SOTI MobiControl Reviews

It's used to manage the devices in our company.

The best feature is its compatibility with various device versions, such as Windows, making it work seamlessly.

In future releases, I would like to see a better configuration of the dashboard.

Moreover, sometimes it's not very user-friendly because you need to change the profile and add the package to the profile before deploying the device.

I have been using this solution for a few years. I currently use the version 15.6.5.

It's stable, even with the cloud version. I haven't encountered

The customer service and support are good. They resolved my issues very easily. The support is very user-friendly.  Even the technicians were Italian were like me, so it was very good.

chose it for the remote control capabilities and its support for various operating systems, like Windows CA, and other software support.

The initial setup was easy for me.

The solution is not expensive.

I would like to compare it with Intune because Intune is a free tool, but I want to understand this software better.

I would recommend using the solution. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten because it's an industrial product, and it's not easy to configure a product like that.

SOTI is mainly used for managing mobile devices, like laptops, mobile barcode scanners, and mobile printers. It's used for security, OS updates, and monitoring. 

SOTI's most valuable feature has to be mobile device management and visibility through the main console. There's a central dashboard that you can use to monitor the devices and keep track of usage, battery consumption, and battery life. So at the beginning of a shift, a client can look at all the places that just logged on and see how many of them have bad batteries. For example, if you see batteries that just came off a charger but they are under 80% charge when they should be fully recharged. They've also got a couple of new products. They have a software development app called SOTI Snap that lets users create Android applications

SOTI has a ticketing solution as well for help desk requests from different departments. They can track, take photos and generate new requests, then follow up on old requests. They can obviously close requests that have been fully managed and taken care of.

Companies like SOTI and Mobile Iron are working with Google to help them manage these devices and eliminate the use of bar code scanner sales and mobile device sales. That's kind of crazy. The majority of the devices that we sell use Android OS. With the latest versions of Android that are coming out, like 10 and 11, you have to have MDM software to register devices with Google. You can't get them online without going through an MDM, it's kind of this funny new aspect of Android, and it's all designed so they can control all their Android devices in the future. With the way things are licensed and the direction that Android and Google are going, they're trying to eliminate old legacy devices.

There's no way to stop that unless you control the licensing. So if a company buys a hundred new devices, they have to register with Google. Once they're registered, if a new company tries to sell those hundred devices five years later and another company tries to register the devices, Google can shut them down and say that they're not authorized to relicense this product

I've been using SOTI for about 15 years.

SOTI seems to be stable.

I believe SOTI is scalable. There are big corporations out there — companies with upwards of 4,000 cell phones that they need to manage — using it. From what I understand, SOTI handles that volume very well.

SOTI tech support is solid.

Setup is easy for the on-prem. For transitions to the cloud, it can take two days to get everything converted up and uploaded into the cloud. We just did one recently and there weren't any problems. It switched over from on-prem to cloud pretty seamlessly.

Customers can achieve some cost savings using SOTI. For example, SOTI can keep track of things like data consumption and roaming. Say there's a truck driver out on the road playing Pandora over his phone and it's adding up all these roaming charges to the company, they can get the data on stuff like that, then configure the devices to not allow roaming.

SOTI is fairly priced. It's not super expensive. If you have a thousand devices that are licensed, it's going to start climbing up in price. Typically, it's like 25 bucks a seat for a year. There is also is a maintenance cost to it. It's like seven bucks for tech support. So it's right around 30 dollars on average per seat.

Out of all the alternatives, SOTI is definitely the mobile device management software that we recommend. There is a handful of them out there — Mobile Iron, Avanti, and AirWatch—  and it seems like the majority of people are using SOTI over the other ones. A lot of people use the other ones as well, but it does seem like SOTI is the leader in that field.

The owners of this company are seasoned wireless guys that have been doing this for 20 years and SOTI is all we sell. When we come up against a customer that has AirWatch, we've sold them on the benefits of SOTI over the other types of software and transitioned them to using SOTI rather than the other competitors.

I would give SOTI a solid eight out of 10. 

We use it for tracking RF units. Across the whole network, we have about 1,000 devices.

The way SOTI has improved our organization is that we were trying to get off of the legacy MSP configuration. The improvement for us is having an OS and an interface for which we can get active support, if we need it, for configuring a unit.

One of the most valuable features is the ease of moving items from one configuration to another; it's a Windows-like setup. Also, the admin console is very easy to manage and to move through.

For the most part, the application deployment works well. Occasionally, when moving a gun, we'll see that we have to manually intervene, when working with the setup.

It has been very stable, so far.

The scalabililty is very good. We've not seen any issues. We have five sites, so far, that are using it.

So far, tech support has been very good. They're responsive and they've been able to provide solutions to the issues that we've brought up.

We used MSP previously. We switched to SOTI because MSP was out-of-support.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had to work with our server team so that it was set up the way QC likes to have things set up. To set up the server, it took about a week or two, and that was more just a matter of coordinating. It was very reasonable. It took longer, on our side, to do the legal part.

Our strategy has been to use SOTI to move away from MSP and to get legacy equipment operational, before trying to get anything new going.

In terms of deployment, we've mostly had one person from each of our sites focused on this particular implementation. At some sites, the configuration changes more rapidly than at others.

We worked with SOTI on the set up.

We really haven't had that much time with it yet. It's working well. We have more flexibility with the solution, but there isn't really a fixed number that I can give for ROI at this point.

SOTI's pricing seems to be competitive.

AirWatch was the other one we looked at.

Make sure you can gather your equipment and thoroughly test the configuration before you start rolling out.

We use the remote control technology and screen sharing features for both Android and IOS. At my location, we are using it more for Windows, while some of the other sites are using it for Android. There have not been any complaints or any concerns, they've been working well. I don't know that it's reduced device downtime, as of yet. We're relatively new using it.

We also lock down units and that has also been working fine. We do not have the location services on at this point in time, with our configuration. 

We will be increasing usage of SOTI when we bring on the new DC site that we're planning to put up in the middle of next year. I can't say it's been a cost-savings. It's been more of an update solution, for us.

We use it to track our iPads and for upgrading them with software upgrades.

For us, having a 40-person sales team, it's definitely helped improve efficiency. Using the serial number and all the different filters within SOTI, I have the ability to not only keep track of a device when a sales rep forgets to let me know which one it is, but definitely to do better inventory, too.

With SOTI allowing me to remote-access the devices to either unlock, lock, or change any settings, it has saved us the manpower of needing to hire someone to go to where that device is to fix it or do any troubleshooting. That's where SOTI has been very helpful, in terms of saving time and money.

The feature I find most valuable within SOTI is the ability to reset or unlock a device. A lot of the devices that we use are in the field. We have locations in Dallas, San Diego, Seattle, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona and there isn't always someone, within our company, who is managing these devices. Sometimes it's the doctors' offices that we partner with where they use these devices. Having the ability to remotely reset a device or unlock a device has been super-crucial for me.

Also, although they're Apple products, we don't use the Find My iPhone feature because that would require us to use so many fake numbers or come up with a list of numbers. SOTI has been super-helpful in helping us track where an iPad is and in knowing that we can remote-access it.

If SOTI had an in-your-account chat feature, that would be super-helpful. I've been having some trouble with getting ahold of someone to help me when I have an issue within SOTI or with a device or with my account. And with staff members of SOTI being in Canada, the time difference doesn't tend to help. They have fewer people in the office at times that I'm in the office.

So if SOTI is able to build in a chat feature where it allows a user to chat with someone while they're in their account and trying to figure out a problem, that would be super-helpful for me and my company. That is one of the biggest things we have struggled with, with SOTI: finding what's wrong with our account at, say, 2:00 pm, when no one at SOTI is available to help; or when our account managers have stepped away from their office or email and they can't get to us, but we need the device working.

Also, one thing I asked our account manager and one of the tech support agents about, previously, was: There is a feature within SOTI that I've seen where I can right-click my device and it would allow me to locate my device. However, the thing we've struggled with is that SOTI requires me to have the Find My iPhone feature turned on. What I want to know is, can SOTI, within their mobile device management system, as we're downloading that into the device, have something that reads the location without the Find My iPhone - or Find My Device on the Apple iPad - turned on? With the privacy setting on the 300 iPads that we use, we allow the location to be found, but we don't have the Find My iPhone feature turned on. So if SOTI can somehow build it so that I can locate my device without needing Find My iPhone turned on, that would be another super-helpful thing that would benefit our company.

Another issue is that if someone is using an Apple device and they're on the SIM card for data, it does not push the SOTI management system through immediately. It only works when you have it on WiFi. That's something I've noticed as we're troubleshooting and deploying devices into the field. Some of our sales managers have had an issue with this, waiting for SOTI, plus our company's app, to go through to their iPads. It does not work on a SIM card only, it only works through WiFi.

Additionally, reporting could be better. When I try to run a report, it doesn't have a filter or even a feature where I can choose what I have in the report. That's been a struggle since the first time I used it so I just don't touch it anymore.

SOTI has the ability to help us scale, no matter what market we're in.

One thing that would be helpful is, when we purchase licenses through SOTI for our devices, there isn't a reminder that lets us know when we're about to run out of licenses, and that has been a bump in the road for our company a few times. There are so many iPads or devices in the field, with so many different managers utilizing them to download the SOTI management system, that when we're running low on licenses I don't know about it. The day a manager needs to sync with SOTI on the device and it doesn't allow it, we go through so many different hypotheses on why it is not working. Is it the iPad? Is it this? Maybe, at the end of the day, I go into our SOTI account and see it's because we have no more licenses. And there is a 24- to 48-hour window that it takes for our license to go in, get approved, signed, etc. If SOTI is able to build that to help us scale, that would be very crucial.

They let me know when my device is about to expire but shouldn't they let me know when my licenses are running out? If we have ten left, we might easily purchase another fifty from SOTI. That way, they would help us scale and they would have more business.

If the chat feature is able to be built, that would be the only thing I have a comment on when it comes to tech support. Overall, technical support has been sufficient.

I wasn't here when our account was set up with SOTI, but what I can speak about is setting up SOTI within the device, when we have to deploy a new one.

The process, at least for me, having been trained by our engineer, has been super-straightforward. Knowing how I can troubleshoot it myself, knowing what needs to happen in terms of right-clicking it so it pings to the device, all of that has been very straightforward. I'm not sure if I would describe myself as a super-tech-savvy person, but the technical understanding is straightforward: You have a device that's paired with SOTI, now you have to turn on the iPad to make sure it works. That has been very straightforward for me. SOTI has been super-easy on that side.

When we're pairing a device to SOTI, it takes no more than five minutes, as long as it is on WiFi. As soon as it's on WiFi, it takes no time. 

We were trying to negotiate with our account manager previously, in terms of pricing, and he was able to lower it by $500 if we were to renew our license for another year, but he wasn't able to give any bigger discount than that, even with us using it so frequently. My suggestion would be, if it's a customer who's worked with SOTI and wants to continue to work with SOTI, and they have so many licenses already - we have at least 350 licenses already - I would hope that they could do more deals. What our account manager told us was, unless you purchase another 200, we can't give any bigger discount. And I was thinking, "Well, I have no need to just buy 200 licenses." Every time we purchase a license it's a lot for our small start-up already.

That's one of the reasons, right now, that we're on the fence if we want to continue our partnership with SOTI: because the price couldn't be lowered. If they're able to provide packages for, say, 50 licenses, to give a slighter discount, that would better, because the 200 is just not ideal for a company that's a start-up. If they're working with Google, sure, give them 2000 licenses. But for smaller companies, I hope SOTI has something that they can provide.

I would say go for it, if you need to manage and track devices, it's the way to go.

In our company, I and two engineers utilize SOTI. I am our project coordinator and there is our lead software engineer. The two of us handle maintenance and deployment. The third user is our VP of engineering. I use it on a daily basis.

We bought it directly from SOTI.

If I were to rate the solution from one to ten, I would give it a nine. It's not a ten because of the things that I mentioned above. But SOTI has been efficient and responsive enough to allow me to do my day-to-day functions without needing much assistance. The ten would be if they added the chat feature, if they had the SIM card and the cellular working together. Then I would definitely give SOTI a ten.

In our company, we have a net promoter score, with the promoters, the detractors, and the passives. I definitely am a promoter for SOTI. I would not be a passive. But if SOTI is able to fix some of those features that would be fantastic.

I am a distributor of SOTI in Hong Kong.

This solution is most suitable for government companies.

SOTI is good for medium to large-sized companies. In Hong Kong, we have so many customers that the smallest customer in Hong Kong has about 10 users, and our largest customer has more than 32,000 devices.

One of the customers that we support is in the government sector. They are using Workspace ONE for 8,000 devices.

We mainly give them support on the MDM for Workspace ONE.

The keywords menu is better than other MDM. They have an Out of Contact policy, which other MDMs don't have.

The SOTI system architecture and requirements are more simple compared to Workspace ONE.

They have a script engine that's very good for engineer support.

They have legacy design architecture, and sometimes the support isn't helpful.

Sometimes the innovative features are very difficult.

I have worked with SOTO MobiControl for 13 years.

I would rate the stability as eight out of ten.

If a customer goes directly to SOTI support, sometimes they can't solve the problem immediately. Usually in Hong Kong, we do the first tier of support for all of our customers.

The deployment process is simple because the legacy interface is easy to understand and easier to use than Workspace ONE. The SOTI Next-Generation UI is just like Workspace ONE, so sometimes it's difficult to use.

SOTI is changing from the classic user interface to a more modern type of user interface, which is more difficult to use.

It's a little bit expensive. The Hong Kong government has a perpetual license for SOTI rather than a subscription.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

My advice is to find the right consultant.

We're a mobile refueling company. We go out into construction sites where they have fleet trucks. We do about 650 million gallons of fuel a year, and we have about 180 fueling trucks in the Midwest, east of the Mississippi. We use the Zebra MC67 devices, with software that we've purchased to control the truck when it distributes fuel to a semi or a reefer trailer or a large earth-moving piece of equipment. We do deliver to trains. All the fuel delivered is real-time to the end customer.

For us to manage that we have MobiControl, not only for setting them all up and connecting them, but also for managing and synchronizing files, and for our logistics center - which is the call center - to help the drivers change routes online in real-time. We remote into them and we make changes, or we make changes on our side and then we can watch what happens on the handheld. We walk through issues with the drivers, if they have issues on the handheld.

The tool has become incredibly valuable for us in terms of helping the drivers.

It was the tool of choice. We had the tool, we owned it, but as we got better at using it, its success became self-evident. The ability to remote into the device, help the drivers, set up devices in the field, all that pooled together into being critical. 

And now, with its growth in other environments, our IT department is exploring other uses for agents and remote access. We're not a really big company in terms of the corporate level, so it takes a little time for us to get traction on stuff. But it is certainly the key to the logistics side of our business. We couldn't have our call center without some remote access tool. Our decision to stay with SOTI was, initially, a default decision, but then it grew into all the capacity.

It is the key component in our logistics center. Every one of our logistics personnel is trained on SOTI as an end-user, to be able to help people in the field. It's as simple as that. It's the primary tool when it comes to assisting drivers in the field.

For us, the ability to connect with the driver at a moment's notice and support them in the field is paramount.

On a side note, it helps me set them up and manage them remotely. Without remote management, I'm not sure we could execute that, with that many trucks in the field. Our market area is Wisconsin, Michigan, all the way down to Florida. There's no other way, at this point in time, that I could think of how we would do it, other than having remote software. 

We stay with Mobi because of the functionality. It's amazing software.

We're not using MobiControl to its capacity. We're not driving the ports out of it, we are just starting to enter it. It's a function of time and personnel, in getting to all the other attributes it has. At this point in time, until my staff and I can really dig into MobiControl and take it to another level, I don't think it would be fair for me to talk about improving anything. And right now, I probably couldn't tell you what to improve.

We're at a level that SOTI MobiControl can far outdo what we're using it for right now. I would not be doing MobiControl justice if I said they have to improve something, because I'm not working from a position of being a super-user, I'm just becoming one right now.

It's extremely stable. I rarely have any issues with it. Even with the patching of the servers, it's all Microsoft Server-based, it's not running on Linux. If the patching failed - which it hasn't - but if the patching failed, the restore is really straightforward.

It's very much scalable to our needs. It's a function of devices out there. We acquired 220 device licenses, and we float between 200 and 210. I do have spare devices, I still need that room. Then, depending on our company strategy, if we're going to provide another device - we're looking at the tablets - if we do that, then we acquire as we need. If we're willing to pay for them, we can get as many as we require.

SOTI's customer service is top-notch. We have asked for and have received incredible customer service.

We recently signed up for SOTI Enterprise Support. It was worthwhile to do it, with the additional training, and the call testing. It's a huge opportunity for us to continue to explore the functionality of SOTI in a contained environment.

The customer service has always been excellent. I've never had bad customer service. And I've called. I'll say, "How can I do this in here?" and they'll run through some scenarios. SOTI MobiControl also works with our partners like Zebra. Zebra was on the phone with tech support from SOTI and it took four minutes to figure out what I wanted to do between the two, and I got a solution. They helped me out when I needed it. How can you put a price on that?

We had no previous solution. 

The part I can speak to is the version updates. The initial installation went quite well. We had five users five years ago. Now we've got 50 users. How we used devices five years ago is way different. We did not have a call center at the time, and now we have a call center. The version update is what I can talk to you about because I pushed for it, to get the latest and greatest version, and they were incredibly helpful.

We had older servers it was running on, so we had to update the servers. The quality of the technical people at SOTI was phenomenal, it didn't take much to figure it out. We were able to import our stuff from an older server to a newer server and connect to the database with minimal impact.

Once that happened, all consecutive version updates are basically pushing a button and letting it chug and it's done, it's up. We have a really solid platform for what we're doing right now.

We were on version 9 or 10. Once the servers were updated to the most current servers that support version 14.3, after that, it was straightforward. It took 15 minutes to do the last two updates that came in. MobiControl was already up, and all we had to do was update the agents. I had no issues with the devices in the field connecting. So as far as I'm concerned, it was a 20-minute window.

In terms of updates, we haven't had any bugs. As soon as the device comes online, I can do a global Agent Upgrade within 24 to 36 hours, and the handhelds all update. I haven't had an issue with an agent. It just works.

Time is money. I have a truck out there, a $450,000, 5,000-gallon steel truck that's automated out there, and I'm paying a very qualified driver to run it. These guys have commercial driver licenses, and every hour they're not pumping is an hour of cost.

For every shift, there are five or six hours man-hours we have to have put aside to process those customers, to get them into our system, so their information is available, and that, of course, is manual time. If a truck's not running, not moving, not pumping, it's costing us something.

If you're running around with a half-million-dollar asset, or even a $350,000 asset, it needs to make money. It needs to be pumping fuel to make money. So, yes, we have return on investment with this solution.

It's a reasonably priced tool for what we're using it for. To be fair, I don't have much to compare to. But being in IT for 20 years, I thought it was really reasonable. When you take into consideration the maintenance cost on it, it's is very low. There's a one-time license fee for a device. But you can call support under standard support, which I had up until about two months ago, and it has been excellent. All that updating I mentioned was done under our standard license.

When you get customer service tied in with a reasonably-priced service and product, there really is no other reason to go anywhere else.

At this point in time, I would give it a ten out of ten. The reason I say that is because it's not just the software, not only the stability of the software, but it's the customer service. You get somebody on the line and you're not waiting 40 minutes. Call Oracle once and see how fast you get somebody.

I'll give it a ten in my world because, when I call and reach out to support, or if I call to reach out to my technical rep, or if I call and reach out to my account manager, I get a response. I may leave a message, but he'll call within a couple of hours. I always get an answer very quickly. They have automated voice menuing but it's not eight layers deep, and each layer's not ten layers of options. It's quite refreshing.

We mainly use it in transport, for example, in police and governemnt.

The solution allows for very good remote control. We only have to get one application and have everything we need under the license. 

It's a very complete tool.

We've had a good user experience overall. 

The licensing is simple. It's just one license to gain access to all of the functionality. Other competitors have different versions, like premium and standard, where some features are only available for one version. This isn't the case with this product.

There is a good "closed mode" where you can use only one application or certain chosen applications.

It is very fast. It's very responsive compared to other applications. 

The pricing could be a bit less. Maybe if there were tiers, it would be better as then companies could lower the pricing by going to the lower deployment model.

I've been using the solution for five years. 

The solution is stable. I'd rate the solution seven or eight out of ten. 

The scalability has been enough for us. We haven't had issues scaling. I'd rate the scalability ten out of ten. 

We will continue to use the solution. However, we are open to looking into other solutions as well. This solution is meeting our needs for now.

The initial setup is very simple. 

We do have outside help for deployment. I have a local company that supports us, and the feedback we get is that it is very easy to set up. 

We have witnessed an ROI while using this solution. 

The cost is different, depending on if you are using cloud or on-premises deployments. 

There is a bit of a high cost. They don't have standard versus premium so we are paying a bit more since we don't have the choice to choose a lower tier.

We upgrade regularly and are on the latest version of the solution. I'm not sure of the version number. We use it both on-premises and cloud. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a fine solution. 

We are not the end user. We are the service provider, so we basically manage the customer's devices using SOTI MobiControl. We deploy the applications, we also implement the lockdown, and various other features.

The lockdown, application deployment, and various settings are the most valuable for me. 

The cost could be a bit better, especially in emerging markets like South Africa.

I have experience with this product.

It's been very stable over the past few years but less stable since we upgraded to the newest version a few months ago. 

We recently had an issue before the new year 2024 where we couldn't deploy anything or stage devices. However, we logged a call with the sales team, which was resolved.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

We have all sorts of clients, small, medium, or enterprise businesses, for SOTI MobiControl.

I don't deal with them directly, but our dedicated MDM Guardic team does.

The team did mention that initially, it took a while to get issues resolved. But recently, there's been a big improvement. Support is quite responsive now, and I get answers relatively quickly.

However, there is still room for improvement in the support. 

Neutral

From the initial setup to when the device is ready to be used, it takes a couple of minutes. It takes a couple of minutes, depending on the network's stability. We often encounter network issues.

It is an expensive product. I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive, especially in emerging markets. 

Many competitors are coming in much cheaper, making it challenging to convince clients to choose SOTI over other MDMs.

It is a helpful tool, we'd be lost without it if we didn't have it.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.