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Every organization that wants to deploy a large fleet of devices has to make a decision: build your own device infrastructure from scratch, or buy an MDM solution (or similar). Comparing the cost of those options is a logical first step, and MDM pricing makes this relatively simple on paper.
The natural way to compare these options is price. MDM cost per device can be used to calculate total expense based on the projected size of your device fleet. You can then compare this figure — which is deceptively simple and concrete — to the much fuzzier internal projections for the cost of building your own solution.
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MDM cost and benefits for device management
While building your own device management is a big undertaking, buying device infrastructure can be a compelling option. It’s far more affordable on the front end and can ease the burden of deploying and maintaining your fleet — if you find the right solution. You’ll spend more time upfront researching options to find a quality solution that fits your needs, but after that, the upkeep is relatively low and processes become highly repeatable. Here are the relatively few things that you’ll need to consider when buying device management solutions.
- Device licenses: The main cost of buying is device licenses. Usually, this is priced per device per month, and the size of your fleet will be the deciding cost factor.
- IT support: Adding a new platform to your IT stack will mean oversight from your IT team. Someone has to qualify the technology, learn how it works, and ensure it will integrate properly. But the time your IT team has to spend learning and implementing a solution is worth the long-term freedom of outsourcing your device infrastructure over building custom.
- Cost predictability: MDM cost per device makes it simple to project the cost of expanding, shrinking, or keeping your device fleet at its current footprint. Additional features can be added a la carte as needed and budgeted appropriately.
However, using MDM cost per device as your comparison benchmark can be risky. A cost per device analysis assumes that all MDM solutions offer roughly equivalent functionality and incur roughly similar operating expenses to implement and maintain. Anyone who has used software knows this is simply not true, and with enterprise solutions like MDM, potentially huge challenges may be very hard to spot.
And even assuming MDM tools are alike, prices are not. According to research from Oxford Economics and Samsung, a purchased MDM solution costs between $3.25 and $9 per device, per month. What’s making up that huge difference in pricing? Usability, scalability, and extensibility.
If, for example, your device provisioning requires 40 minutes of setup per device using your MDM solution, you are paying for this — whether in expensive kitting fees or in your ops team’s precious time. If you could reduce that provisioning process down to 10 minutes (or less, as many Esper customers do) and scale that savings across thousands of devices? You can start seeing how “cost per device” doesn’t tell the true story of MDM expense.
Download our free MDM RFP template to compare MDMs
Since shopping for MDM services can be so complicated, we put together this MDM RFP (request for proposal) to help you quickly and easily compare MDM solutions.
With this pre-formatted, fillable/editable, and reusable PDF, you’ll be able to:
- Highlight technical requirements for your MDM solution
- Define goals and milestones your MDM solution must meet
- Document MDM budget and timeline details
- Find the questions you need to ask when shopping for MDM services
And using the RFP is easy peasy — just fill it out. All the key details are already highlighted here, so all you have to do is fill in the details that are important to you.
The RFP starts big and narrows focus as it goes. You’ll start by highlighting the key dates and milestones for MDM selection, followed by a detailed description of your management use case. You’ll note the number and type of devices, where they’ll be located, and other useful information.
It’s also important to document what you want to achieve with your MDM. You’ll want to make sure to define your technical requirements (and limitations) — highlight all potential deal breakers here. This will save both you and potential MDMs a lot of time.
Download the MDM RFP
Key questions from the MDM RFP
By following the RFP, you’ll learn how to ask MDMs the kind of questions that cut to the heart of solution shopping and avoid bad fits for your project. Here’s just a small sample of what you’ll get:
- Can I bring my own devices? If supporting a variety of hardware and form factors is important, you’ll want to make sure your MDM won’t limit your options.
- Do you offer remote debugging capabilities? The ability to remotely log, diagnose, and solve issues is crucial to scalability.
- Do you provide security patches? You don’t want a vulnerable device fleet. Period.
- Can I automate device provisioning? Regardless of what you’ve been told, provisioning doesn’t have to be complicated and you don’t have to be on-site to do it.
- …check out the full RFP for the rest of the list!
If you’re not sure these questions apply to your devices, check out our MDM Device Compatibility Checklist first — you’ll learn a lot about how to think of MDM tools and whether they’re a good fit for your use case.
We built this RFP to help streamline the MDM search. You can download it and use it as many times as you need. Then, as the dust settles and you’re comparing all the bids, let us show you what we can do. Schedule a demo with Esper and compare us to your top prospect at the time. At the end of the day, we want to see you choose the right MDM for your needs — even if it’s not us.
Of course, there’s also the option of building your own management tools.
MDM alternative: Build your own device management
Building and maintaining a custom infrastructure for kiosk, point of sale, and other company-managed devices is a big undertaking. You are essentially creating your own MDM solution. Don’t try to fool yourself here: it’s not easy. It’s costly, time consuming, and requires significant setup on the front end. But once it’s done? You get full control and ownership of your devices. Here are things to consider before deciding to build.
- Developers’ time and salary: Building a new product will require fully burdening multiple developers for at least six months minimum. The number of developers and how long they’re unable to work on other projects will depend on various factors such as skill and the fleet size you’re looking to build. Don’t underestimate how long it will take or the resources that will be required. Similarly, don’t hire the bare minimum to get the project off the ground. Depending on one developer could leave you in a bad place if that person decides to leave.
- Lost productivity: With your development team committed to building your device fleet, that means they won’t be readily available for other revenue-generating activities. When something goes wrong, this can result in major business disruptions.
- Server costs: Servers are required when choosing to build. And you’re guaranteed to pay more when you buy it on your own since you don’t benefit from the same economies of scale true infrastructure providers do.
- Compliance certifications: Devices in regulated industries, such as finance or healthcare, that handle sensitive customer information won’t get very far without certifications. Certifications will add additional costs, overhead, and time to the build process. (Check out our MDM security checklist here.)
- Lost revenue from device downtime: Consider all the losses that come into play when a device goes down: lost profit, cost to repair, and operational costs are the bare minimum.
- Fallout from poor CX: Customer experiences are the most important factor for a dedicated device fleet, so poor management of fleet assets can be disastrous. When your devices are designed to be the frontline, you can’t afford to mismanage them.
- Management overhead: Device fleet management doesn’t stop once you build it — you have to update it, continue innovating, and further invest in a continuous management strategy. Your dedicated devices should be a core component of your business, so you’ll need the bandwidth to treat them as such.
As you can see, there are several pitfalls to avoid when choosing to build your device fleet — but the flexibility and freedom you get from your own management solution might be worth it to some. For everyone else? Let’s talk about buying.
Cost to build custom device management (custom MDM)
To put things into perspective, here’s a quick look at how much you’d spend to build device infrastructure for 100, 5,000, and 50,000 devices (instead of buying an MDM solution). Of course, you may think we’re biased since we build infrastructure for a living. But given our experience in this field, these numbers are far from unrealistic.
Buying, however? Considering you won’t have to pay for developers, lost productivity, servers, certifications, lost revenue, fallout from device failure, or management overhead, well, you’ll save quite a bit. The total price for a 100 device fleet is just $7,200 (vs $604,800). A 5,000 device fleet comes in at $360,000 (vs $2,060,000) and a 50,000 device fleet infrastructure will set you back $3.6m (vs. $14.8m).
While MDM cost per device doesn’t tell the full story — you will incur operating expenses as part of implementation, maintenance, and support for a purchased MDM solution — it does make it obvious that building your own device management is incredibly expensive, and rarely makes sense for all but the most sophisticated and highly scaled enterprises.
Now that you understand the cost of building your own device management, you probably want to know how paid MDM solutions really compare on cost — the costs not on the pricing page. Reach out and we’ll be happy to have a conversation with you about how Esper lowers OpEx and streamlines processes compared to traditional MDM.
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FAQ
It’s more customizable since you’ll have full control of the entire system.
Cost, time, and upkeep. It’s very expensive to get started, takes significant time investment, and is both costly and time consuming to maintain.
The pros are vast: simpler maintenance, more cost effective, and improved flexibility. The primary drawback is finding the service that works best for your needs — it can be quite challenging.
The big guys usually have the time and money to throw at a custom solution — and back when they invested in this system, it was likely necessary. But now, there are other options that offer nearly the same customization and flexibility required by even the largest of companies. Both large and small organizations can benefit from buying now.
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