Fleetsmith

Easy solution to bootstrap your IT and MDM

Commentaires : Fleetsmith makes managing large number of devices easy and foolproof even when the organization is too small for an official IT owner.

Avantages :

We've been able to harness MDM and smoother onboarding with very little resource thanks to Fleetsmith. It's easy and very intuitive for any team member. Very light weight and functional.

Inconvénients :

It does not allow for remote wipe unless the computer is connected to online. I have also heard that when we have a robust security and IT process, we may have to move onto a more robust system.

Great for startups on budget

Commentaires : Keeping up to date with all patches and forcing users to do their updates is now a breeze.
Checking computer compliance such as hard disk encryption, screensavers, password policy is now also fully centralised.
Added controls such as remote wipe or preventing computer to connect to unknown wifi spots also certainly limit or mitigate risks of data theft.

Avantages :

Pricing is very attractive (free) with less than 10 assets, impossible to beat. Profiles are easy to setup and it does help to get started very quickly. Installation is also very straightforward which is GREAT as opposed to some other tools we assessed. MDM and DEP are supported, which is awesome so that you can literally leave the computer setup itself (although we have not yet activated DEP). Would recommend to anyone considering to secure a small park of computers to give it a try on a machine to see if it fits their needs.

Inconvénients :

It supports only Apple devices, pricing may give me second thoughts going over 10 users (we will want to retain the software but some competitor may become more interesting). It does integrate a lot of features and software that can be installed automatically on computers, however it does not support ALL the software we wish to see. It also does not include (as yet) device location tracking or some "smart" features such as automatically enforcing updates within X days for vulnerable softwares (for example some Chrome updates are "cosmetic" but some do fix security issues and it would be great to see them automatically enforced without manual action). Still... quite sure these will come in time!

Fleetsmith Was Great - Maybe They Will Be Again One Day?

Avantages :

Fleetsmith was a great fit for us until Apple purchased them and removed all the functionality that drew us to the product in the first place. Under Apple's ownership the security standards are high, and they are slowly adding functionality back in, so it might return to greatness.

Inconvénients :

Lack of integration with volume app purchasing, and the sale of the product to Apple which resulted in massive loss of functionality.

Very strong MDM solution - but scalability can be hard with complex needs/environments

Commentaires : I've been happy with the basic uses of Fleetsmith and the team is amazing. They are constantly working on new features and hopefully they tackle some of the biggest feature requests soon but it's the best value for money for SMB that I've ever worked with.

Avantages :

Fleetsmith has great integration with GSuite and a clear and straightforward management dashboard to deploy and manage assets. The setup is very simple and takes no time to get plugging away at configuring your environment. The support team via tickets or in Slack are super helpful, responsive, and all around a great group of people to help out if needed. Also, the way that FS keeps apps that don't require an update continuously updated while closed is a really elegant way to not worry about an ever growing collection of end user apps.

Inconvénients :

The biggest issues I have encountered come with the implementation of profiles in FS and the lack of custom package deployment. The approve and assign process could definitely use some streamlining as it's a few steps to get things how I like them. The Global Profile is not useful for me as there are a lot of different subsets of devices. This is further compounded by the inability to assign multiple profiles which I would find very useful in an enterprise settings (tailoring devices by department and/or geographic location). As for the applications catalog, it's got some standards in there, but it is very limited. Without the ability deploy custom packages and now whitelist KEXT unless it's in the FS catalog, it really defeats a lot of convenience of an MDM

Fleetsmith - a missed opportunity

Commentaires : Fleetsmith is very good at the bits it does do, you need to keep in mind there are limitations in what you can manage now. The lack of any roadmap from Apple means other options namely the Jamf products are worth evaluating before paying for Fleetsmith. If you find it fits your requirements though it is a reliable product.

Avantages :

We started using Fleetsmith before Apple acquired the company and the ability to easily onboard users with a generous free tier was superb. The ability to deploy a number of key pieces of software from their catalog was great and there we some good levels of control over device settings including key escrow for disk encryption.

Inconvénients :

Many of the features that made it so great disappeared overnight though and have not returned. There is no roadmap from Apple to say what the plans are. There were also little things that you couldn't acheive with Fleetsmith such as easily deploying a website shortcut to the desktop. Luckily they did leave the custom script in place so bash is an option but this is something that should be slicker.