Jamf Pro

Avantages

The overall ease of use makes JAMF really pleasant to work with. We can deploy configurations and compliance policies very easily and this ensures our Apple devices are always secure and compliant.

Inconvénients

At this point we do not think there is anything JAMF can improve on, they do already have so many great features.

Avantages

Great real-time dashboards about every needed aspect for the whole Apple device inventory at a glance made it convenient to decide easily about the future projects.

Inconvénients

Implementing the jamf pro for the first time needed patience and continuous improvement so that we can reach an stable level, sometimes even changing settings related to automation requires some scripting experience.

Avantages

As a user of JAMF PRO since the days when it was called Casper, I can safely say that this product is a constant evolution of itself and as it pertains to Apple hardware, software, admin and user needs. Considering the product is on a zero day release schedule always means we are ready to manage devices and workstations upon the latest release of an OS build. It has allowed use to customize our deployment packages, settings and enrollment styles. Having the ability for zero touch enrollment and deployment of systems is without a doubt the most influential feature of our JAMF Pro installation. Getting machines up and ready is a breeze with JAMF Pro, long term management is even easier.

Inconvénients

JAMF rarely has anything we dislike. Over the years their menus have evolved for the better. The user interface has improved drastically. i would say as they grow, to continue to keep the product suite obtainable by educational users. Products which havent recently released such as Jamf Protect are a bit cost prohibitive, it would be nice if they were bundled into the Jamf Pro suite.

Avantages

The ease of use for users to have the ability to update or install software, at the click of the button.
We love using Self Service, this allows us to install or update software and drivers without the user needing to bring the device to us. Jamf Pro also gives us control of what gets installed on devices and what settings get pushed automatically. You have the ability to create groups of devices and get as granular as you want with groups.

Inconvénients

Not really a "Con", but it would be great if the reporting was a little bit easier to get.
You can download several different reports, but I think JAMF still has room for improving their reporting.

Avantages

Jamf Pro is far and away the best product I have used to manage Apple computers in an enterprise environment. Its easy to use, the learning curve is short. Jamf Pro is reliable and powerful. There's a reason it has become the industry standard for Apple device management.
Support from Jamf and from the Jamf Nation community is second to none. I know if I have a problem I can turn to Jamf Support or Jamf Nation for help finding a solution.

Inconvénients

I would like to see a more customizable, dynamic GUI. I would like to be able to dynamically drag around items in the Dashboard. Clicking on items to remove them from view in the Dashboard would also be very helpful for cleanup and organization.
I would also like to see better effort in improving Patch Management.

Avantages

Mobile Device Management is a requirement these days, especially if managing Apple products. Jamf Pro is a comprehensive suite that covers all support. It is accessible to all skill level, from a department director managing tablets to the system administrator writing scripts to manage a fleet of laptops.

Inconvénients

The interface can be overwhelming to a novice user. Things can quickly become confusing and overlapping services can make troubleshooting the problem complicated.

Avantages

jamf has an advantage of having MDM and policy/self-service built-in to one, and it manages macOS and iOS in the same platform. There are a lot of things that jamf does really well, and being one of the larger platforms it has a great community around it.

Inconvénients

jamf has a lot of limitations and does some things poorly. They have grown in their release cycle which has helped with Apple's quickly changing landscape, but there's still a lot that is customized. Often you don't know there's a limitation until you're in the weeds and realize that jamf doesn't do it at all or doesn't do it well. Our environment (and most) have a lot of customization in order for it to run smoothly

Avantages

Jampf Pro makes it easy for our school to deploy, track, and manage a sustainable fleet of Apple products. Its Self-Service app management catalog makes it easy to install and push out apps based on users and control iOS updates remotely without having to collect and manually update managed devices. Control of the products remains within the IT department and enables high-level security settings to ensure safe usage of the device.

Inconvénients

I love the Jamf Pro software and wish that it was a more universal device management system that went beyond just Apple products. It is a pain point within or organization to have utilize multiple device management systems due to different hardware.

Avantages

The best in class MDM management that allows us to get really creative with how we serve our user base.

The API is flexible and allows our developers to use Jamf in collaboration with a number of other tools.

Inconvénients

Quality control around recent releases, where the push to meet new Apple functionality seems to come at the expense of function of existing features. A more robust test and release process is needed.

Feature requests can languish for a long time with seemingly no traction.

The Self Service app until the Jamf 10 preview wasn't a great user experience. Configuration profiles are clunky when they offer multiple options and can disable features accidentally.

Avantages

When we were evaluating management tools for our environment, we quickly came to the conclusion that there was not a one size fits all solution. Once we realized that, every other institution we contacted asked if we had looked at Jamf yet. Once we started looking at the product, the ease of use, the feature set, and the features that allowed us to customize the end user experience, we knew that this was the only product we could use. Jamf customer support has been great from the initial install, transition to cloud, upgrades and general support questions.

Inconvénients

Local server upgrades. During the time we had our own on site server, we performed upgrade. Most of the time they went OK, but it was a complicated process with many pitfalls, and seemed, on some occasions, to require a fair amount of pure wizardry. This is was generated most of my support calls with Jamf.

Avantages

central location to manage 180+ mac's in one software suite.

Inconvénients

Self Service loses sync and sometimes needs to be manually restarted.

Avantages

1. The features are very robust, and development announcements are released very frequently
2. Some of the more straight forward features and policies are very easy to implement for even junior admins
3. Cloud based availability enables lean shops with no on-premise capabilities to get started
4. Custom scripting available for the more advanced admins
5. Decent reporting and auditability. Haven't investigated reporting/metrics with 3rd party solutions but simple reachs indicates this is possible or being worked on

Inconvénients

1. The UX is horrendous, and for someone that doesn't live and breathe the solution it becomes hard to find certain items when I need it
2. Flushing errors can be more intuitive, they did implement auto-rerun on failed policies just recently so hopefully that improves things

Avantages

Best way to ensure all Macs are up to date, ready to go with business required software installed. Works straight out of the shrink wrap.

Inconvénients

Very steep learning curve. Lots of short scripts to install different software. They do have a good CS team to help onboard you and check back in if you need help. But expect to spend the first week or two learning how to get it to do what you want. Don’t expect to learn how to deploy this without designating a lot time on learning it.

Avantages

I like how it allows us to view which machines are in need of updates, what updates crashed, as well as the ability to manage machine inventory. All these features and a clean interface make it easy to navigate.

Inconvénients

Although this may be centralized to a few issues, at times the synchronization seems to be delayed compared to ServiceNow.

Avantages

It does everything you need it to in terms of managing whatever you buy from Apple, with a focus on as much automation for mass deployment as possible. Since they focus on Apple, they have all the latest features available as soon as possible.

Inconvénients

When things break, they can break badly, and a lot of solutions involve running command line scripts and requesting service restarts from support, so if you aren't willing to dig into these sorts of things, it might be difficult for you when support gives you this type of solution.

Also, their marketing can be very deceptive, with their analysis on costs phrased as to make apples-to-oranges comparisons and obfuscate their competition's benefits.

Avantages

Jamf Pro is a very powerful tool with a rich feature set. There is a learning curve but the training available is excellent, providing you are in a region it is available.

We manage a global fleet of Macs and use a hosted cloud instance which allows us to install software, perform updates and just generally manage our Macs no matter where our users are.

The Self Service app gives our users the ability to install software when it suits them or run fixes to known issues without having to contact IT.

Inconvénients

Support can be a bit slow at times, as we have a hosted instance when we call support we are often told we have to wait for someone from the cloud team to take a look and get back to us. Also since updating to v10 we have had performance issues because of a product issue which could be resolved by throwing more resources at the server but as we do not host it we do not have the control to do that. Apparently the problem has been addressed in the next release.

Avantages

With lots of devices in the network, it's easy to troubleshoot the devices. The UI experience is straightforward. It has good templates to create configurations and it's maintainable. The report feature is a bonus and it's easy to use.

Inconvénients

When there is a network issue in between the update, it gets harder to troubleshoot and it needs manual intervention. Support for username search could have been beneficial

Avantages

I love that Jamf handles everything Mac related from pre-stage deployment to pushing updates to reporting. Jamf has simplified everything that I do in my job & I rarely have to touch machines anymore. I love that we were able to implement a system to get machines from pre-stage to named, bound to AD & authenticated with 802.1x in a matter or 2 minutes, that is my absolute favorite thing as even doing it by manually I had issue - but I don't anymore.

Inconvénients

There is nothing I don't like, a couple of features I'd love to see implemented but Jamf continues to listen to their customers & update features all the time. We did have a bit of a time getting it to work in our environment with the restrictions on our network & the fact we cannot sync with LDAP, but we figured it out during training & it was no fault of Jamf.

Avantages

Third-party patch management is easy to set and view.
Easy to deploy apps as long as they don't need special configuration or parameters.
Good options for settings and policies to be applied. Detailed hardware and software inventory, albeit a bit delayed.

Inconvénients

No GOOD MacOS update options, so it's up to the user to run software update. The options Jamf offers are neither good in terms of compliance and IT management nor convenient for the user. Had to find an alternative to do MacOS updates. There seems to be light on the end of the tunnel but only for devices with MacOS 12.

Avantages

Mac people supporting Mac people. Purpose built for Apple admins.

Inconvénients

FedRAMP certification would be amazing. Otherwise a customizable login banner for Jamf Pro (cloud)would satisfy one gov control that audit looks for.

Avantages

Jamf is simply one of the best management platforms to manage Apple devices. This include macOS and iOS devices. You can push anything out to these units from software installs to printers. I use mine to perform zero touch installs for my users. They get their MacBook Airs. They are already joined to the domain as they take the shrink wrap off the box. This is possible due to the close relationship Apple and JAMF has. It does take some setup to get there though.

Inconvénients

It is expensive. They just started to enforce their 50 unit minimum. They charge a boot camp fee to get you setup which is extremely expensive but it is worth it. JAMF is powerful and you want a good foundation in order for it to be effective. You have to be willing to put the work in and learn it for it to be beneficial.

Avantages

Jamf Pro delivers software, configurations, and restrictions with accuracy and reliability.

Inconvénients

There are some counter-intuitive processes that might seem redundant or additional steps. Jamf Pro has many features and many ways to configure delivery.

Alternatives envisagées 

Cisco Meraki

Pourquoi choisir Jamf Pro 

We moved to Jamf Pro to take advantage of the reliability of the industry standard for Apple. The issues with our previous MDM kept adding up and we were troubleshooting MDM issues on a monthly basis. Our hope is that Jamf Pro proves reliable for years to come.

Pourquoi passer à Jamf Pro

We chose Jamf Pro as our platform because of the balance of features and cost that outweighed the others. Jamf's reputation also had a lot to do with our decision.

Avantages

easy to use and easy to deploy software enroll mac books

Inconvénients

full control is not available. like remote management of mac. wipe and clean of device is not available

Avantages

Jamf Pro is the ideal solution to manage all the devices needing to go home to students in our school district. All students need an easy to use and reliable experience. Jamf Pro allow us to centrally manage all the devices and keep them update and healthy so students concentrate on learning and not unreliable technology.

Inconvénients

It would be awesome to have automated exports of the assets. As an administrator supporting laptops, Chromebooks and Apple Devices. I need centralized place to manage all these assets. It is inefficient to look in three different databases to know the complete fleet. Jamf Pro currently features a manual extraction which then has to be manually uploaded to the Total Asset Management Database.

Please help me save time so I can have more time to help teachers and students.

Avantages

Jamf Pro is so powerful and simple and focused on letting us succeed, it's in a class of its own.
We've been in production for 6 years with major staff turnover and this company has continued to support us despite many chances where we might have dropped the ball. Professional services, quality of the code and stability of the platform are major factors that have made it successful in our specific challenging environment.

Inconvénients

There is no downside we have faced. Release cycle is faster than we need, training and communications are above par for SAAS and functionality and value makes it a must renew each time we renew and re-evaluate MDM solutions.

Avantages

Ease of use and also the reliability. I implemented this product at 4 separate company and at each one it has made the MAC environment stable and safe for all Mac users.

Inconvénients

Scripting help would be appreciated. I don't not use the API features of this product but would love too with help. Also more descriptions of each item via the jamf help guide would be nice.

Avantages

I like the ease of use and the pretty much immediate support that Jamf has towards Apple's releases.

Inconvénients

The only thing that I kind of don't like is that it seems that the Jamf site does not play well with Chrome. But that may have changed with Jamf Pro v10. The same with managing on mobile devices previously on version 9, it was horrendous. But I believe v10 changes all of that.

Avantages

Jamf Pro allows me to easily and seamlessly empower my teachers to be masters of their classroom -- employing the appropriate restrictions and management tools when they feel necessary. Jamf Pro gives me the confidence that my devices are secured and that all of my students have what they need when they need it.

Inconvénients

The Jumpstart fee for macOS management is often a burden that small, independent schools cannot afford. While I did get a lot of insights from my jumpstart, the money we spent on the jumpstart would have been more beneficial to be funneled into a training pass to allow me to have some time to get a better understanding of not just the product, but management theories -- something that was not covered in my jumpstart. There's very little negative that we've experienced since our onboarding.

Avantages

All encompassing. It works great for all of our iOS devices and allows us to run our environment with "zero touch" to over 500 devices, (soon to be over 2000). We primarily use it for Apple iPad management, but we do have a few Macs on premises and have been slowly adding them in to the mix. Once the initial setup is done, it just works. Any time that we have had issues, my personal "JAMF Buddy" is only an email or call away, and our issues are resolved in a timely manner.

Inconvénients

Not a lot not to like. Probably my biggest complaint, which I've slowly been losing is that the UI can sometimes be a bit annoying. Reports also could be a bit more intuitive, although you can get a report for such a wide variety of items, but there is a learning curve. Maybe some premade reports or something to go off of would be nice.

Avantages

Jamf does what it does very well - it's generally easy to use, and there's a large community of Mac admins who are helpful in learning how to make the most of the software. Support is great, and the product works well with other third party apps and services in a lot of cases.

Inconvénients

Some features that seem basic are missing, and some of the most highly voted feature requests sit in an 'under review' status for years without being implemented. Patch management is also somewhat lacking and requires some manual workarounds to do properly.

Avantages

Well rounded with many features. It integrated well with Apples School Manager product and allows us to pull in student data to it. Makes our 1:1 environment easy to manage and a lot less stressful.

Inconvénients

The one major con for us has been its reporting features. It does have the ability to give you a lot of information, but it is not intuitive nor user friendly when creating reports. Perhaps some canned pre-made reports would be advised.

Avantages

Ease of use and end user functionality.

Inconvénients

I understand the nature of mdm's and profiles and only being able to have and use one but sometimes when changing from one mdm to another it would be nice if it played better without the option of wiping the device.

Avantages

Whenever I have a need, it seems that JAMF has the tools in place for me to come up with a solution. We can essentially do whatever we need to do for our Apple users with JAMF. People think it's magic that we can remotely install customized software builds for them instantaneously. Users are blown away when they walk into my office and without touching their computer I can tell them the last time they restarted, or how much hard disk space they have left. This is an insanely powerful set of tools which we use daily, and without it we'd need to hire more IT staff to manage the workload!

Inconvénients

I honestly can't think of any. If anything, JAMF is so powerful that I know that there are features that I'm not tapping into!

Avantages

Makes it easy to push out mandatory software patches to mass amounts of users, with integrated device policy rules.

Inconvénients

Background processes often cause problems for software engineering teams, due to conflicts with disk i/o that cause throttling of disk usage on build processes. This can lead to complaints from engineering teams that the software interferes with daily development tasks.

Avantages

When I started my job I quickly became the Jamf administrator within the first 3 months. I am very thankful how easy Jamf was to learn, the online resources Jamf provides as well as 200+ level classes you can go to. The ease of year and how modular things were a major help. As I got more experience using Jamf I learned exactly how much more you can do with it. We strictly use Jamf for Mobile Device Management and the amount of things you can do is amazing. From pushing apps to creating config profiles to deploying iPads makes things so easy.

Inconvénients

There are certain features I would like added, however most of them are legal issues that Jamf probably has with Apple and not so much an issue with Jamf Pro itself.

Avantages

The ease of use and the intuitive design would be the best. I also like the suite of applications and how easy it is to reply applications and pretty much anything through self service.

Inconvénients

The limitations in patch management options and custom reporting is harder than it needs to be. I am currently looking at a combination of products to over come this.

Avantages

The support channels are responsive and robust; the installation base is huge in HiEd; the admin community is supportive and knowledgable; when actions/methods are easy, they're VERY easy.

Inconvénients

When things are difficult, they're very difficult/complex. Nothing experience won't overcome, but the learning curve is steep for some. Interface with Apple pertaining to certs and Apple IDs could be a little less cumbersome, but this is largely Apple's making and affects all MDM solutions.

Cloud distribution point management is a bit lackluster. Repository syncing feels clunky. Some UI/nav isn't what you naturally expect it to be. None of these are dealbreakers.

Avantages

I love how I have the entire campus inventory at my finger tips and I can create policies that extended workflows for the entire population or just a small portion. I have enjoyed seeing how this product has evolved since my days as a Casper user.

Inconvénients

I wish JAMF Pro could provide a more automated way of doing software security updates like in years past. I feel like this is one area that has kind of been lagging behind.

Avantages

Works seamlessly with Apple devices and software, easy to deploy, easy to manage multiple devices in multiple locations.

Inconvénients

a little difficult to learn, if you've never used an MDM before, but it's not too bad once you get it set up

Alternatives envisagées 

Cisco Meraki

Logiciel antérieur 

Cisco Meraki

Pourquoi passer à Jamf Pro

price, better integration with Apple devices

Avantages

It make management of macOS, iOS, and iPadOS easy and seamless. JAMF always has day 1 support of releases and adds features as needed.

Inconvénients

The new UI was made to make things better on mobile devices, which is was, but it made it a little more confusing on the compute browsers. Icons and text are always preferred over only icons.

Avantages

It does everything that Apple lets them do. Save money and time by having less IT support staff and your staff feels like they have the power to manage themselves and not need to reach out to IT and feel frustrated when it takes too long to respond.

The community is a huge plus as you can normally get hard questions answered by pros who are happy to help at no charge.

Support is great as well. Things do break, but they are there to help.

Inconvénients

Cost is a factor as it is continuing to go up.
It can be very complex and hard to understand some of the more useful features as there are a ton of hoops to jump through to get everything working and if something breaks it can take a while to figure it out.

Avantages

Works well to manage apps and profiles on iPads. With privacy concerns about apps, this makes it all much more centrally manageable.

Inconvénients

Historical records on geo location would be good for when iPads are hard to find

Avantages

JAMF does exactly what it says it will. No question. If there's something you'd like to do with your macOS or iOS MDM (also tvOS) and Apple has released the ability to actually do that - JAMF will allow you to control it.

Inconvénients

Only sticking point for me is the price point. JAMF is the gold standard for Apple MDM. They are also the solid-gold-price.

Avantages

Easily write, test, and implement policies to proactively support Mac desktop and laptop users
Zero-day support for Apple software and hardware releases
Simple DEP and VPP integration with excellent documentation
Outstanding customer support
Large and active user community with a strong commitment to sharing solutions and ideas

Inconvénients

STILL no effective built-in software patching tools
Long-standing UI quirks and obsolete JSS interface
Not enough functionality to track changes over time (show me adoption rates of new software titles for a given smart group, etc)
Rudimentary support for user notifications still requires extensive scripting to be effective
Mandatory JumpStart training a waste of money for experienced Jamf admins

Avantages

I LOVE the ease of this product when needing to manage a large number of Apple Devices. I also think that they have a wonderful user conference, and great community that are very willing to share trials, tribulations and triumphs. Classes to get certified are great and those leading them are knowledgeable and thorough.

Inconvénients

I don't like all of the changes with managing iPads year after year and the difficulty there was transitioning when they were first able to "managed", however, I believe that was mostly Apple's fault, not the fault of JAMF.

Avantages

Jams Pro always provides 0 day support, we use it to manage our customers fleets. At least 50 instances managing 20,000 devices total. They always provide the latest features from apple without any delay or wait like other MDM vendors.

Inconvénients

There are a number of legacy features or manual setup steps that can be confusing. Also some of the features assume Active Directory which isn’t alway common with most organizations.

Alternatives envisagées 

Cisco Meraki

Pourquoi passer à Jamf Pro

Better mac support, hands down.

Avantages

This software allows you to manage several computers as well as iPads from it's friendly user interface. We've implemented it successfully in our schools (over 20 locations) and it is a tremendous help. We've been able to use this software to deploy programs and applications without having to hand install them on multiple computers/iPads..it's a HUGE time saver.

Inconvénients

There really isn't too much to not like about this software. Their support team is friendly/knowledgeable, they stand by their product, and it is easy to use.

Avantages

The layout and use interface is fantastic and intuitive. I implemented Jamf pro blind, relying on the support team and good old documentation to help me out. The support team was fantastic and also teached me how to accomplish various tasks on the platform

Inconvénients

Its very expensive with a mandatory training program. I don think its nessesary and i was able to negotiate out of it.

Avantages

Ability to quickly enroll, deploy, and support device management for Macs and iPads.

Inconvénients

Need ability to apply unique device names in conjunction with Automated Device Enrollment / Inventory Preload

Avantages

When I took over our Apple OS environment, I was not an Apple user. It was extremely easy to work with JAMF and within a 6 months, I had figured things out, had completed 2 JAMF upgrades, and was enrolling Mac OS devices. Its a super simple product and is the best for management.

Inconvénients

Most of my issues with JAMF are related more to Apple limiting the kinds of features I want to be able to configure. Apple needs to allow MDMs to set more things.