SOTI MobiControl Reviews

I work for a global clothing manufacturer, and we currently utilize both SOTI MobiControl and Windows Intune. I am the senior technician in charge of retail hardware globally. We've got locations in EMEA, APAC, Latin America, and North America.

In my current project, I'm using SOTI. The retail environment uses Zebra TC 77 devices that are Intune. I have to wait for a guy in the UK to do his job, and he's stretched thin. Increasingly, I must step it up and become a mobile device manager. All these other guys who are high up in the tech team access Intune, but they don't provide me with the level of access I'm accustomed to as a systems administrator.

I'm not the administrator of Intune, so I must wait on the IT guy who manages it. These Intune guys are holier than thou, and I don't operate that way. Whatever they say goes because they're the Intune administrator, and they architect things the way they want or the way they have been taught in their certification program. That's just what got me to look into SOTI.

The graphical user interface is fantastic. I had a guy get me up and running in less than two hours, whereas there are issues with Microsoft Intune. You need an administrator proficient with Intune, and he has to create the groups. 

These groups trickle down to where the devices live and how they operate in terms of the QR codes and getting the APK into the system so we can manage the devices. SOTI is more accessible. 

The ease of access was awesome. The guys helping us out were pretty fluent in the product. I currently have two devices in a dashboard that we're testing, but the solution that they have is awesome. I like that it's a cloud-based based solution, and I think there will be some significant cost savings.

I wish that I had some more tutorials and educational resources on how to use the product.

Several of our major partners like FedEx, UPS, and USPS are using MobiControl with a ton of devices. Updating the firmware is easy. If you do it in Microsoft Intune, you're going to end up with a lot of false reporting. I have not seen that issue with SOTI MobiControl so far.

Setting up MobiControl wasn't complex. I had someone help me. I asked him to go back and show me so that I could collect screenshots of the work he was doing, but it was fairly straightforward.

I rate SOTI MobiControl eight out of 10. I'm not an expert yet. If I had spent more time with the product, I might rate it 10. Right now, there are a few things that I'd like to see and haven't had the chance to dive into.

We use it for managing our mobile devices.

MobiControl is vital to our operation. We have to have SOTI to manage all of our devices. Otherwise, we would have different configurations at each site and it wouldn't be centrally managed. We like the fact that SOTI allows us to centrally manage all of our devices.

Among the valuable features are managing configurations of all devices and being able to remote into devices. That's pretty much all we use it for. We send out configurations for each site that has its devices. Each site has a different configuration, and SOTI manages each configuration for each site.

The remote control technology and screen sharing feature help us resolve issues faster. We primarily use them for Windows CE and Android right now, not iOS. These features are good. We like them.

We use the Lockdown Kiosk Mode feature on all of our devices. We use that so that the operators can't change any settings in the background, and so that the applications they run are immediately available to them. It's a good feature. The admin console is also good; no problems with it.

I would like them to improve the process of enrolling Android devices. It's much more difficult to enroll Android devices than it is Windows CE devices. There are a lot more steps required.

The stability is good. We've had very few cases with SOTI. Over a five-year period we've had something like ten cases.

The scalability is good. We have two groups that manage SOTI. I'm in manufacturing and I have a counterpart in logistics. He has more facilities, so he has deployment servers around the globe, whereas I just have one. 

That is going to change in the next couple of years. We're going to be putting in new deployment servers, probably in Europe and China, likely next year. From what I've understood, that's going to be pretty easily done. We're just going to use a management server in the United States and updates will be sent to all the deployment servers that we set up. 

So it seems really scalable, and we've purchased an additional quantity of licenses that we think we'll need for that deployment.

Technical support has been good. They're very responsive. We had basic support before, but now we have the Enterprise Support. We just got that, so I can't evaluate it. But the basic support we had was very good. They were very responsive. That's the main good thing to look out for: making sure they answer emails and the like.

The setup was straightforward. We have the Enterprise Support package, so they walked us through how to set it up.

In terms of our implementation strategy, right now we're upgrading from version 12.4 to 14.2. It's taken a couple months, but I just set up an on-premise test environment to start moving some pilot devices over. Once that's complete, I'll upgrade the test environment to 14.2, and we'll test it for two or three weeks and then schedule a time to upgrade the production environment.

I am doing the deployment myself, but the admins at each site are helping with the testing process. Once I've completed the test environment, the site admins will test their devices, and I'll do the upgrade after they're done testing.

We used SOTI directly. We have that Enterprise Support and they are required, according to that support model, to help us walk through that. Our experience with them has been very good.

It has saved us money because the manpower needed to manage all the devices, without an MDM, would be a lot. But I can't give any specific numbers.

It makes sense to have scanners on SOTI MobiControl, but it makes less sense to have printers because there are fewer features for them, while the price is the same for both. If they had a lower license fee for printers, we would probably want to purchase those. But since it's the same cost, no matter what kind of device it is, we've opted out of doing printers. There are just not enough features to really justify it.

Plan early and give yourself enough time to plan. Make sure you know what the customer needs as soon as possible. Make sure they understand what they need as well. Test everything. That's probably the best advice I could give, even though it's common sense.

We don't really use application deployment. We don't deploy the actual application itself using SOTI. The application is preinstalled on the devices. We do deploy certain configuration files. We also don't use the real-time location services. 

I wouldn't say MobiControl has reduced device downtime, it's just made it easier to configure the devices.

We have about 40 factories where we're using it. That is probably going to double over the next two years.

I'm the main administrator for the solution, and we have a local admin at each site or group of sites. They have fewer admin responsibilities, but they have admin over their particular sites, their particular folders and devices. I have control over everything. My counterpart in logistics has been using SOTI for a long time, so I lean on him a little bit for his expertise. So it's really two guys who support the system.

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. 

Our organization relies on Android devices for critical business operations within the retail sector. These devices are used for managing stocks, handling barcode operations, and likely supporting various retail applications. Here, SOTI MobiControl helps us manage and provide security patch updates and maintenance support for devices.

The product has valuable features for device management controllers and geofencing. It helps in enrolling, managing, and relocating the devices quickly. It enables the functionality to stop once it goes out of the box beyond limit boundaries. It is a very useful feature from a security perspective.

We found some issues when we switched on the product's kiosk mode. We were not able to access a few URLs. Whenever we try to access the application, it redirects to Microsoft's login page. The URL is blocked due to some restriction policies. They assured us that they would fix the bugs in the upcoming version.

There could be a feature for user ID management. It would help multiple users to log in to the same device using their unique credentials. They could allow users to log in with AD accounts.

We have been using SOTI MobiControl for more than six years.

The platform is stable enough. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the platform's scalability a ten out of ten. We plan to increase the usage in the future.

The technical support services are good.

Positive

In parallel, we use Microsoft Tune to manage enterprise devices. However, it supports limited devices compared to SOTI MobiControl.

The initial setup is easy. I rate the process a ten out of ten. The deployment and application upgrade takes one or two hours to complete.

The product is reasonably priced at the moment.

I have bought licenses from SOTI MobiControl to manage more than 5000 devices. I have been working as an administrator for a long time and know every product feature. I recommend it to others and rate it a ten out of ten.

We are using SOTI MobiControl to control our corporate devices, which we have issued to our field staff to do some application performance.

It is a mobile device management tool that we can control through the mobile device. So, it's the corporate device to control. So every user needs to use only the app, only the application since there's a way that we have set things. Hence, they cannot do anything besides that.

SOTI MobiControl needs to improve its geographic interface. The remote screen of the solution gets stuck at times. So, that needs to be improved.

For future releases, my suggestion for improvement is that somewhere in the setting and policy profile, where it's a little bit complicated. So if something can improve on that to make it user-friendly and easy to understand, then it would be better.

I have been using SOTI MobiControl for a year.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

The scalability of the solution is a bit complex. I found something that is a little bit complicated, but I can say that the solution is overall good. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Approximately we have over 2,000 users in our company using the tool.

I have experience with technical support. They are quite good. Also, they very quickly understand the issues and what are the requirements from my side. Response time is also good.

The initial setup is neither easy nor too complicated. The solution is deployed on the cloud.

Actually, we have a team for maintenance, and we also help each other. So around 10-15 people are required for maintenance.

We did the implementation within our organization.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing a five.

I used to see the demonstration from another vendor, and I can say that it was quite similar to SOTI MobiControl. So each product has its own pros and cons. So, I don't want to give any opinion on that.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

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 have almost 800 mobiles for our distributors. What we can lock is just what we call QOS mode. We limit them to specific functionality on the phone to minimize the risk. We control because our app is not published in the Google Play Store. We push the updates manually using SOTI. We use it for device management and application control on those devices.

IT allowed us to have full control of our mobile devices that are used by the sales team despite being far from us.

The solution’s price is good because Google’s MDM costs 15 dollars while SOTI costs around two. The user experience is excellent because of the way you log in, move from one menu to another, and do the activity or the process.
According to price, stability, and features, SOTI is a good choice.

SOTI MobiControl is nice and powerful but has some complications. The interface is not easy. In IT, if you manage multiple platforms and systems, it becomes tedious and hard. Also, there are issues with phones supported by SOTI.

SOTI MobiControl's support should be extended to a broader range of phones, especially in Africa, where many people do not have access to high-end devices. Investing in expensive devices that could be lost or stolen overnight is not logical.

In addition to expanding device compatibility, we would also like to see the platform made easier to use and more control over settings.

I have been using SOTI MobiControl since 2018.

The product is not 100% stable. Sometimes, it generates a bug that we need to change the XML file manually.

The solution’s scalability depends on the hardware. You have to add a license only for scaling.

The customer support was extremely helpful and was always available whenever we needed them. There were not many complications, but they were beside us whenever we needed assistance.

Positive

The SOTI team was hands-on and very supportive. They supported us enough to tackle any issues. 

13 people and all system admins were involved in the deployment.

I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

We tried Scalefusion.

Maintaining quality is not challenging. We just opened a ticket with the maintenance team, who are available and helpful. Sometimes, the account manager knows the mobile and test environments and can advise us not to throw out a version but to wait for a bug fix. They actively support us, and maintenance does not take much time. Also, I have it hosted on my servers and not in the cloud.

The challenge with IT is that it doesn’t always commutative. I launched my application with SOTI installed on my mobile phone. It’s challenging to quantify its security impact. Overall, it provided us with a higher level of control over the devices, which is essential for the smooth operation of an enterprise application, including the users’ knowledge and the application itself.

I strongly recommend considering an MDM solution for any enterprise. The recent transition to a uniform licensing structure has simplified the decision-making process, whether you opt for on-premises or cloud deployment. Overall, it’s a valuable solution that I encourage people to adopt.

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

The primary use is providing support to remote employees on mobile phones. We also use it to deploy software and updates to the phones.

The remote control technology and screen-sharing absolutely help us resolve issues faster. If there is a remote user who has difficulties or does not understand an error or a problem or a crash, the support team can remote control the phone and see right away what is on the screen and act on the problem. We could debug, we can help, we can reboot the phone. We have many options to help the remote user who is struggling with an application or with the phone. Before, they had to bring the phone to the office or to their manager so that we can debug it. Now it can be done remotely, most of the time, if the phone is not broken. These are very important features that we like. That's why we use SOTI.

The Lockdown Kiosk Mode is very useful. After the remote control, it's one of the main reasons we use the solution. When you have 9,000 people remotely using your applications, you want to make sure that they don't play with Facebook while they're supposed to be working. It's a very important feature to prevent installation of applications we don't want and to provide a uniform device interface for everybody, no matter what the phone brand. The uniform interface makes training easier. It also prevents installation of software that could be harmful or compromise the security of the phone. It's a very important feature.

Because we have a custom, business-to-business application, the solution's deployment features give us the ability to control the deployment of new versions. We can granularly decide which people or which phone receive updates. It's kind of like having your own "app store" and being able to control what you deploy on the phones, how you want to deploy it and when you want to deploy it. You can see how the deployment is happening; if it's going well or not. It's a convenience feature that provides us with great flexibility in the deployment of our software to our users.

By enabling a faster response time to support users who are having difficulties on their device, it helps us with downtime or with a device that was blocked or malfunctioned. The support team is able to respond faster to problems, providing a faster resolution time so that the end user is back working with the device.

It has improved the security of the phone, through lockdown. If the phone is lost we can remotely wipe it. It reinforces the overall security of the device. 

There are many aspects in which we've improved the efficiency of our operation.

There are many features that we use.

• The main one is providing support through remote control of the phone.
• Another feature we use provides a lockdown screen, which prevents remote users from starting or installing applications that are not officially supported by the company.
• We also use it to deploy updates of our software remotely.
• There are some additional features, like antivirus, that are part of the solution and are nice to have.

In a nutshell, those are the four main features that we use. The software has many more options which we don't use that often.

You need to get used to the admin console. I think it could be improved. It's not the best I've seen. Certainly, the software has a lot of features so you necessarily have some complexity in the interface, but I've seen better. They could make it easier in certain aspects.

Once you know it and how to navigate through it, it's good. When you're not trained on it, that could lead to some difficult situations where you say, "Where is what I need? What do I do?" If you don't know how to navigate through it, you could get lost. It's a complex interface in that regard. You need to be trained.

Development of lockdown screens, and certain aspects of the application, are still cumbersome and difficult to work. A certain subset of the features of the application are sometimes difficult to work with due to the complexity or maturity of certain modules.

One of the main pain points I have had with Soti is support for the latest device. That could cause a problem. Let's say Samsung comes out with its latest device and Sprint and Verizon start to sell that device, and we have a few of those devices to support. Sometimes you need to have an agent on the device and there are times when the agent is not fully compatible with the new device. That can cause problems. Certain stuff crashes. They need to catch up with the latest devices. Generally, when we have difficulties, it's because the phone is brand new and SOTI doesn't have a connector or agent that is fully compatible with the device. Any MDM always has to make sure that its agents support the latest phones that come out. Sometimes it's difficult.

They have to really work on making sure they lock down a strong relationship with the device manufacturers so that they can work in advance on their agents before the phone is released to the wider market.

The solution is very stable. In the four years we've been using it, there have been very few issues.

As I mentioned, we have nearly 9,000 users on one machine. Over the four years, we have had to upgrade the type of machine we're running it on. It scales but the problem is that you need to upgrade the server on which you run. You need to add more CPU or more disk space to support the scalability.

The scalability is horizontal, not vertical. One machine has to have all the accounts. That's one of the issues that we have found with scalability: You always have to keep the same machine. If you want to add a second machine, you need to split the account and that removes flexibility of management.

The other weakness that they have currently is that they don't have systems that are built for redundancy. You have one database that manages everything and, if that database crashes, you have a problem. They could have done a better job with redundancy, and on scalability there is some weakness. It scales but you need to add more horsepower every time.

Because machines are very powerful, it's not so much of an issue. Now we're on the cloud. You can scale servers very easily. But I would like, eventually, for there to be better redundancy in the system for failovers. Failovers are a weakness of the solution. If my server goes down then my solution goes down. They don't have a failover strategy for their solution. That's a weakness in the scalability.

We have Enterprise Support. We have additional support because we are one of their large customers. We have access to some of the senior developers. Generally, we have a direct line. If there is any glitch or any step that we don't understand or we need help, we have fairly quick access to support from SOTI. 

Support is very good. They are very knowledgeable, very good at helping, at doing everything to help when we have issues. They follow through. If they don't have a solution, they bounce it to the dev. Generally, I have always been pleased by their response time, by the quality of the response, and by the knowledge of the people in support. I am very pleased with support.

Generally, you have to install from the app store or they have an OEM website where you can download the agent. Once you know the process, it's fairly straightforward. We've done so many that we're used to it.

It's not complex. It's not simple. It's in between. You have to have a license key and a few other elements on hand. Then you install the agent on the phone, you register it and it appears on the interface. Any MDM will be like that. Deploying a device takes a few minutes, assuming you have everything already set up on your server.

In terms of our deployment strategy, first, we set up our own servers. We have remote users in both Canada and the US. We break it down by countries first. Then we have a breakdown by type of device: tablets or phones. In our implementation, we then segment the phones by provider: Verizon, AT&T, etc. Within those categories, we break it down by type of lockdown screen because we have different types of lockdown screens for a manager and for a regular employee. Based on their roles, they have more or fewer applications available.

We did it internally. We have some people helping on the lockdown screen. For the rest, we manage the software ourselves. But because we are a large SOTI customer, we have Level 3 support. When we have issues or problems or questions, we have access to the top SOTI engineers.

For us, the solution is part of the overall business cost. It's required. It's not about saving money. It's about supporting the users' security.

There are solutions that can be more aggressively priced, but they may not provide all that SOTI does. It's a matrix regarding what feature you use. You need to compare the features you use and what you are willing to pay for them. You may have MDMs that have half of what SOTI provides. They are cheaper but you have less.

SOTI's pricing is okay. It's in the middle. But pricing is a subtle issue. They can provide more aggressive pricing once you start to have a lot of licenses. They have volume discounts and can be very competitive.

You can have the solution in-house or you can have the solution on the cloud, managed by SOTI. Evaluate your needs. There are advantages to having SOTI managing it for you. That's something to look at.

You definitely require some training and understanding of the management platform. That's part of the deployment, especially if you use certain features, like lockdown screens which require some configuration and setup. SOTI can provide support to evaluate this. They help you with certain deployment aspects and training on the solution.

We may look at the real-time location services from time to time, but part of our own software on the cellphone gives us tracking through GPS. So this feature from Soti is not something that is necessary. It's not critical to our use case of SOTI.

Another thing that is important is knowing very well the types of devices that you have and making sure that they are supported by SOTI. If you use older devices or devices that have been on the market a while, that should be okay. If you're planning to have a lot of new devices, and if you're changing devices very frequently, make sure they're supported by SOTI.

Also, if you use an unknown device brand, that could be problematic. We are in the security industry. While you probably you use an iPhone or a Samsung or some well-known brand, in certain industries, like ours, there are specialized phones. You may have phones that are made especially waterproof or that you can drop. They've been "ruggedized," made to work in difficult environments. Those phones may be from brands you've never heard of. If all your phones are from unknown brands, you have to make sure they are supported by SOTI. Generally they are, but you have to do your due diligence between your inventory and what SOTI supports.

For administration of the solution, we have a small team of five people. Because we are hosting the solution ourselves - we have and manage the servers - it's our responsibility. We have two sys admins who maintain and administer the solution.

We are growing every month. We are adding hundreds of licenses every month.

I would rate SOTI at seven out of ten. It's a good product, very stable. There's some stuff that they could improve and I think they are improving it.