Apple Business Essentials vs. NinjaOne

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apple Business Essentials
Score 8.3 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
NinjaOne
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
NinjaOne automates the hardest parts of IT, delivering visibility, security, and control over endpoints. The NinjaOne endpoint management platform increases productivity for IT teams and managed service providers, and comes with unlimited onboarding, training, and support.N/A
Pricing
Apple Business EssentialsNinjaOne
Editions & Modules
Fleetsmith Managed
$8.25
per device, per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apple Business EssentialsNinjaOne
Free Trial
YesYes
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 periodNinjaOne is a subscription service with a charge rate per month. For more detailed pricing information, contact NinjaOne directly to request a demo or to start 14-days free trial.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apple Business EssentialsNinjaOne
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 …
NinjaOne
Chose NinjaOne
We came from Manage Engine and it is a night and day difference. I would never imagine going back after working with NinjaOne
Chose NinjaOne
We have used many RMM providers and the UI, cost and experience has all been better with NinjaOne.

Datto wasn’t able to improve anything in the three years that we use them, in fact they were sold to and immediately started trying to sell us the other services they had.
Chose NinjaOne
this integrates with Splashtop and works well. I am happy with the integration and prefer it over Teamviewer. This is included in our subscription and works with a few clicks. Users can accept / deny the request and if no one is there we can still remote in. Makes servicing …
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne is very simple to use and navigate. There are fewer layers of pages to navigate to get to what you want. This is a time saver and it makes it easier to find what you are looking for.
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne feels like a smaller company, and I mean that in a good way. Their support is quick and helpful and because of our size we are escalated directly to their level 2 support. Our account manager is eager to assist and get ideas/issues to the right people and put those …
Chose NinjaOne
We liked the per device pricing and the UI of the platform most when we decided to leave Datto RMM. We believe that NinjaOne's constant development to improve the product has been really helpful. The quality of the community posts with scripts we can use to automate things …
Chose NinjaOne
Prior to NinjaOne, our IT management was a blank slate. We knew we needed something, and we wanted to ensure we were making the best decision for our organization. We attended demos and talked with sales reps, sales engineers, etc. At the end of the day, it was the relationship …
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne isn't the cheapest or the most expensive. However, it has the most functionality out of the other solutions that we looked at.
Chose NinjaOne
So far NinjaOne has been more stable to use vs the items listed above. It has been easier to setup and go. Easy to setup end user equipment with a quick setup file that an end user can run if you asked them to. The portal is quick to update and quick to allow you to start …
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne has a much better web interface than Automate, in terms of both usability and function. The endpoint search function in NinjaOne is very good with results, and each endpoint agent page has a great overview of the endpoints health, NinjaOne event history, etc. The …
Chose NinjaOne
About 2 years ago we evaluated about a dozen similar utilities that are all aimed at managing and maintaining endpoint from several customers at the same time. At the end of the evaluation, NinjaOne was chosen based on several criteria specifically targeting the use case that …
Chose NinjaOne
Mainly used them to try and push out installs for NinjaOne. But NinjaOne has their own way of pushing out the installs through AD and it made my life so much easier getting this deployed.
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne offers the same feature set that the big players offer, for a fraction of the price. when looking at RMM solutions, there are several large companies out there that claim that they do everything well, but what we have found is that they often do many things, but not …
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne feels like it is way beyond its competitors. Their UI is fantastic, with the exception of no Dark Mode. It is very responsive and easy to navigate. Also, NinjaOne bills monthly with no contract commitment. This makes it much more accessible to smaller and medium-sized …
Chose NinjaOne
The systems screen on NinjaOne is simpler and has more information. You can customize details/columns per technician. CMD, PowerShell, registry emulate the windows look and feel. Pulseway just gives you a big white page to type commands and it doesn’t respond as seamlessly. …
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne has what it takes and is very cost effective for what it provides an IT team. We would not be able to do what we do without it.

Cost comparison wise, NinjaOne is the best option we found that has such a wide breadth of capabilities like it does.
Chose NinjaOne
Ninja does a few things better than Goverlan Reach, like the integrated ticketing. But honestly, Goverlan was much more user-friendly for everything else. N-able has a lot of features, but they're not easy to use, if you can even find them.
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne has more overall features than these competitors bundled in their package. Both of these other products have separate add-ons that will accomplish the additional features that NinjaOne bundles in. While it seems that both may be slightly more powerful when it comes to …
Chose NinjaOne
Ninja is much easier to use that anything I've worked with in the past. We selected Ninja because we felt the learning curve for the team would be the fastest, and the roadmap for the product shows its evolving quickly. Can't say that for many of the other platforms I've …
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne isn't as versatile as N-able. NinjaOne doesn't have as many features or settings as N-able.
N-able is far more complex, which isn't always a good thing. For vary large-scale MSPs, it might be a better choice. However, for a small to medium-sized team, NinjaOne is an …
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne was cheaper and had a more robust platform. Other competitors didn't offer the same number of features or customer support.
Chose NinjaOne
Like all software you have certain features that you don't get in others, specific software like Zoho Assist give great remote access, probably better then Teamviwer (1 of NinjaOne's remote Access Solutions) however you have to have a contract and license for each one and the …
Chose NinjaOne
NinjaOne blows Connectwise out of the water. You can take a college kid right out of school and put them in front of NinjaOne and they will have no issues at all. IT is that easy to use! Connectwise on the other hand uses an academy to get you trained and ready. Yeah if you …
Features
Apple Business EssentialsNinjaOne
Monitoring Tasks
Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Product A and Product B
Apple Business Essentials
-
Ratings
NinjaOne
8.9
Ratings
18% above category average
Remote monitoring00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Network device monitoring00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Activity Monitoring00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Management Tasks
Comparison of Management Tasks features of Product A and Product B
Apple Business Essentials
-
Ratings
NinjaOne
8.6
Ratings
14% above category average
Patch Management00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Policy-based automation00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apple Business EssentialsNinjaOne
Small Businesses
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.0 out of 10
Panda Systems Management
Panda Systems Management
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Meraki SM
Cisco Meraki SM
Score 9.8 out of 10
Action1
Action1
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Meraki SM
Cisco Meraki SM
Score 9.8 out of 10
TeamViewer
TeamViewer
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apple Business EssentialsNinjaOne
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apple Business EssentialsNinjaOne
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.
Read full review
Whether you are an MSP who needs an all-in-one solution for device management, or you are in-house IT who needs a single pane of glass to manage your devices, NinjaOne fits the bill as a top tier solution. The amount of flexibility in scaling to your organization's size is impressive as the platform can be as simple as just using it for remote access, all the way up to deploying comprehensive automation packages in the form of a compound condition that bases its actions on the results of other conditions or scripts.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
  • With Ninja, we are able to have all of our IT tools and management under one umbrella making it extremely easy to keep an eye on all of our servers and workstations.
  • Their support team is OUTSTANDING and gives quick and helpful answers to our questions. Our account manager calls us personally to review any issues and ensure we are running smoothly.
  • Ninja gives us automated patch management of our important devices, and has a nice security log to see what's been done.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
  • NinjaOne does support Mac, however I would like to have more options for automation and scheduled task on Mac devices.
  • I would like it if NinjaOne also provided an MDM solution.
  • It would be nice is NinjaOne could integrate a PAM solution as well.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
I have not had any real issues with NinjaOne and as long as it keeps doing what it is meant to do, I do not plan on looking elsewhere. I need software to be stable and NinjaOne is stable.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Ninja's interface is clean and simple. Overall usability from an interface perspective is good. Some items, policies and scripting for instance, are a bit cumbersome and it's really not clear how to implement with a best practice mind-site. Ninja RMM got the job done for us but as we pushed our needs more into automation and efficiency we felt it wasn't keeping up with our speed of growth. There is definitely usability in the product, and it will get the job done, but there are other RMM's out there that fit better in our business.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Availability is very good
Read full review
Performance
No answers on this topic
The software loads quickly for the most part
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Support has been very responsive and my account rep Brian K. has communicated with me continuously making sure we had everything we need. Not like other MDMs where they sign you up and that's the last you hear from them. NinjaOne makes sure you use the product to its best application and you are successful and continue as the product features grow.
Read full review
In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
Easy to learn and all of the functions and features were easy to learn. Once I started learning all of the features and functions, it made my everyday tasks much easier and more productive. The user interface is very easy to use. If I did have any questions, the Ninja Dojo was a big help.
Read full review
Online Training
No answers on this topic
It was nice and self paced learning. The sections were easy to understand and the functionality was very worthwhile. The online training was very easy to learn and intuitive. I did not feel the need to ask for any clarification or assistance with any of the sections. I am still learning a lot of the functions but fined it very easy to use.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Use of Organizations and locations
Read full review
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
We used Auto Task and Datto. We felt that NinjaOne was a more user friendly platform. There was a large training curve for new employees to learn to use Auto Task. We have noticed a shortened training curve for NinjaOne. We really like the layout and the Ninja Academy.
Read full review
Scalability
No answers on this topic
Overall the software is very reliable
Read full review
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.
Read full review
  • NinjaOne is a monthly payment with no commitment, this is much better suited to an MSP than other competitors that try to wrap you up into a 3-5-year contract. As an MSP, we could lose a client at any moment and it sucks to be stuck in a contract where we can't lower our agent counts.
  • NinjaOne helps my techs be more efficient and productive. Saving time and money.
Read full review
ScreenShots

NinjaOne Screenshots

Screenshot of the NinjaRMM dashboardScreenshot of the NinjaRMM mobile appScreenshot of NinjaRMM automationScreenshot of NinjaRMM device detailsScreenshot of NinjaRMM network monitoring - NetFlowScreenshot of NinjaRMM virtual machine monitoring