Jamf Pro Reviews

We are a small yet busy design studio. We don't have an internal IT department, so I needed a solution to standardize our Mac fleet. Jamf helped me manage our Macs, so I didn't have to install or update all the software manually. 

When the COVID lockdown came, I managed all the Macs from the Jamf dashboard. 

Everyone lives far apart, so being able to deploy updates was important. If someone needed a new computer, I could talk them through the process instead of doing it myself.  

Before Jamf, I manually installed all the applications, updated the operating system, and ran diagnostics. I would go from station to station, which took a long time. I also coordinated with each user to find time for their updates or maintenance. 

Now, with Jamf, almost all of it is managed remotely. I generally don't need to schedule time with the user. I program updates or new installations after hours, which works better for everyone. Now that we are working remotely, those tasks would be challenging. 

Smart computer groups are one of my favorite features. You can create a group based on specific features. If I need to deploy an app to all the laptops, I can use the smart group I created for them instead of choosing each device one at a time. This also removes the possibility of forgetting to include one or more devices. Another feature I like to the ability to create and save a specific search that I need frequently. The customizable inventory page is also helpful, so you can see your inventory at a glance and sort it by a specific column.

Tool tip-type information would be helpful. Sometimes, when creating a configuration profile or policy, I'm unsure about a specific choice. It would be great to have a pop-up with links for more information on a feature. 

It would be great for Jamf to provide templates for commonly used tasks like updating an operating system, packaging commonly used apps like Office 365, or enabling FileVault. 

I envision a standard setup template where you could make simple choices. Since all the hardware is Apple, I don't see why that can't be provided. 

I've used the solution for five years.

The customer service could be improved. That said, the support has always been very helpful and responsive. 

I did not previously use a different service; I did everything by myself.

The initial setup was quite complex. Once the initial setup was completed, I found it difficult to remember the steps. 

We did the implementation in-house with a Jamf engineer. 

If you are new to Jamf, take a course, or hire an expert to teach you how to set everything up. The initial jump start they suggest isn't enough. 

I did not previously evaluate other options. However, we are looking at some now. 

Once you get it going, it's great. Their support is also very good. 

We use this program to manage all of our Apple devices in our different locations. We have Zoom rooms set up that use iPads that we configure to stay in single app mode so users are unable to change anything. 

We also use it to manage the kiosk we have set up when we have guests. We have also implemented a BYOD policy where we have users sign up with Jamf and it allows us to push apps from our business to their phones. It's nice. We also make sure they select the "personally-owned" option so we don't accidentally take full control of their device.

It has made our day-to-day job so much easier since implementing Jamf Pro at our company. We have a simple to use one-stop-shop for all our Apple devices. We can manage all our Macbooks and see what apps are installed or even see what macOS version they are on. Then we can remotely force install the newest version of the macOS and either allow the user to upgrade on their own or force it to upgrade then and there. Jamf Pro is great for lost devices as well, they have a "Lost Mode" command that will ping their last known location and even make a noise.

The first most valuable feature I found was the ability to simply push out applications to devices, Mac or iPads/iPhones. (We also have the ability to manage desktops and AppleTV devices if needed). It's as easy as procuring the licensing for the apps and then setting it to the volume purchasing back in Jamf. 

Another great feature is the ability to set all different kinds of restrictions on the devices. We can block certain settings, the App Store, or even specific apps! We can even do the opposite and only allow selected apps.

It's really hard to figure out anything that needs to be improved in Jamf. They do everything so well and they are constantly updating the system. 

Since we are in the cloud, it just updates automatically and little bugs/glitches are always being fixed. 

Apple does block certain actions from happening or disallows Jamf from making certain changes. This is the only true issue I can see, which is not truly a Jamf issue. I would just hope that one day Apple will allow Jamf to make changes to the screen sharing changes so that way we can fully support remote employees. 

I have been using this solution for almost two years now.

Support is great. They have multiple ways to contact them and are fairly responsive. They will also follow up a couple of times before closing the ticket due to no responses.

Positive

Initially, Jamf Pro was primarily used to manage our all-Mac computer lab classrooms for one of our departments. Jamf Pro replaced a mix of DeployStudio, Munki, WorkGroupManager, and a couple of other antiquated tools which I'm sure I'm forgetting.  

Having one solution which replaced all those other moving parts has been a godsend. We are now expanding to managing individual faculty/staff Macs as well. It's going to be a bit of a process, but I'm excited to have Jamf Pro managing more and more of our assets.

Jamf Pro allows us to maintain an updated and consistent user experience in our classrooms while reducing the hands-on time required from our techs. Long gone are the days of running around (or even manually logging in via ARD) to update our classroom systems.

Jamf Pro is also helping our techs to more efficiently deploy new Macs to faculty and staff.  This is also a boon for security, as faculty and staff no longer need to have a secondary account for admin purposes - or worse, run as admin day-to-day.

Being able to easily deploy apps and patches to our client computers with minimal hands-on time from our techs has been huge. Being able to choose which apps and patches are deployed to which computer groups allows me to easily test on one batch of computers before pushing them out to the rest of our fleet.

The inventory reporting is also much more thorough than other solutions which just don't play nicely - or at least as nicely as they could/should - with Macs.  Due to the fact that it's all in the same system, we can get pretty granular about which apps/patches get pushed out to which hardware sets (Intel vs. M1, for example).

It would be nice if there was a built-in means of renaming computers that worked reliably.  This is a common problem I've heard many other Mac admins wish for as well.  

While Jamf Pro *can* rename computers, there are weird priorities based on when the computers check-in that can overwrite the desired name - particularly if your organization does not use any of the rather limited naming conventions that Jamf *can* recognize. Manually naming computers is one thing our techs still have to do. It's not a deal-breaker, but not ideal.

I've used the solution for about four years now.

We are a kindergarten to eighth grade school district in Illinois and we have the need to manage our student and teacher devices. We manage a total of 1,600 devices between macOS laptops and Apple iPads. As students move between grade levels and application needs changes. 

In addition, we need to make it easy so our students and teachers don't need to worry about making tech work, but instead can pick up and use devices without needing many tech skills. We also want to make sure multiple users in our organization have the ability to manage devices.

Jamf Pro has allowed us to make sure settings for our devices are easily installed so our end-users don't need to worry about a significant amount of steps for setup. We also use this to send applications to devices as well as the day-to-day usage of devices, we have a significant deployment that occurs every year with mobile devices for new students. We have also been able to use Jamf Pro to begin building a better inventory of our devices, have greater insight into patch management, and making sure our devices are up to date.

The ability to build configuration profiles for devices to send settings to devices and making it easy for our students and teachers to install applications has been the most valuable. 

This has meant that when a teacher has an upcoming project, we can be sure applications that may be needed will be on the devices ahead of time so they can use their instructional time to teach. In addition, creating smart devices and user groups means our environment can be very flexible and make changes to our deployment without a significant amount of additional work. 

We would love to see the ability to have settings apply to mobile devices on a time schedule. This would allow us to plan some tasks ahead of time. For example, we often have testing needs throughout the school year and the ability to do things like set a date to install an app and a date to remove an app would help us schedule upcoming tasks better. The same would go for things like web clips; we often share links with students for accessing content and being able to have this appear/disappear on a date would be helpful.

I have been using Jamf for five years.

It is very stable.

The scalability is very good.

Support has been responsive to our needs.

Positive

MaaS360 - this worked for our smaller deployment of about 100 devices, but as we expanded devices in our organization we needed a more flexible solution.

The initial setup was simple.

We implemented in-house.

It is tough to quantify the value but it has allowed our team to be more efficient.

When evaluating solutions to look at the pricing delta between products rather than the total cost.

We did not evaluate other solutions. 

We are a medium-sized company, and our fleet is 95% Macs.

Jamf helps us to manage Macs remotely via an intuitive dashboard.

Managing macOS can get difficult sometimes without the help of an MDM. With Jamf, I have control of the fleet with a few clicks.

Being able to update third-party applications without the need for other external tools is another plus. 

With minor modifications, we were able to have an almost zero-touch deployment. This way, we know that all Macs will always have the same configurations.

We are also working on the self-service app, which has a lot of potential. 

With Jamf, we can create almost a zero-touch deployment which saves a lot of time with flashing the OS, manually installing the apps, and configuring some settings.

This has enabled us to save time for each onboarding/offboarding/laptop change.

I worked in an environment where we had only 10 Macbooks and no MDM, and without Jamf, it was super hard to manage the Macbooks. With self-service, the sky is the limit. You can do whatever you want with it.

There are some out-of-the-box integrations that can help you achieve some results.

Smart Groups with alerts is useful. This will let me have visibility of the environment without having to constantly see what is happening. 

After some tweaks, zero-touch deployment is another valuable thing. We are able to configure the laptop with the security requirements needed, default applications, and so on without touching it. This feels great, especially when you send a brand new sealed Macbook to some user.

Another awesome feature is Patch Management. Until this day, many people don't know that this exists. However, it helps a lot with patching third-party applications.

The solution needs cheaper training. Some companies don't have that much budget to invest in training. 

They need integrations with known/other services out of the box.

Reports for execs could be more colorful/attractive.

The documentation for the API is still confusing.

Until this day, I still don't know what's the best way to securely run your API in an end-user endpoint.

Some documentation could also be updated or created in cases where a large population uses the same environment (like Jamf + Google + Okta) or something like that. 

I've used the solution for two years.

I used Kandji and ManageEngine in previous jobs.

Jamf was already in my current environment, and it just works, so there is nothing to say here.

For what I remember, 30%

We use Jamf to deploy our Macs and iPads. We have 700 Macs and 700 iPads that we manage using Jamf. We typically refresh around 200 new devices every year. This is a lot to manage.

We can give a user an iPad still in the box and when they open it, they log into the device using their network credentials and Jamf sets up and configures the device automatically.  For Macs, we have minimal set up prior to deployment. Jamf installs all of our company applications and then we use Jamf to keep the Mac up to date.

Without Jamf, it would be nearly impossible to manage 700 Macs and 700 iPads. With limited staff, we can manage this number of devices with ease. Imagine having to go to 700 devices to do a software or OS update. With Jamf, we don't have to touch each device. We can easily determine software and OS versions on the devices and push updates to the devices as needed. We also offer several macOS and iOS applications in Self Service, which is a repository where users can install company-approved applications with ease.

Quick and easy deployment is beneficial when deploying large numbers of devices. The time that we save in hours for new deployments, redeployments, application upgrades and OS upgrades more than makes up for the cost of the product.

Since my company falls under the scope of PCI, we can easily identify applications and OS versions that need to be updated, and we can push the updates automatically. This ability helps us to remain in compliance so that we can pass our annual PC audits with ease.

The only thing I sometimes struggle with is file management of our packages which resided on the Cloud instance of the file repository. Jamf doesn't make the Cloud file system visible so there are rare occasions where the local repository and Cloud repository get out of sync. This is a minor issue, however. The few times that this has ever caused problems for me, I was able to reach out to Jamf support and during a quick phone call, the tech support team was able to identify my issue and offer a quick solution.  

Our company has been using Jamf for over ten years. I have been the Jamf admin for just over one year.

This solution is very stable.

Jamf is extremely scalable. We have around 1400 total devices under management. Other companies have well over 100,000 devices.

Tech support is top-notch. They are easy to access and extremely knowledgeable and helpful.

Jamf was chosen long before I started with the company.

I believe there was just in-house deployment.

The cost of Jamf is certainly worth the investment.

I was not around during evaluation.

I use Jamf Pro primarily for managing Apple devices in our organization, focusing on both shared and one-to-one iPads in classrooms. We utilize it to deploy apps and handle updates, although we faced challenges due to the previous technician's Band-Aid approach, resulting in a majority of iPads running outdated iOS versions.

The most valuable features of Jamf Pro for me are the device locator, which helps find missing iPads, and the ability to remotely manage and disable devices. This has been crucial when dealing with misplaced iPads or addressing security concerns. Additionally, the app library is a powerful tool, and we are exploring ways to make it more accessible for teachers to select curated apps. The classroom feature stands out, allowing us to push content to iPads and monitor student activities.

There is room for improvement with Jamf Pro, especially regarding updates. After a recent update, all app icons disappeared on iPads, requiring a manual refresh for each device. This affected system apps like Safari and Mail. This isn't the first time such issues occurred and it raised concerns about the update process and communication.

I have been working with Jamf Pro for almost nine years.

I have not had any issues with Jamf Pro's stability.

Jamf Pro is currently managing approximately 1,400 devices for us.

The installation process for iOS updates with Jamf Pro can be challenging. Upgrading from version 12 to 13, 13 to 14, and so on must be done in one go, taking hours and requiring a teacher's oversight to prevent issues. Pushing large updates increases the chance of errors, and iPads need to be at least 50% charged. Breaking updates into smaller chunks would be more practical for our over 800 iPads. Additionally, updating individual devices rather than the whole organization would offer more flexibility.

Jamf's reporting and inventory management features have been crucial in compliance and auditing processes. Particularly, for our school's replacement plan mandated by the law, the ability to easily identify and document every iPad and iPhone in our inventory was crucial. Jamf made the process seamless by allowing us to extract the necessary data, customize it in Excel, and present a comprehensive snapshot for each school. 

For new Jamf users, my advice is to prioritize training, breaking it down into manageable chunks to absorb information effectively. Before purchasing, focus on initial installation, app management, and system configurations. Recognize the importance of proactive technicians to ensure a smooth implementation. Be aware that even free apps may require purchasing within Jamf. Understanding options like one-to-one, shared devices, and Jamf Classroom is crucial. Sales pitches are valuable for tech departments, but communication with end-users (teachers and students) is equally important. Overall, I would rate Jamf Pro as a nine out of ten.

It's used for package deployment, security patching, and zero-day vulnerability patching. It is also used for reporting and provisioning new machines into the enterprise. 

It is primarily in the cloud. Most companies are migrating Jamf to the cloud. They're trying to get rid of their on-prem instances, and Jamf prefers that as well.

It is a great tool. Its ease of use is fantastic. It is very simple, and you don't really have a high learning curve with this.

It is a very powerful tool, and there is so much that you can do with it.

There should be an option for exporting the data for reporting purposes so that we can give that to the higher-ups, such as CIO. We should be able to see bar graphs and charts on different data points. It would be great to have a good reporting tool to look at, for example, data points of how many versions of Adobe Acrobat we have in our environment in a bar graph or pie chart. They don't have anything like that. There is an application called Tableau Reader, which does statistics, and you can put a statistical or analytical aspect in there to extract data and share it on a graph or a pie chart. Such a tool would be great.

I've been using it for over 15 years.

It's very stable. There's no issue that I can see.

It's highly scalable. You can have 10,000 clients.

It's used on a daily basis. We have 700 users on one and 1,500 users on the other. We also have about 200 users on another. There are about 3,000 machines.

They are good. They are very accessible. I would rate them a five out of five.

It was pretty straightforward once you're in the cloud. I see it from both ends. I was the one who could set up Jamf in the cloud for clients, and now, I'm on the other end having them doing it. I can just jump and set it up on my side. It takes about five minutes or less.

In terms of maintenance, if you have a good engineer, you don't really need a lot of support. I've supported over a thousand by myself.

A good ROI is the end-user community in which everything becomes more stable and you can provide a self-service feature where you can put the latest applications available within your enterprise, on something like an internal portal for software distribution, for the end-users to download. This way, you have more user empowerment, and you also have more stability in the enterprise regarding updates and patches. There are also fewer issues. If the end-user has a problem, you can use Jamf Remote to remote in and take care of that issue then and there.

It provides ease of use. The ROI is the end-user experience. Jamf is all about the end-user experience, making sure that they're happy with the product and things of that nature.

I've looked at different solutions. KMG was one, and Fleetsmith was another, which was bought by Apple. There was also Blackberry. So, I have looked at all the other ones, and this tool is the best. It is very simplistic and easy to use without a high learning curve.

You have to make sure you have a good engineer who knows how to use the tool, and you're off to the races.

It is a very powerful tool, and you can do so much with it. Therefore, you'd have to figure out:

• What does success look like?
• What is your end goal?
• What do you want to achieve?
• Why do you want to use Jamf Pro?
• What is your use case?

Once you have an idea of what you really want to do, it's very easy to execute that. Some people flounder when they get a tool like this because they have no idea what they want. The best thing is to keep it simple and then build upon a good, sound foundation of simplicity. That's what I've found out. If you jump into using this tool and want it all at once, you might get a little overwhelmed.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. As compared to any of the others, it is best-of-breed.