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Kandji vs Jamf - Apple MDM Solutions Compared

Kandji and Jamf Software are two of the leading vendors for IT admins who need to manage fleets of Apple devices. Which one is right for you? To help IT teams that manage and secure macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices answer that question, it’s useful to turn to G2, the popular software analysis site, which compares products based on user reviews.

Conclusion based on G2 user reviews: Customers favor Kandji over Jamf Pro

The last decade has seen tremendous growth of Apple devices in the enterprise. It started with the popularity of iPhone, then grew with widespread Mac adoption. With that growth has come increased demand for Apple-specific device management solutions. 

Jamf started in the Apple device management market way back in the early years of Mac OS X and managed preferences. Over the years, the company has continued to build on that foundation while appending new management features, such as Mobile Device Management (MDM), to it.

Being newer to the industry, Kandji recognized the need for a device management SaaS platform that could accommodate growing businesses and increasing regulatory demands. Existing solutions were either overly simplistic or mind-numbingly complex and didn’t meet the needs of today's organizations. Kandji’s founders decided to focus on automation and integrations as a way to provide powerful functionality without the complexity of some other solutions.

The G2 Comparison

G2 has compared Apple MDM products on several criteria, including feature sets, ease of use, quality of support, and more. G2’s reports include both data-driven comparisons of customer satisfaction as well as real-life customer stories from companies that have implemented these solutions in their organizations. Here’s what G2 found when comparing Kandji and Jamf Pro.

Customer Satisfaction

Kandji

4.8/5

Jamf

4.7/5

Meets Feature Requirements

Kandji

9.3/10

Jamf

9.2/10

Ease of Use

Kandji

9.5/10

Jamf

8.8/10

Ease of Setup

Kandji

9.4/10

Jamf

8.2/10

Quality of Support

Kandji

9.6/10

Jamf

9.0/10

Ease of Administration

Kandji

9.5/10

Jamf

8.8/10

Product Direction

Kandji

9.6/10

Jamf

9.2/10

What the Numbers Say

Customer Satisfaction

Although Kandji and Jamf Pro both receive high marks for customer satisfaction, G2’s overall appraisal is that, “When assessing the two solutions, reviewers found Kandji easier to use, set up, and administer. Reviewers also preferred doing business with Kandji overall.”

And while Jamf Pro’s overall score is no doubt helped by its legacy position as a market leader, Kandji’s innovations seem to give it an edge with Apple MDM customers.

Worth noting: The largest sector of G2 reviewers for Jamf Pro are educational institutions with more than 5,000 devices. By contrast, the largest sector of G2 reviewers for Kandji are software or technology companies with between 50 and 5,000 employees.

Kandji

4.8/5

Jamf

4.7/5

Meets Feature Requirements

When it comes to features and capabilities, G2’s reviewers rank Kandji just a bit ahead of Jamf Pro. Jamf Pro enables you to do pretty much anything you’d want to do in the way of endpoint management—but then so does Kandji. 

So, for example, both services enable admins to construct zero-touch deployment workflows. But Kandji adds to that the customizable setup experience of Liftoff. Admins want to maintain a desired end-state for their devices. Kandji uses features such as the Kandji Agent for auto-remediation and Auto Apps for patch management. Such features allow admins to keep the endpoints they manage in the desired state, while also maintaining strong security and compliance postures.

Kandji

9.3/10

Jamf

9.2/10

Ease of Use

In the head-to-head comparison with Jamf Pro, Kandji really stands out for ease of use. Built from the ground up to provide a modern and native Apple look and feel, Kandji was designed with an eye on the ways Apple users and admins like to work. Creating configurations, specifying settings, and managing apps can all be accomplished with a few clicks, rather than complex scripting.

“Kandji does an excellent job of balancing ease of use and being a powerful tool. It's so easy to get things up and running, and to deploy advanced security to our environments, and it saves us a huge amount of time.”

Senior Director of Technology | Read the Review

One example: Blueprints. You create a Blueprint, populate it with Kandji Library Items, and assign devices to it. No need to spend days or weeks scoping endless policies and content for your devices.

“The ease of use, support and integration into your processes is so simple and intuitive that it makes the entire experience enjoyable (even for tasks that are usually not the most exciting with other tools).”

CTO | Read the Review

Kandji

9.5/10

Jamf

8.8/10

Ease of Setup

Of all the scores in G2’s comparison, the biggest delta between Kandji and Jamf Pro is in the ease of setup. Setting up an MDM solution can be a daunting process—but with Kandji it doesn’t have to be. Kandji’s Support team makes sure new customers are properly oriented into the Kandji admin experience. Getting devices enrolled and ready to use with automation features like Liftoff mean you can go from setting up your first Kandji trial to a successful deployment in no time.

“Kandji was easy to set up without any help and get fully configured. Their Blueprints are straightforward, and the Library Items are easily relatable to the settings which apply under each type. If you're not familiar with MDM, Kandji is a great place to start.”

Technical Partner Manager | Read the Review

Kandji

9.4/10

Jamf

8.2/10

Ease of Administration

In Jamf Pro, you can do almost anything you want—if you’re willing and able to put in the time to spin it up yourself. For example, you can create a policy to install Adobe on devices in a certain group, then build a dashboard to display a pie chart of how many Mac computers have received the Adobe apps. But you need to know what you want to see and then create it yourself. 

Kandji, on the other hand, doesn’t try to overwhelm you with data. It shows you small, focused dashboards that give you the data holistically. So if you want to know what Library Items have been installed, you don’t have to create a dashboard; instead, you click over to the library item in question and see there what’s been installed. And you don’t need a dashboard to see which computers have FileVault enabled or not; Kandji automatically remediates devices on which it’s not enabled. That said, if you do want to create customized data workflows, the Kandji API is there.

“The ease of use, coupled with the intentional small touches, make for a solution that stands out. Kandji and its people have added a breath of fresh air into a traditionally mundane process for both the admin and end-user.”

Chief Information Officer | Read the Review

Kandji

9.5/10

Jamf

8.8/10

Quality of Support

Jamf Pro leans heavily on its large user community to provide support. Customers without support contracts or large accounts get a lower tier of service—which often means turning to Jamf Pro’s community forums, rather than official company channels, for help.

Kandji Support, by contrast, is open 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday, and accessible via chat and email. They also publish easy-to-follow documentation. And Kandji’s support engineers are all former Mac admins: The Support team works collaboratively with customers, from onboarding onward. They’ve been there, done that, and want to help Kandji’s customers do the same.

“The entire process—from onboarding to rollout to troubleshooting issues with Kandji support—has been a pleasure. Everyone on the Kandji team is dedicated to our success, and do their best to help us achieve that. Support is very responsive with troubleshooting.”

QA Tester/IT Admin | Read the Review

“It is easy to get real-time support. The support staff is highly knowledgeable and willing to help with any issues, whether they are directly related to Kandji or fall outside of the platform.”

CTO | Read the Review

Kandji

9.6/10

Jamf

9.0/10

Product Direction

The code for Jamf Pro has been around for almost 20 years, with a legacy architecture. (For example, it was originally on-premise only, but now is also cloud-based.) Jamf’s products have evolved to a great extent through acquisition and integration, rather than building products from the ground-up with a consistent philosophy.

By contrast, Kandji operates with an agile, cloud-native architecture born out of the pain points that many Mac admins face when struggling to achieve and maintain a desired state with Jamf Pro. Kandji saw a clear opportunity to lead with a new approach to MDM.

“Kandji is adding features and functionality at a very fast pace.”

IT Manager | Read the Review

Kandji

9.6/10

Jamf

9.2/10

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Summary

There is no doubt that Jamf Pro is a powerful device management platform. It has 20 years of experience and a robust community of users and consultants to support it. Many of the engineers at Kandji have worked with Jamf Pro in the past and know and respect the product well.

But Kandji wanted to offer a different way to do Apple device management, one based on superior end-to-end operational efficiency, with a backbone of security, so admins can get what they want to do in just a few clicks. Under the hood, and in conjunction with the Kandji API, there’s plenty of power, so admins can do what they need in the time they need to do it. It’s Kandji’s clean, convenient approach that’s won over customers.

Read our MDM buyer's guide to find the solution that's right for you.

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