Apple Business Essentials vs. Cisco Secure Endpoint for iOS (Security Connector)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apple Business Essentials
Score 8.4 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
Cisco Secure Endpoint for iOS (Security Connector)
Score 0.0 out of 10
N/A
From partnership with Apple, Cisco now offers mobile device security through Cisco Secure Endpoint for iOS (formerly Security Connector), an application to provide visibility and control for iOS, and to accelerate and advance the mobile workforce. With it, businesses can gain visibility into network traffic on iOS devices and block connections to malicious sites, wherever users go.N/A
Pricing
Apple Business EssentialsCisco Secure Endpoint for iOS (Security Connector)
Editions & Modules
Fleetsmith Managed
$8.25
per device, per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apple Business EssentialsCisco Secure Endpoint for iOS (Security Connector)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo 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 EssentialsCisco Secure Endpoint for iOS (Security Connector)
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
JAMF Pro is more expensive and is not as user-friendly for organization-wide deployment.
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.
Chose Apple Business Essentials
I include Samsung Knox as a competitor in this field because you can have a similar setup with any Samsung devices purchased through a reseller as well. We have gone down this route for a few devices that have needed to be Android and the difference between the two platforms is …
Cisco Secure Endpoint for iOS (Security Connector)

No answer on this topic

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User Ratings
Apple Business EssentialsCisco Secure Endpoint for iOS (Security Connector)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apple Business EssentialsCisco Secure Endpoint for iOS (Security Connector)
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.
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No answers on this topic
Pros
  • 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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No answers on this topic
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.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
It's very simple to use. Sometimes a little too simple, so it can be tempting to fiddle around or tweaks settings that might have annoying downstream impacts. But it's easy to rollback or disable changes anyway. My only wish is that each option set should have its own deeper explanation about the impact of the options on real-world users or security concerns.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
I include Samsung Knox as a competitor in this field because you can have a similar setup with any Samsung devices purchased through a reseller as well. We have gone down this route for a few devices that have needed to be Android and the difference between the two platforms is night-and-day. Apple Business Essentials Manager is much easier to use and manage.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • 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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No answers on this topic
ScreenShots