Mobile device management is how a fleet of phones and laptops gets enrolled, configured and wiped without anyone touching them.
This guide ranks the platforms on what the first ninety days cost in administrator hours, what the per-device price becomes once patching and identity are added, and how much of the work survives if you leave the vendor.
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says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a
vendor. How that works.
In short
What mobile device management software does
Mobile device management enrols company phones, tablets and laptops into a central console that pushes settings, applications and security policy, and can lock or wipe a device remotely.
Five things, in this order. Feature counts are not among them: they are the least useful
comparison in software, because every vendor ticks every box.
01
Setup effort in mobile device management software
What the first ninety days of a mobile device management software rollout cost in hours, not in licence fees. A product that needs a partner engagement before it does anything is a different purchase from one a team configures in an afternoon.
02
What mobile device management software really costs
What the bill becomes once the modules a normal buyer of mobile device management software needs are added, and whether you can read that number without a sales conversation.
03
Getting your data out of mobile device management software
How your own data comes back out, in what format, and whether that export is included in the mobile device management software contract or billed as a project.
04
Independence from the vendor
Whether you can buy mobile device management software, run it and leave it on your own terms. This test decides most of the order on this page, and it is why the largest vendors in mobile device management software often sit below the smaller ones.
05
Who the product is built for
The size and shape of company each mobile device management software product was actually built for. Most regret in software comes from buying for a company you are not yet.
The fourth test decides most of the order on this page, and it is the reason the largest
mobile device management software vendors sit below the smaller ones. A product with a published price, an export
that works and no mandatory implementation partner is a product you can leave.
A platform suite that arrives with a quote, a partner and a two-year commitment may well be
the better software and is still the harder decision to reverse. We rank mobile device management software for the
buyer who has to live with that decision without a procurement department, which is a stated
bias rather than a hidden one.
We do not publish a score out of ten. A number like 8.4 is a judgement dressed as a
measurement, and nobody can check it.
What you can check is on this page: what each mobile device management tool costs, where the vendor is
established, whether the price is published, and what we think it is bad at. Our full method
is on the how we work page.
Enterprises running virtual desktops and devices under one policy
Any organisation under roughly a thousand devices
Country is where the vendor is headquartered or contracts from, which is a
different question from where your data is hosted. Where the two tell different stories, the
entry says so.
Cross-platform device management with the price list on the website
Ranked #1 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Hexnode UEM wins the independence test: you can sign up, enrol a test device and read the price without speaking to anyone. It manages every platform a normal company owns, competently rather than deeply.
Plan for landing a tier higher than expected once patching or remote access turns out to be gated, and budget a few days to learn a console that shows every option it has at once.
What stands out
Published pricing
All platforms
Self-serve trial
Where it costs you
Features are split across tiers in ways the comparison table hides
The console is dense and unfriendly on first use
Right for
A mixed fleet that wants one console and a published price
Wrong for
An Apple-only shop that would rather buy Apple depth
Apple-only management with a free tier that genuinely works
Ranked #2 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Mosyle is the cheapest credible way to manage Apple hardware properly, and the free tier covers enrolment and configuration profiles for a small fleet without a card.
The bundle above it adds identity, patching and encryption, which look generous until you compare each one against a specialist. Setup is a day. The exit is easy in principle because enrolment lives in Apple Business Manager, not in Mosyle.
What stands out
Apple only
Free tier
Published pricing
Where it costs you
Apple only, with no path if Windows arrives
Bundled security modules are weaker than dedicated products
Right for
A Mac and iPhone fleet under a few hundred devices
Wrong for
Any company with Windows laptops or Android phones
United StatesFree tier; paid per device per year, published
Android fleets, kiosks and shared devices, priced on the page
Ranked #3 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Published pricingAsia-Pacific
Scalefusion is what you buy when the devices are Android and not all of them are phones. Kiosk lockdown, shared-device check-in and OEM-specific controls are configured rather than scripted, and the price is on the website.
Documentation assumes familiarity with Android Enterprise enrolment modes, which is where most failed pilots here actually stall. The Apple side works but is not the reason anyone chooses it.
What stands out
Android depth
Kiosk mode
Published pricing
Where it costs you
Apple and Windows support trails the Android side
Support hours sit in an Indian timezone
Right for
Android fleets, kiosks and shared devices in the field
Wrong for
A Mac-first company that lives in macOS policy detail
The deepest Apple management, and the administrator time to match
Ranked #4 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Jamf Pro gives you the primitives and expects you to assemble the policy, which is exactly right at five hundred Macs and absurd at thirty. It tracks new Apple controls faster than anyone, and the community around it means someone has already published the script you need.
The cost is two-sided: the per-device licence and the salary of the person who runs it. Exit is clean, since Apple Business Manager holds enrolment.
What stands out
Apple depth
Large ecosystem
Scripting
Where it costs you
Needs an administrator who scripts, not one who clicks
Costs more per device than any other Apple option here
Right for
A large Mac estate with a dedicated Apple administrator
Wrong for
A twenty-person company with a handful of MacBooks
United StatesPer device per year, published list; volume quoted
German device management built for schools and public bodies
Ranked #5 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Self-hostablePublished pricingEurope
Relution exists because German procurement asks questions most vendors answer badly: where is the data, can we host it ourselves, and what does the works council see. All three are standard here, including an on-premise deployment.
Outside education and public administration the feature set looks modest, and English documentation lags the German. Judge it on the compliance answer first and the console second, in that order.
What stands out
German hosting
Education focus
On-premise option
Where it costs you
Very focused on the German public sector market
Reporting and app catalogue are thin next to the specialists
Right for
German schools, municipalities and privacy-sensitive public bodies
Wrong for
A multinational needing depth across three operating systems
GermanyPer device per year, published; hosted in Germany
Already inside your Microsoft licence, if you read it closely
Ranked #6 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
For most Microsoft shops Intune is already paid for, and no competing product survives that argument on price. Windows enrolment through Autopilot and conditional access through Entra ID are as good as this market gets.
The Apple side is a season behind, the admin centre keeps moving, and troubleshooting is genuinely unpleasant: policies report as pending for hours with no explanation of what is blocking them.
What stands out
Bundled licence
Windows depth
Entra integration
Where it costs you
Apple support consistently trails Jamf Pro on new releases
Failed policies are debugged through sync logs, not error messages
Right for
A Windows company already paying for Microsoft 365 E3 or E5
Wrong for
A Mac-heavy team that needs Apple controls on day one
United StatesPer user per month, published; included in some Microsoft 365 plans
Spanish device management with in-house app distribution built in
Ranked #7 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Applivery came from internal app distribution and kept that strength, so shipping your own builds to enrolled devices is smoother here than in products that bolted it on. It is EU-established, publishes prices and can be trialled the same afternoon.
The limits are scale and headcount: bulk operations and reporting thin out above a few hundred devices, and the vendor is small enough that roadmap risk is a real line item.
What stands out
EU vendor
App distribution
Published pricing
Where it costs you
A small company carrying the whole roadmap
Reporting and bulk operations are basic at scale
Right for
European teams distributing their own apps to managed devices
Wrong for
A fleet of several thousand devices needing deep reporting
On-premise client management that grew a mobile module
Ranked #8 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Self-hostablePricing on requestEurope
baramundi Management Suite is client management with mobile attached, not the other way round. Imaging, patching and software deployment on Windows machines are the core, run from a server you own, which is why manufacturers with a nervous security officer keep buying it.
As a phone-management product it is behind the specialists. Price it as an on-premise suite over three years, including the Windows Server it needs, or the comparison is meaningless.
What stands out
On-premise
Windows patching
German vendor
Where it costs you
Mobile management is the junior half of the product
Licensing rewards multi-year commitments over pilots
Right for
German mid-sized firms managing Windows clients on their own servers
Wrong for
A cloud-first company with mostly phones and Macs
GermanyPer endpoint, perpetual or subscription, quoted
Apple management with the remediation scripts already written
Ranked #9 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Kandji sells the work, not the tool: a library of prebuilt controls that install, configure and repair themselves, so a generalist IT person can run a Mac fleet to a decent standard.
That is worth real money if the alternative is hiring. When your policy sits outside what the library covers you end up scripting anyway, and then you are paying a premium for the parts you no longer use. Ask for the quote early.
What stands out
Apple only
Prebuilt controls
Quote-only
Where it costs you
Quote-only pricing at a premium over Mosyle
Prebuilt automation is opinionated and hard to bend
Right for
A Mac fleet without a full-time Apple administrator
Wrong for
Teams with unusual policies that fight the prebuilt controls
Purpose-built and rugged hardware, including the awkward models
Ranked #10 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Published pricingAsia-Pacific
42Gears SureMDM covers the devices that break other consoles: scanners, wearables, printers and Android builds that stopped receiving updates years ago. Pricing is published per device, which keeps it honest.
What you give up is polish. The interface has accumulated fifteen years of features without a redesign, and the surrounding product names overlap enough that quotes need reading twice before you know what you bought.
What stands out
Rugged devices
Kiosk
Wide OS support
Where it costs you
Console shows its age and its accumulated features
Product naming across the add-ons is confusing
Right for
Warehouse, retail and field fleets on unusual hardware
Frontline device fleets where an hour of downtime costs real money
Ranked #11 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
SOTI MobiControl is built for devices that earn money by the hour: a scanner in a depot, a handheld at a till. Remote control, battery and signal diagnostics and scripted recovery are the reasons it costs what it costs.
The buying process is quoted and modular, implementation normally involves a partner, and the independence test goes badly. Right answer for a frontline fleet, wrong answer for head office.
What stands out
Rugged fleets
Remote diagnostics
Quote-only
Where it costs you
Quote-only, module-priced and usually sold through a partner
Far too heavy for a standard office fleet
Right for
Logistics and retail fleets where device downtime stops work
Wrong for
An office of knowledge workers with company iPhones
Enterprise device management, newly independent of VMware
Ranked #12 of 12 in Best Mobile Device Management Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Omnissa Workspace ONE is the enterprise end of the market, and the only product here that treats a virtual desktop and a physical laptop as the same access decision.
It left VMware in 2024, and customers spent that year discovering what their renewal now costs, so get the multi-year price in writing before signing. It is heavy to deploy, partner-led in practice, and disproportionate below a thousand devices.
What stands out
Enterprise scale
Virtual desktop tie-in
Quote-only
Where it costs you
Ownership changed in 2024 and renewals moved with it
Needs a partner or a dedicated team to run properly
Right for
Enterprises running virtual desktops and devices under one policy
Mobile device management enrols company phones, tablets and laptops into a central console that pushes settings, applications and security policy, and can lock or wipe a device remotely. The differences that matter are rarely in the feature list, so this is
the order we would work through them.
01
Decide whether you need a published price
8 of the 12 tools here publish what they cost; the other 4 quote per organisation, which means a sales conversation before you can compare anything. If you are buying without a procurement function, start with the ones that publish: Hexnode UEM, Mosyle, Scalefusion, Jamf Pro, Relution, Microsoft Intune, Applivery, 42Gears SureMDM.
02
Work out what the first ninety days cost in time
Licence cost is the number in the contract; setup effort is the number that surprises people. Ask every shortlisted vendor who does the configuration, how long it took the last customer of your size, and what happens if that person leaves halfway.
03
Check the exit before the entry
Ask for an export of your own data in a format you can open, and ask whether it is included or billed as a project. A vendor that hesitates here is telling you what renewal negotiations will feel like in three years.
04
Match the tool to the size you are, not the size you plan to be
Most regret in this category comes from buying for a headcount that never arrived. The entry-level products here are not worse; they are aimed at a different company.
05
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 12 vendors are established in 5 countries across 3 regions (North America 7, Europe 3, Asia-Pacific 2). Where a vendor is established decides which government can compel access to what it holds, which is a different question from where the servers are. For most buyers that is a factor, not a veto.
Enrolment is the product, not the console
Every demo shows a dashboard; the thing that decides your project is how a device gets into it. Apple Business Manager, Android Zero-touch and Windows Autopilot let a device arrive at a desk in a sealed box and configure itself, and a device enrolled any other way can be removed by its user.
Jamf Pro, Mosyle and Kandji all build on the same Apple enrolment, which is why switching between them is easier than it looks. Scalefusion and 42Gears SureMDM earn their place on the Android side, where enrolment mode decides what you can control for the life of the device. Choose the enrolment path first, then pick the console that speaks it best.
Confirm your hardware reseller can add devices to Apple Business Manager or Zero-touch.
Enrol one real device in the trial, including the factory reset, not a simulator.
Ask which enrolment modes the vendor supports for Android: work profile, fully managed or dedicated.
Per device or per user, and how that bill actually grows
A phone, a laptop and a tablet for one employee is one user and three devices, and vendors here charge both ways. Microsoft Intune bills per user, which gets cheaper the more devices people carry. Hexnode UEM, Mosyle and Scalefusion bill per device, which is cheaper for shared hardware nobody owns personally.
The second variable is tiering: patching, remote access, kiosk mode and identity sit above the entry plan almost everywhere, and the entry plan is the number in every comparison. Price the tier that contains the three features you actually named in the requirements, then multiply by your real device count including spares and test units.
Count devices and users separately, then price both models with your own numbers.
Check whether spare, loan and test devices consume a licence while sitting in a drawer.
Get the renewal uplift in writing; year-one discounts here are steep and temporary.
BYOD, privacy and the works council
In most of Europe you cannot simply manage a personal phone. A works council will ask what the employer can see, and the honest answer differs by enrolment mode: a full-control enrolment exposes location and installed applications, an Android work profile or Apple user enrolment separates company data and shows the employer almost nothing personal.
Get this agreed in writing before the rollout, not during it. Relution and Applivery are the two here that answer the data residency question without a special contract, and baramundi Management Suite answers it by running on your own server. If personal devices are in scope, a wipe must mean the work container only, and you should test exactly that before anyone signs a policy.
Write down what the console can see per enrolment mode, and show it to the works council.
Test a selective wipe on a personal device, and confirm the photos survive.
Ask where the management data is hosted and which entity can be compelled to hand it over.
Leaving a device management platform means touching every device
This is the migration nobody budgets for. Policies, applications and certificates do not transfer between consoles, and on Apple hardware the supervised state usually survives only if enrolment was done through Apple Business Manager, which is the argument for insisting on it from the start. Moving from Omnissa Workspace ONE or SOTI MobiControl to anything else is a project with a device-touch line in it.
The defensible position is to keep the assets that matter outside the vendor: enrolment tokens in Apple Business Manager and Android Zero-touch, application packages in your own storage, and the policy set documented somewhere a human can read. Then the console becomes replaceable, which is the only leverage you have at renewal.
Confirm your enrolment tokens live in your own Apple and Google accounts, not the vendor's.
Export the full policy and profile set during the trial and check it is readable.
Ask what happens to managed devices on the day the contract ends, and get it in writing.
What goes wrong most often when buying mobile device management software
Enrolling devices manually because the reseller had not set up Apple Business Manager yet. Every one of those devices has to be wiped and done again.
Buying on the entry tier price. Patching, remote access and kiosk mode sit a tier higher at almost every vendor in this list.
Rolling out to personal phones before the works council has seen, in writing, what the console can and cannot see.
Treating device management as a security control on its own. It configures and wipes devices; it does not detect what is running on them.
07
Frequently asked questions
10 answers
What is the best mobile device management in 2026?
Hexnode UEM leads our ranking of 12. Manages iOS, Android, Windows and macOS from one console and publishes what each tier costs, which is unusual in this market.
The tier boundaries are the catch: kiosk, patching and remote access sit in different plans, so most buyers land a level above the one they priced. Support responds faster than the size of the company suggests.
How did you rank these mobile device management tools?
On what separates products after the demo: how much setup the first ninety days take, what the price becomes once the modules a normal buyer needs are added, how your data comes back out, whether you can buy and leave it without a partner engagement, and who the product is genuinely for.
That fourth test is why the large platform suites usually sit lower here than their market share would suggest. Not on feature counts, and not on a score we invented.
Which mobile device management tools publish their pricing?
8 of the 12, with the pricing model each one publishes:
Hexnode UEM: Per device per month, published.
Mosyle: Free tier; paid per device per year, published.
Scalefusion: Per device per month, published.
Jamf Pro: Per device per year, published list; volume quoted.
Relution: Per device per year, published; hosted in Germany.
Microsoft Intune: Per user per month, published; included in some Microsoft 365 plans.
Applivery: Per device per month, published.
42Gears SureMDM: Per device per month, published.
The other 4 quote per organisation.
Is there a free mobile device management tool?
Mosyle offer a free tier or a free self-hosted edition. Read what the free tier excludes before you plan around it.
Which mobile device management tools can you host yourself?
Relution, baramundi Management Suite. The other 10 are sold as a hosted service only, which means the question of where your data sits is answered by the vendor, not by you.
Where are these mobile device management vendors established?
In 5 countries across 3 regions: North America 7, Europe 3, Asia-Pacific 2.
Hexnode UEM is established in the United States.
Mosyle is established in the United States.
Scalefusion is established in India.
Jamf Pro is established in the United States.
Relution is established in Germany.
Microsoft Intune is established in the United States.
Applivery is established in Spain.
baramundi Management Suite is established in Germany.
Kandji is established in the United States.
42Gears SureMDM is established in India.
SOTI MobiControl is established in Canada.
Omnissa Workspace ONE is established in the United States.
Establishment decides whose courts and whose disclosure laws apply, which is a separate question from where the data is hosted.
What should you use instead of Hexnode UEM?
Mosyle and Scalefusion are the next two on this page.
Mosyle is for a Mac and iPhone fleet under a few hundred devices; Scalefusion is for Android fleets, kiosks and shared devices in the field. All 12 are ranked here with what each one is bad at.
Who should not buy Hexnode UEM?
An Apple-only shop that would rather buy Apple depth. Features are split across tiers in ways the comparison table hides.
Do you get paid for these rankings?
Vendors can pay for visibility, which affects where and how prominently a product appears. It does not change a word of what the entry says about that product, including the criticism, and it cannot buy inclusion for something that does not belong in the category.
We take no commission when you click through to a vendor and we do not know whether you bought anything. The full arrangement is on our disclosure page.
How often is this mobile device management guide updated?
Whenever the facts move: a price change, an acquisition, a product that stops being maintained. The published and updated dates at the top of the page are real, and a review means someone went back to the vendor documentation rather than bumping a date.
These 12 products are the ones we judged worth ranking in mobile device management. If yours belongs here and is missing, tell us what it does and who it is for, and we will look at it. Inclusion is an editorial call and it is not for sale — but nobody gets considered for a list they were never put in front of.
People land on this page with a shortlist to make, not a browsing habit to feed. That is a narrower audience than a banner reaches and a far more decided one.
Written by us, about you
We describe the product in our own words, say who it suits and say who it does not. A vendor never writes the entry and never sees it before it goes up.
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Where a product sits in the ranking can be paid for, and the notice above the list says so on every page. What the entry says about the product is not for sale at any price.
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