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Apple Business Essentials Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 8.2 out of 10
Score
8.2 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Apple Business Essentials are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Intuitive and Easy to Navigate: Reviewers have consistently praised Fleetsmith for its intuitive user interface and easy navigation. Several users have stated that compared to other solutions, Fleetsmith stands out as a user-friendly option.

Convenient DEP Enrollment: The DEP Enrollment feature of Fleetsmith has received high praise from multiple reviewers. Users appreciate the convenience it offers in setting up passwords for users and granting immediate access when they turn on their computers.

Simple Software Deployment: Many reviewers have commended Fleetsmith for its ease of adding software to be pushed out. They have found this process to be straightforward, highlighting the simplicity of deploying software using Fleetsmith's platform.

Reviews

23 Reviews

Apple Business Essentials for Enterprise

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We automatically import devices that we purchase from resellers (Verizon, CDW, etc.) into our Apple Business Essentials Manager account. Once they're imported, we assign them to the MDM of our choice, purchase application licenses, and import them into our MDM for incredibly easy management and configuration of our Apple devices. Apple Business Essentials facilitates easy device management with other MDM providers and allows us to control every aspect of corporate iPhones and iPads.

Pros

  • Asset management
  • Application license management
  • MDM enrollment
  • Ease of use

Cons

  • Admin management (limit of 5 admins/account)
  • Location configuration is not very intuitive
  • Lack of new features/feature development

Likelihood to Recommend

I would recommend Apple Business Essentials manager to any organization that orders and uses iPads or iPhones on a large scale and wishes to manage them. Even if you do not intend on applying an MDM to your corporate Apple devices, it is nice for asset management and corporate application purchasing from a central location. If you do not care about any of those features, this functionality is not for you.

VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
4 years of experience

Easy Apple device management

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We only have a few macs in our environment but this software has made it really easy to manage that small amount. The biggest help is the automated deployment of settings once the device is connected to the MDM. We just upgraded our network infrastructure and it made it easy to push the new wi-fi network to the devices.

Pros

  • It is quick at pushing policy updates
  • It is a relatively low cost and doesn't have a minimum
  • It stores filevault keys in an encrypted form but makes it easy to recover macs if needed.

Cons

  • I would like it to be easier to deploy apps to computers

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for a more structured work environment where you need strict controls. I don't think this would be as helpful in a relaxed workplace where control is not needed as much.

VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
3 years of experience

An Awesome Product from an Awesome Company

Rating: 9 out of 10

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have enjoyed using Fleetsmith for managing our Apple products. Fleetsmith has been able to provide a niche product for a niche market, and they care about the organizations they support. Any issue that I have ever had has been resolved quickly. I appreciate what they are doing and how the product is evolving.

Pros

  • Apple Device Management
  • Universal Settings

Cons

  • Limited apps for iOS devices

Likelihood to Recommend

I'm happy with the services I have received from Fleetsmith. I think anyone with an extensive Apple fleet will be happy with them as well. My only real beef is how many editions of iOS they are willing to support. I can see their reason, but older gen stuff still needs management too.

VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
7 years of experience

On Fleet.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Fleetsmith to inventory and manage Mac devices for our company and clients. It's used across the whole organization and maximizes our ability to automate. It helps give great reporting information (encryption status) and helps keep the computer up to date.

Pros

  • Ease of use to manage. Some other solutions can be a little hard to navigate. Fleetsmith is intuitive.
  • DEP Enrollment is really nice. If you are shipping a laptop out to the user you can set their password and when they turn on their computer they will have access.
  • Adding software to be pushed out. Pretty easy to do.

Cons

  • The list of native software to be deployed isn't as large as it could be.
  • Pushing out custom software would be a good workaround but that doesn't seem doable.
  • Clients frequently tell me they dislike the reporting capabilities.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

AV
Andrew Vo
Director of Operations in Information Technology at Jones IT (11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
2 years of experience

Good system

Rating: 4 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, most employees are using Google Chromebooks. However, employees such as myself use Macs for our jobs and daily tasks. Since it's hard to keep up with inventory and security with Macs, we use Fleetsmith for managed remote and local Macbooks. With Fleetsmith, I feel more comfortable with our company asset given to employees without fear of a stolen laptop or sensitive company documents getting leaked out.

Pros

  • Security.
  • Asset control.
  • Deployment.

Cons

  • User management.
  • User interface.

Likelihood to Recommend

Since I normally just set it and forget it. I cant really comment on this.

CE
Christopher Ecklesdafer
Director of Network Operations in Engineering at ManagedWay (11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
2 years of experience
View profile

The no-nonsense fleet management solution for startups

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Fleetsmith is used across the organization to manage our relatively small fleet of Mac devices.

Pros

  • Onboarding new users is an easy process.
  • Taking action if a device is lost is simple to do.

Cons

  • Windows support would be nice to have.

Likelihood to Recommend

Fleetsmith is well-suited for anyone who has a fleet of Mac devices that need to be maintained and kept up to date.

PD
Philippe Dionne
CTO (Chief Technical Officer) in Engineering at Stamped (1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
1 year of experience

Fleetsmith

Rating: 10 out of 10

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Fleetsmith to manage our corporate Mac OS fleet, pushing software patches and configuration to our whole company, enforcing policies and supporting the security and compliance baselines required in our market. It enables us to amplify our small engineering team with enterprise-scale policies and visibility of potential risks before they become problems.

Pros

  • Policy enforcement
  • Enrollment of new workstations
  • Patch management

Cons

  • Eagerly waiting for custom packages, though the support for scripts and toolings like Chef and Puppet is strong.

Likelihood to Recommend

We run a Mac OS and Linux estate and Fleetsmith is an Apple-centric solution. This is perfect for us, but a cross-OS solution may better suit a company with a more diverse set of user machines

VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Engineering (11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
2 years of experience

So So

Rating: 2 out of 10

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Fleetsmith to remotely manage all of our iOS devices. As any MDM this helps us easily manage all of our mobile devices in one location.

Pros

  • VPN Configuration
  • Easy Setup

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

THERE IS NO VPP. MAC IS NEEDED TO PROPERLY CONFIGURE DEVICES.

DK
DeMarcus Ketchum
System Administrator in Information Technology at OCuSOFT (201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
1 year of experience

Fleetsmith Review

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Fleetsmith to manage software and settings for our staff computers. I like that I have the ability to set security, wifi and system settings as well as make sure that 3rd party software is kept updated and current. The G Suite integration is really helpful for our classroom computers so when a teacher switches rooms they just need to log into the computer in the room.

Pros

  • Making sure security settings are enforced.
  • Deploying software.
  • Keeping track of users.

Cons

  • Would be nice to be able to import 3rd party software.

Likelihood to Recommend

Fleetsmith is great for integrating with G Suite and managing groups of computers.

JW
Jeff Wimer
Information Technology Manager in Information Technology at Bethany Lutheran Church (11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
1 year of experience

A great product!

Rating: 6 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have been using it across the whole organization. It's our MDM of choice currently and it helps ensure all of our devices contain anti-virus, encryption, and firewall and are up to date.

Pros

  • Great user interface.
  • Simple implementation and rollout.
  • The catalog contains a lot of the most used services.

Cons

  • Customer service needs a chat or phone support.
  • The catalog is nice but doesn't contain everything.
  • Custom scripts should have a better user interface.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for small businessrs trying to scale.

SC
Steven Cruz
IT Engineer in Information Technology at Amplitude Analytics (201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Apple Business Essentials
2 years of experience
View profile