. It enables small business to manage every iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TVs throughout the business.
$8.25
per device, per month
Pricing
Apple Business Essentials
Editions & Modules
Fleetsmith Managed
$8.25
per device, per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apple Business Essentials
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFree unlimited trial for up to 10 devices Device Intelligence free for unlimited devices iOS/tvOS devices free during beta period
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apple Business Essentials
Considered Both Products
Apple Business Essentials
Chose Apple Business Essentials
Like I mentioned earlier, Fleetsmith's ease of use is better than the others that I've had experience with (e.g. Addigy, JAMF). It's intuitive and it doesn't take a long time to get the basics down. The UI is great and it takes care of most of what I need it to do.
Chose Apple Business Essentials
If JAMF could configure the VPN we would have stayed.
Chose Apple Business Essentials
For the sake of transparency, Fleetsmith is MUCH cheaper which is why we went with it in the first place.
Chose Apple Business Essentials
By far the most intuitive and seamless experience to get set up with pricing that scales for our organization's needs.
Chose Apple Business Essentials
The primary products we checked out were Mosyle, JAMF, and SimpleMDM. In the end it really came down to the simplicity of our needs and the simplicity of Fleetsmith's approach being in tight harmony. We kicked the tires, hard, for about a month and then dove all the way in.
Chose Apple Business Essentials
We have tested Cisco Meraki, but the UI is so chaotic. It is not easy to find the function at one go as we need to take time to explore the navigation. The configured device at times gives a false alert. Device enrolment is not straightforward. The licensing fees are slightly …
Chose Apple Business Essentials
Our decision was made some time ago so I don't remember all the details but we went with Fleetsmith originally on a recommendation.

One major influence was the direct and no-effort integration into our G Suite account for ease of management and tying back to our organisation …
Chose Apple Business Essentials
Figuring out how to package apps for Jamf Now was super complicated. Fleetsmith is like using an app store.
Chose Apple Business Essentials
I view Jamf as the leader for mac. Airwatch does mac and pc. If Fleetsmith worked on PC, I think it would put it over the top.
Chose Apple Business Essentials
Jamf seems much more dependent upon a dedicated IT staff to configure and support it; I chose Fleetsmith because to a much greater extent it “just works” out of the box. To my mind, the value proposition is that it comes as close as possible to eliminate the need for IT staff …
Chose Apple Business Essentials
Fleetsmith is very cost-effective and scales from startup to mid-size business much more easily. Fleetsmith can be setup by a team-member or CEO without needing engineering help, and certainly not a dedicated IT admin.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Apple Business Essentials
Small Businesses
Rippling
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Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Meraki SM
Cisco Meraki SM
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Meraki SM
Cisco Meraki SM
Score 9.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apple Business Essentials
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(21 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(19 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(21 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apple Business Essentials
Likelihood to Recommend
Apple
Fleetsmith is well suited for companies with a lot of Macs, Mac minis, Apple tvs, etc., that are all over the place (different offices, states, countries, floors, remote employees, etc). It makes the management of these central where it would be almost impossible otherwise.
Read full review
Pros
Apple
  • Fleetsmith does a great job of being unobtrusive on managed devices. After initial deployment, one might never know it’s there except when it prompts to enforce a software update.
  • Fleetsmith has sensible defaults and relatively few decisions for the administrator to make; for most applications and configurations, it’s sufficient to enforce a minimum version. For more complex use cases, I suggest falling back on Fleetsmith’s ability to install tools such as Puppet and run arbitrary shell commands.
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Cons
Apple
  • We were told that this was in the works and it would be implemented at the beginning of the year 2019. That has still not happened and whenever we ask about this functionality we cannot get a good answer.
  • Management of devices that are already in the field—we were told that in order to use Fleetsmith as we would like (pushing apps to devices) we would have to get each device and set them up from a Mac.
  • Integration with Windows.
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Usability
Apple
The installation steps are very easy and the UI for admin panel is user-friendly. Enrolment all based on Gmail accounts and the import function is there to fetch the user accounts. Navigating in Fleetsmith admin panel is simple and clean.
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Support Rating
Apple
Fantastic support. I have had a few queries on how to go about doing things in the best way and the support at Fleetsmith was always very quick to reply and with excellent advice and detail to solve the problem and lead is into our best use of their product.
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Alternatives Considered
Apple
The primary products we checked out were Mosyle, JAMF, and SimpleMDM. In the end it really came down to the simplicity of our needs and the simplicity of Fleetsmith's approach being in tight harmony. We kicked the tires, hard, for about a month and then dove all the way in.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Apple
  • Lesser cost for managing device, instead of getting more manpower to do it manually.
  • Lesser security threats (which will cause financial damage) as all devices are configured according the the company security policies, such as firewalls, media management, app security updates.
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ScreenShots