Is Jamf necessary for an environment with less than 10 Mac computers and no other mobile devices?

[u/BlueScreen_OfLife]

Edit: Thanks all, appreciate the advice. This a pretty cool subreddit with chill people.

I'm very experienced in Intune, don't know much Jamf yet, so this is a new platform for me. Just wondering if it's beneficial to use it in an environment that only has a handful of Macbooks?

[u/Greedy_Chocolate_681]

Do you already have intune? Is it a 10 person company, or is it larger and there are only 10 macs?

[u/BlueScreen_OfLife → u/Greedy_Chocolate_681]

Yes heavy intune, larger with a few macbooks sprinkled in.

[u/Greedy_Chocolate_681 → u/BlueScreen_OfLife]

Then just manage them with intune, you're already paying for the licensing.

[u/JaceBelerenApologist → u/Greedy_Chocolate_681]

A macOS deployment for Intune shouldn't take more than an afternoon to get up and running.

If leveraging Microsoft EDR, just be sure to do the MDATP onboarding stuff too. Otherwise, it's mostly just some Intune policies that have (more or less) an analog for Windows already.

I certainly wouldn't advise setting up Jamf for 10 devices. The learning curve to set up Jamf for the first time is significantly higher than retrofitting an Intune deploy.

[u/BlockBannington → u/JaceBelerenApologist]

Deployment from Intune: one day. Getting approved for ABM: 49 years. What THE FUCK is a DUNS

[u/QPC414 → u/BlueScreen_OfLife]

Leverage Intune, you are no where near a point where Jamf's power is needed or Mosyle.

Reconsider when your Apple fleet gets as complicated as your MS fleet and Intune no longer meets your needs.

[u/Ok_Disk8585 → u/BlueScreen_OfLife]

Having 10 macs in InTune , I dont think you need seperate MDM like JamF for macs as recent updates in Intune can cover it.

[u/Slow-Pineapple5894 → u/Greedy_Chocolate_681]

if you've already got intune humming for the rest of the fleet, adding 10 macs into that feels like the path of least resistance. learning a whole new mdm for that small a footprint seems like overkill unless there's some very specific compliance checkbox jamf checks that intune can't

[u/hainesk]

You could look at Mosyle. They have more relaxed license requirements and are generally a bit cheaper.

[u/BlueScreen_OfLife → u/hainesk]

Thank you! That's new to me, I'll look into that.

[u/cogiskart → u/hainesk]

They required at least 30 licenses to be able to buy Fuse last time I checked.

[u/hainesk → u/cogiskart]

I think that’s because under 30 licenses you get the free version.

[u/Ok-Friendship-2318 → u/hainesk]

The free version is equal to the business tier, not fuse.

However all 30 device licenses for fuse don’t have to be MacBooks. You can do 10 MacBooks and 20 iOS device, paying $50/mo. But also I dont think OP may even need fuse.

[u/shawn22252 → u/hainesk]

2nd mosyle. 1.5 per device per month easy to set up and easy to manage

[u/amb540 → u/hainesk]

I will 3rd mosyle. I have 500 windows devices and 4 MacBooks in mosyle. We had jamf but I switched to mosyle. Much cheaper and easier to configure

[u/mighty_sys_admin]

SimpleMDM by PDQ is what we use; only 28 Macs here. Not as "point and click" easy as Jamf, but dang near close. It did not take long to set up, and I adore the ease of use. Only a few dollars a month per device.

[u/PDQ_Tarabyte → u/mighty_sys_admin]

Before I landed at PDQ I worked heavily with Jamf and genuinely loved it. I actually got hired into a mixed environment once purely because I knew Macs. They can be a nightmare to manage, but Jamf for 1-30 devices? Hard no.

u/mighty_sys_admin is spot on. PDQ owns SimpleMDM and it’s surprisingly easy to set up. The underlying Apple MDM token environment (Apple Business Manager, Automated Device Enrollment) works the same regardless of which tool is sitting on top, so the learning curve is really just the UI. Once you’re past initial setup you’re managing devices pretty quickly.

In case you are interested-Getting Started With SimpleMDM

[u/mighty_sys_admin → u/PDQ_Tarabyte]

Cheers, u/PDQ_Tarabyte, love your guys' products. Keep up the good work.

[u/Ok_Disk8585 → u/mighty_sys_admin]

In that case suremdm works pretty good with macs and remote support for them

[u/Ihaveasmallwang]

Depends on your goals. Apple Business provides some basic MDM services for free.

Do you already have Intune at your company? It’s come a long way for Macs.

[u/badbash27]

Probably not worth the cost unless you will be expanding in the near future

[u/blow_slogan]

Depends on how managed they need to be. For rhat few i would stick to intune and a remote solution or rmm - especially because you fall within free tiers for many solutions. Jamf wont even sell to you for like, less than 50 devices (they will if you sweet talk them, but i think the real floor is 25).

[u/HerrBadger]

Jamf is a very big curve for such a small number of devices.

Lots of people who use and evangelise Jamf will recommend it, and it is a good platform. If you have Intune already, Intune is very much a capable platform and is rapidly improving, but there are things like app packaging which are a real pain point, but can be managed.

Platforms like Iru and Addigy come with pre-packaged apps, and the learning curve is a lot less steep. There are solutions like FleetDM as well which are very capable and are what you make of them.

Honestly, stick with Intune. There’s a lot of great capabilities, and once you put the time in to fill in the gaps, it’ll do what you need it to do, and save you additional licensing costs.

[u/PhilLovesBacon]

Seriously, look into Action 1. It would at least give you potential remote access, software patching, and potentially more for free. First 200 endpoints are free.

[u/Admirable-Farmer2911]

Would also recommend sticking with intune. I was recently in a similar situation where the "purpose built" platforms like Mosyle and Jamf looked more appealing. However considering the much higher cost to those platforms and the recent improvements to Intune in regards to Mac management, it was an obvious choice.

[u/Previous-Low4715]

I manage thousands of devices in jamf. It’s increasingly less valuable each renewal if you have intune. I am planning on migrating everything at some point very soon, paying six figures for Jamf no longer makes any sense. I’m not sure it ever did, but I didn’t make that decision.

[u/Crazy-Rest5026]

Honestly no. Having about 900 iPads and 100 Mac’s . You don’t need it for 10 devices

[u/CryoGenID]

Take a look at Relution, I think it is free for up to 10 devices and can be self hosted :)

[u/clybstr02]

I use it in a big Intune shop to do very bare support of about 20-25 Macs. It does a reasonable job, though we do have Apple Business Manager too.

[u/AngrySociety]

Use intune, this years jamf renewal cost caused us to ditch jamf and switch to intune.

[u/PoeTheGhost]

Apple Business is built-in and comes with AppleCare+ bundle options and iCloud storage.

It’s pretty affordable for small companies. Signup is through ABM.

[u/Professional-Heat690]

no

[u/drummerboy-98012]

We’re actually dumping Jamf and moving to Intune with our Mac fleet. Microsoft has surprisingly made improvements for Mac support, believe it or not, and we’ll be saving thousands every year.

[u/ChiefBroady]

For just 10 Mac’s with simple requirements Jamf is probably overkill. But once your requirements are more complex and the user experience needs to be the best it can be, intune doesn’t cut it, even with all the “improvements” they did in the last couple of years.

[u/ntw2]

Yes. In fact, start when you have just one so it’s easier to onboard additional devices later.

[u/throwawayismeta]

You definitely do not need Jamf, or any extra MDM. If you're already using Intune that's more than enough as is.

[u/Mindestiny]

It's more about what you need to accomplish and how much skill you have managing endpoints.

If you need any real level of security and reporting (compliance, etc) I'd put Jamf a tier above Intune for Macs. You can still do MDM for Macs on Intune but it's not nearly as nice and 10 computers is not a huge cost.

If you just need basic management, stick with Intune. No sense using two platforms for a handful of devices that just need basic encryption enforcement and the like.

[u/ProposalKitchen1885 → u/Mindestiny]

This. Intune sucks for Mac, but it can usually do an okay job as long as those Mac’s know they’re second class citizens.

[u/JaceBelerenApologist → u/ProposalKitchen1885]

That's less on Intune and more on Apple making their devices a pain in the ass to manage.

[u/Entegy]

Stick with Intune. Intune has massively improved in Mac management over the last couple of years and it's really not worth paying for a whole other MDM just for a handful of Macs. Call me a shill but at the end of the day, if you're not a Mac-focused shop and you're already using Intune, use Intune.

I still suggest getting Apple Business, making sure all your corporate Apple purchases go into AB and sync with Intune.

[u/JaceBelerenApologist → u/Entegy]

I'm not a shill either, and have used Jamf for pure Mac environments. It's nice if it's just a Mac shop (or primarily one). I wouldn't recommend it here either, especially not if they're already paying for Intune licensing. The only real thing I missed going from Jamf to Intune was it's ability to manage printers and package software.

[u/Entegy → u/JaceBelerenApologist]

Intune's gotten pretty good with software now. Deploying Adobe CC was my last major barrier and that's possible now.

[u/Psoin]

I suggest Indian over jam

[u/gaybatman75-6]

Jamf is probably over kill, depending on how much management you want to do you could do Intune or go with Kandji/Mosyl for cheaper.