Apple Remote Desktop vs. NinjaOne

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apple Remote Desktop
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
Apple Remote Desktop (ARD), from Apple, is a remote administration tool for managing Apple computers running OS X across a network.
$79.99
one-time fee
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 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 Remote DesktopNinjaOne
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apple Remote DesktopNinjaOne
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsNinjaOne 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 Remote DesktopNinjaOne
Features
Apple Remote DesktopNinjaOne
Remote Administration
Comparison of Remote Administration features of Product A and Product B
Apple Remote Desktop
8.0
25 Ratings
2% below category average
NinjaOne
-
Ratings
Screen sharing8.925 Ratings00 Ratings
File transfer9.024 Ratings00 Ratings
Instant message9.320 Ratings00 Ratings
Secure remote access with Smart Card authentication8.53 Ratings00 Ratings
Access to sleeping/powered-off computers7.219 Ratings00 Ratings
Over-the-Internet remote session9.019 Ratings00 Ratings
Initiate remote control from mobile7.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Remote management of servers & workstations8.421 Ratings00 Ratings
Remote Active Directory® management7.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Centralized management dashboard8.516 Ratings00 Ratings
Session record7.39 Ratings00 Ratings
Annotations7.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring and Alerts8.312 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-platform remote control6.37 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring Tasks
Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Product A and Product B
Apple Remote Desktop
-
Ratings
NinjaOne
8.9
41 Ratings
18% above category average
Remote monitoring00 Ratings8.838 Ratings
Network device monitoring00 Ratings7.536 Ratings
Activity Monitoring00 Ratings8.424 Ratings
Management Tasks
Comparison of Management Tasks features of Product A and Product B
Apple Remote Desktop
-
Ratings
NinjaOne
8.6
40 Ratings
14% above category average
Patch Management00 Ratings8.939 Ratings
Policy-based automation00 Ratings8.840 Ratings
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User Ratings
Apple Remote DesktopNinjaOne
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(25 ratings)
9.4
(47 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(3 ratings)
9.8
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(4 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(4 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apple Remote DesktopNinjaOne
Likelihood to Recommend
Apple
I would rate this higher if I was confident that Apple is continuing to develop this utility. It has only received minor updates for quite a long time, and is not featured much in any of Apple's online material. It really is a useful utility, but it is starting to show its age and is fraying a bit around the edges in some respects. It could be very useful when integrated with the various MDM solutions (in our case, Jamf Pro) especially when an engineer needs to force something immediately and can't wait for a check-in, and also can't depend on the end user being able to (for instance) do a sudo jamf policy or sudo jamf recon.
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NinjaOne
I think it is appropriate to use NinjaOne for Medium sized businesses. We feel like it can handle our environment of 300 machines. The ticketing system integrating with devices and monitoring is a plus for us since we don't need another third party integration to connect the two. NinjaOne patching could use improvement but they have built up a lot of other pieces of their infrastructure.
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Pros
Apple
  • Automator Actions: This is a very cool feature and cost saving as it reduces human effort by automating the workflow of tasks.
  • Curtain Mode: This lets you block your local user's view of the desktop while performing administrative tasks.
  • Spotlight Search: It can perform lightning fast searches on machines using the spotlight search feature of OS X and thus saves a lot of time.
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NinjaOne
  • Remote connections: the NinjaRemote client is spectacular and very easy to use and navigate. It quickly connects to customer systems so my engineers are able to work. As a bonus, they also offer a really good mobile app to connect to client systems.
  • Antivirus: Bitdefender Endpoint Protection is built directly into the NinjaOne portal. This makes deploying and maintaining AV very easy.
  • OS Patching: NinjaOne makes it very easy to handle patching across multiple clients and locations. It is very easy to use and doesn't take long to set up.
  • Support: NinjaOne support is always very prompt and helpful.
  • Documentation: the NinjaOne Dojo is a one-stop shop for all of your FAQs, guides, and forum needs. You can find almost anything here to help you deploy and maintain NinjaOne.
  • Automation Library: NinjaOne comes preloaded with a large number of ready-to-go automations. They also provide you with a scripting module to create your own.
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Cons
Apple
  • I would like to see more included Unix scrips that can be pushed to clients.
  • Inclusion of a way to remote control or screen share with Windows machines would be useful, as I manage a handful of Windows machines. While this would be possible using VNC on the Windows machines, including the ability to connect using Windows terminal connections would be awesome, for me.
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NinjaOne
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apple
It is a fairly unique tool in the level of integration it has with Apple Desktop products. It definitely needs some engineering attention, and it should be expanded to the iOS arena. It is not perfect, but it is very useful and fills an otherwise fairly empty niche in the support toolkit realm. The built-in screen sharing app in macOS handles the direct screen control or viewing function fairly well, but it does not have all of the other mass control features that Apple Remote Desktop supplies.
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NinjaOne
We already did. After evaluating many platforms, we found the cybersecurity of the company, its development direction, and the performance of the platform to be far superior at its price point.
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Usability
Apple
Once it is set up, it is quite straightforward to use. However, currently, it requires both a script to run to set up permissions and controls, AND a command from the MDM to authorize it to be active. The MDM management command is manual. This is not conducive to an automated workflow, and sometimes gets forgotten. Then, the endpoint is not contactable until someone realizes that the MDM command was not sent or was not successful.
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NinjaOne
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Apple
No answers on this topic
NinjaOne
Availability is very good
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Performance
Apple
No answers on this topic
NinjaOne
The software loads quickly for the most part
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Support Rating
Apple
When i have needed support it was for Hardware not the software itself
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NinjaOne
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.
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In-Person Training
Apple
No answers on this topic
NinjaOne
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.
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Online Training
Apple
No answers on this topic
NinjaOne
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.
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Implementation Rating
Apple
Very quick and easy install with no real issues
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NinjaOne
Use of Organizations and locations
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Alternatives Considered
Apple
I would feel much more comfortable having one of these alternative solutions as our Remote Desktop management tools. Each has their drawbacks and expenses associated with them, but we simply have too large of a deployment to not be considering alternatives. If it is the only solution you can afford, it is OK to start here. I could see where this would have a return on investment, but it is really only suitable for a very small and localized scale. If employees are at all mobile, the duct taping of products necessary (VPN, distribution points, script repositories) would be very cumbersome.
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NinjaOne
NinjaOne's user friendly interface was immediately appealing to a team that that needs to be able to pickup a tool and know how to run with it at first exposure. From the moment we started using it, we would often be able to navigate the platform with a common sense approach and be able to navigate to exactly what we were looking for without requiring documentation or guidance. Customer representatives that we have worked with have all been outstanding, and have not been pushy like some other vendors teams tend to be when you are initially debating between multiple offers.
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Scalability
Apple
No answers on this topic
NinjaOne
Overall the software is very reliable
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Return on Investment
Apple
  • Apple Remote Desktop has a positive return on investment because for the expense to the school, the value it brings to teachers is important. The return on improved student performance is very difficult to measure financially, but there is a definite return.
  • The overall objective of education is to increase student learning, ARD does that phenomenally. Parents see the tool used and are impressed at what the capabilities of the tool can do and how it impacts how active their students are as well as how well they can learn.
  • One negative impact is that teachers rely too much on this tool rather than on actually teaching sometimes.
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NinjaOne
  • Windows patching as we cannot get employees to do it themselve so that alone is making an impact
  • having data about our pcs all the time which we did not have before
  • remote access to pcs in a variety of ways vs hoping remote desktop would work
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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