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Apple Business Essentials

Apple Business Essentials
Formerly Fleetsmith

Overview

What is Apple Business Essentials?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Fleetsmith is a powerful tool that has proven to be invaluable for companies and organizations looking to efficiently manage their Mac …
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On Fleet.

8 out of 10
September 11, 2019
Incentivized
We are using Fleetsmith to inventory and manage Mac devices for our company and clients. It's used across the whole organization and …
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Fleetsmith

10 out of 10
September 08, 2019
We use Fleetsmith to manage our corporate Mac OS fleet, pushing software patches and configuration to our whole company, enforcing …
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So So

2 out of 10
September 08, 2019
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 …
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Great fit for our company

6 out of 10
September 04, 2019
I am the account holder and manager for our Fleetsmith account (Operations Team). We use Fleetsmith primarily for its ability to wipe …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Fleetsmith Managed

$8.25

Cloud
per device, per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.fleetsmith.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is Apple Business Essentials?

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.

It includes the functionality of the former Fleetsmith, a cloud management solution for Apple devices. In June 2020, Fleetsmith was acquired by Apple, and then discontinued in October of 2022 to make way for Apple Business Essentials, which was launched to the public at the end of 2021 in beta, and is now the company's flagship device management solution going forward.

Apple Business Essentials Features

  • Supported: Zero-touch deployment: Local user account, DEP, apps and settings
  • Supported: Automatic OS upgrades and enforcement
  • Supported: Set-and-forget deployment, configuration & enforcement for 70+ apps
  • Supported: Smart inventory
  • Supported: Fully-automated patch management
  • Supported: FileVault 2 Encryption with automatic key escrow
  • Supported: Kernel Extension Whitelisting
  • Supported: TCC/PPPC Whitelisting
  • Supported: Custom script deployment
  • Supported: Kernel-level binary blacklisting
  • Supported: WiFi, VPN and printer deployment

Apple Business Essentials Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Jamf Pro, Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), and Addigy are common alternatives for Apple Business Essentials.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.8.

The most common users of Apple Business Essentials are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).

Apple Business Essentials Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)30%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)60%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)10%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(23)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Fleetsmith is a powerful tool that has proven to be invaluable for companies and organizations looking to efficiently manage their Mac devices. Users have praised its ability to automate inventory and management tasks, saving valuable time and resources. With Fleetsmith, non-technical users can easily configure workstations without the need for extensive tinkering. This user-friendly approach makes it an ideal solution for businesses striving for workplace flexibility. Additionally, Fleetsmith's robust reporting capabilities provide comprehensive information on encryption status, allowing companies to ensure the safety and security of their devices.

One of the standout features of Fleetsmith is its integration with G Suite, which has been particularly helpful in educational settings. Teachers switching between classrooms can effortlessly log in to classroom computers, thanks to this seamless integration. Fleetsmith also excels when it comes to meeting compliance requirements and maintaining certifications such as HITRUST. It enables organizations to control, manage, secure, and track Macs across the entire company or organization.

Overall, users appreciate Fleetsmith for its niche product offering and evolving features. It offers a single-pane-of-glass interface that makes managing Apple products a breeze. From deploying globally and managing remote and local MacBooks to providing confidence in company-issued laptops through easy deployment, updates, productivity enhancements, and compliance gains, Fleetsmith proves its worth by solving various challenges faced by businesses of all sizes.

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.

Limited software options: Some users have expressed frustration with the limited list of native software that can be deployed, preventing them from using custom software. Clients feel restricted by the lack of flexibility in choosing and utilizing the applications they need for their specific requirements.

Reporting capabilities dissatisfaction: Many customers have voiced their dissatisfaction with the reporting capabilities of the software. They find the current reporting features to be lacking in terms of generating comprehensive and meaningful insights from device data, which hinders their ability to make informed decisions and track important metrics.

Unclear issue communication and configuration limitations: Users have found it difficult to achieve desired configurations due to unclear communication about the issues. This lack of clarity leads to confusion and delays in resolving problems. Additionally, some reviewers have mentioned that they are unable to determine what actions the software is taking on managed devices, resulting in uncertainty about its functionality and effectiveness in performing necessary tasks.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-21 of 21)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
  • Apple Device Management
  • Universal Settings
  • Limited apps for iOS devices
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.
September 11, 2019

On Fleet.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
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.
September 09, 2019

Good system

Christopher Ecklesdafer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • Security.
  • Asset control.
  • Deployment.
  • User management.
  • User interface.
Since I normally just set it and forget it. I cant really comment on this.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Fleetsmith is used across the organization to manage our relatively small fleet of Mac devices.
  • Onboarding new users is an easy process.
  • Taking action if a device is lost is simple to do.
  • Windows support would be nice to have.
Fleetsmith is well-suited for anyone who has a fleet of Mac devices that need to be maintained and kept up to date.
September 08, 2019

Fleetsmith

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
  • Policy enforcement
  • Enrollment of new workstations
  • Patch management
  • Eagerly waiting for custom packages, though the support for scripts and toolings like Chef and Puppet is strong.
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
September 08, 2019

So So

Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
  • VPN Configuration
  • Easy Setup
  • 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.
THERE IS NO VPP. MAC IS NEEDED TO PROPERLY CONFIGURE DEVICES.
September 05, 2019

Fleetsmith Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • Making sure security settings are enforced.
  • Deploying software.
  • Keeping track of users.
  • Would be nice to be able to import 3rd party software.
Fleetsmith is great for integrating with G Suite and managing groups of computers.
September 05, 2019

A great product!

Steven Cruz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • Great user interface.
  • Simple implementation and rollout.
  • The catalog contains a lot of the most used services.
  • 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.
Well suited for small businessrs trying to scale.
September 04, 2019

Great fit for our company

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I am the account holder and manager for our Fleetsmith account (Operations Team). We use Fleetsmith primarily for its ability to wipe devices remotely and control certain standards to meet with security regulations/ requirements for our clients.
  • Remote Device Management
  • Inventory
  • Would love to see more applications to implement and control (i.e. Github, Trello, JIRA, Teamweek, GSuite)
  • We signed up under a pretense that Sophos would soon be available as an app. That has not happened and I do not believe there are any antivirus apps available.
  • The help center is lacking. As someone who is not in IT but is responsible for the IT of our small company, I find myself reaching out to someone at Fleetsmith at least twice a month. I would love a better education center to debrief all the capabilities of the product.
The customer service team is great at getting back to me and answering my questions.
September 03, 2019

Worth Using

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Fleetsmith gives us the confidence that all our company-issued laptops are easily deployed and kept up to date. It provides both productivity enhancements and compliance gains with the associated peace of mind.
  • Fleetsmith was really easy to get started with - It had a much lower barrier to entry than other tools we tried.
  • Nothing springs to mind!
It has worked well for our small team.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We run Fleetsmith on all employee workstations with access to systems that contain PHI (Protected Health Information). Fleetsmith allows us to meet all of our compliance requirements to maintain HITRUST certification on employee workstations.
  • Intuitive user interface.
  • Support for modern workstation configurations.
  • Light on resources.
  • Reports for compliance documentation that could be provided to auditors.
If you run macOS workstations, Fleetsmith is great.
Barak Kaufman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our entire organization uses Fleetsmith to control, manage and secure our Macs. It's used to keep everything updated, synced, secured, and tracked.
  • Centralized visibility.
  • Automated remediation.
  • Device analytics.
  • Onboarding.
  • Deeper analytics.
  • Centralized IT catalog of all devices.
  • User onboarding explanation.
It is perfect for a company that takes security seriously, has remote employees and is growing fast, and it really has helped our business scale much faster. I can't speak to the use case of larger organizations
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I have been using Fleetsmith for almost a year to manage our small fleet of Apple products. It makes my job so much easier to have a single pane of glass to manage and update these devices. I do not consider myself a Mac user so this interface makes it a delight to manage devices that otherwise would be left on their own to defend for themselves in an ever more dangerous world.
  • Single pane of glass for managing Apple devices.
  • Makes updates on devices much easier.
  • One place to check everything!
  • Takes some work to set up, but that's Apple's fault for having such tight security. But after you're over the hump, it couldn't be easier to use!
Fleetsmith is well suited for managing 5 to 500 devices. It allows a small to medium-sized business time to concentrate on other tasks instead of treating each Apple device as a one-off for systems management.
Nikesh Ashar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It’s being used by my department to maintain laptops and mobile devices. It allows us to see who needs updates and allows us to roll out secure software.
  • Manages leased laptops.
  • Keeps software up to date.
  • Let’s me see who has which device.
  • Tracking devices.
  • Advanced asset management.
  • Apple lease details.
Fleetsmith is well suited for Apple device rollouts. However, you need good knowledge and admin access to all your Apple accounts across the business or organization to make it work to your advantage.
Pax Whitfield | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We manage about 170 Macs across four states. It has replaced manual provisioning for new computers and OS imaging on re-issued computers and upped our security stance considerably.
  • Escrow of FileVault keys
  • Managing of common 3rd party software apps (Office, Zoom, 1Password)
  • Hardware reporting - battery, storage use, etc.
  • Zero-touch deployment of newly purchased machines
  • Handling of updates and/or communication about undeployed updates on Macs with limited storage space
  • I hope they're working on a way to do automatic macOS user account creation as part of a hardware 'refresh' when reassigning a unit from one staff member to another.
  • Easier/more customization options for deploying in-house and other custom softwares
Fleetsmith is best for newly purchased machines being given to a single user. Excellent for portable computers. It's not as well suited to shared machines, computer lab or kiosk type scenarios, etc. Fleetsmith doesn't really manage iOS or tvOS, either, but if they added this functionality in a competitive way, we have a fleet of both that I'd consider moving!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We deploy Fleetsmith across the whole organization, MacOS only. It helps us to manage the consistency of the app updates and push common apps to the devices. Also, we control the security settings of the devices such as firewall, filevault, media management, and also MDM options to remote wipe/lock the devices.
  • Pushing latest app updates.
  • Monitoring devices' health in the organization.
  • Remote wipe and lock features.
  • Fleetsmith support is responsive.
  • Granular control on the security features such as firewalls, as currently it only enables or disables a firewall. [Would be great] If it can be enabled but also allow certain control on which apps are added as an exception.
  • In the dashboard, affected devices that were highlighted cannot be viewed in a list. Right now in order to know which devices are affected, we can only click on a draft email to send the email to the affected device owner.
  • Fleetsmith [should] work with device manufacturer (Apple) to make the solution works better. Current issue with T2 chip is still plaguing us.
For an organization that does not have Active Directory services, and those that encourage staff to bring their own device to the company for work. It is not suited for those organization with an Windows environment though.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Fleetsmith to manage our fleet of laptops across the business. The service works brilliantly and is simple and very efficient to use.

Whenever we have encountered any friction, which typically comes from Apple rather than Fleetsmith itself, they are always supportive, quick to respond and helpful. Onboarding in the early days was great and the service continues to work flawlessly since the day we signed up.
  • Ease of use
  • Modern UI
  • Reliable
  • UI is sleek and modern but sometimes a little too minimal depending on the size of your viewport
  • Fantastic for managing a fleet of Apple devices in the SMB/SME space where we are. I can't speak to larger scale operations but if you want to deploy devices for 1-100 people, it would be hard to make it faster and easier than it is with Fleetsmith.
  • If you need very granular or shared profiles for devices that can be combined, I don't think this is a capability and might be something nice for future if people want modular permissions and profiles.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Fleetsmith to manage our entire fleet of Macs for the company. We set up zero-touch deployments with Apple DEP. It allows us to manage and track our assets effectively while also providing us the tools to implement security best practices.
  • Setting up zero-touch deployments with Apple DEP.
  • Seamless integration with G Suite.
  • Auto account creation for users.
  • Filevault2 key escrow.
  • Managed apps and profiles are extremely simple to use.
  • As an Admin I would like to know what updates are in flight (like a progress bar) to which devices.
  • More tooling to streamline the laptop repurposing workflow not just for new devices (e.g. doing the auto account creation for a user's device).
  • I wish I could add notes to pending devices e.g. this device is a spare in the Boston office. I do this with sticky notes on my desk.
For startups that need to manage Macs and are not ready for their first IT FTE this is a great product. I'm not a traditional IT person but Fleetsmith has helped me manage the laptops at our company effectively. When we are big enough to hire a full time IT manager Fleetsmith has us set up nicely to scale rapidly.

Shout out to Dave Vega who was our account manager until recently. In the beginning, Dave took the time to understand our needs and explain where Fleetsmith would fit or not fit. He was always responsive for account questions and he would also help with technical questions as well. Dave was never overly pushy on anything and genuinely wanted to make sure Fleetsmith was serving the current needs of Manifold. Thanks, Dave!
Steve Huff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Fleetsmith solves two problems for me: first, I want to spend a minimum of time tinkering with the configuration of my own workstation, and second, I support relatively nontechnical users who have even less
patience for tinkering.
  • 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.
  • I’ve seen Fleetsmith be unable to achieve its desired configuration, but not communicate the problem clearly. For example, when I first enforced FileVault encryption via Fleetsmith, the device showed FileVault encryption as “Enabled, but not enforced”. After talking with Fleetsmith technical support, I found that the underlying issue was that Fleetsmith had not been able to escrow the encryption key because encryption had been manually applied before Fleetsmith was installed; technical support staff suggested that I resolve this situation by manually disabling encryption and then allowing Fleetsmith to reenable it. This solution was acceptable for me, a relatively technical user, but would have been a nonstarter for a nontechnical user.
  • It’s difficult for me to determine what exactly the Fleetsmith agent is doing on a managed device. When I enforce a change via Fleetsmith and then notice that the change has not been made on the device, it’s difficult for me to tell whether a) the agent tried to make the change but was unable or b) the agent hasn’t yet tried to make the change.
My sense is that Fleetsmith is a good fit for use cases where the organization is already invested in G Suite as a directory service, and where best-effort configuration management is acceptable. I don’t know that I would trust Fleetsmith in an environment where strict compliance was of paramount importance; Fleetsmith’s design seems to be to choose to “fail open” rather than “fail closed”.
James Villarrubia | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Fleetsmith is our default MDM solution for our entire set of Macbooks and Apple devices. As a company focused on flexibility in the workplace, having a solution that worked well with a remote, part-time, and location diverse set of employees was critical to our success. We work with large Fortune 500 companies that need guarantees on safety and security that Fleetsmith helps orchestrate for us.
  • Very simple to roll out.
  • Customer service is fast and top notch.
  • Takes customer recommendations on features seriously.
  • Simplicity of the interface means some feature options aren't as clearly defined as they could be.
  • User profiles vs device profiles can be confusing.
  • No "master view" of profile setups.
  • Can't duplicate a profile or set of applications (yet).
For any Apple-based small-to-mid-size business, Fleetsmith is my go-to recommendation. Not sure if the interface will scale well with 300+ devices or users, so larger 100+ person organizations might want to investigate more thoroughly. Fleetsmith's team will always take feedback and answer questions, so if you're on the fence - definitely give it a go.
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