SOTI MobiControl Reviews

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.

I use the solution in my company for Android and iOS devices. The use case associated with the product was simple, as it was used for securing applications on mobile devices. It was used exclusively for Android and iOS devices.

The most valuable features of the solution are containerization and app control.

SOTI MobiControl currently lacks some DLP features. It would be good if SOTI MobiControl could offer a few functionalities associated with DLP features in the future.

I have been using SOTI MobiControl for a year. My company operates as a reseller and SI of the product.

The solution's stability is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. If you configure one policy and push it to that particular endpoint, it will take some time to reflect.

It is a scalable solution. It gets integrated with multiple other security platforms.

My company deals with only two or three customers, specifically the ones in the banking sector.

I have not directly dealt with the product's technical team because I work with the OEM. My company has a local presence in Bangalore and so we directly work with them for processing the orders and for implementations. My company hasn't received any technical support for the product.

The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.

If someone is deploying the agent and making sure that the device is getting enrolled to meet their concerns, then it will take 15 to 20 minutes. The configuration policies are fine.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

In terms of the deployment process, I would say that my company operates as a reseller of the tool. For the customers who are seeing the solution for the first time, the installation process could be a challenge, but if you spend a couple of hours with the product, then the process can seem easy as the solution does not offer a command line interface and everything is mostly based on a graphical user interface. The person handling the installation process should have some basic knowledge about the product.

In terms of the data privacy offered by the product, the return on investment was okay, but it was not much because when it comes to MDM platforms, such products are mainly focusing on all the employees, including the C-level employees in a company, along with the critical data asset owners. The functionalities offered by an MDM tool for a project will be much less than those offered by other technologies in the market. The tool's ROI is okay. SOTI MobiControl is just a security device, so there is no advantage in terms of efficacy or performance efficiency. I can't properly derive an ROI for the tool. SOTI MobiControl is just a product for securing data and data privacy.

You need to secure a license on a per-device basis.

remote wipe option, and it allows corporate data to be deleted if the devices go missing or are stolen or if the number of employees increases.

If you are into the banking sector or you deal with properties and you are building some design in-house while handling people and public data, specifically payment-related data, and if you want to allow your employees to bring their Android-based devices to work while also allowing them to install the corporate applications in their devices, SOTI MobiControl is a tool that can be considered as a very much adequate product. If you don't use SOTI MobiControl, your business will fall under the category of those companies that don't comply with the data privacy standards.

The products support most XDR, NDR, and SIEM-based tools in terms of integration capabilities. It is even possible to use API, SAML, and OAuth.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

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.

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. 

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.

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 for tracking RF units. Across the whole network, we have about 1,000 devices.

The way SOTI has improved our organization is that we were trying to get off of the legacy MSP configuration. The improvement for us is having an OS and an interface for which we can get active support, if we need it, for configuring a unit.

One of the most valuable features is the ease of moving items from one configuration to another; it's a Windows-like setup. Also, the admin console is very easy to manage and to move through.

For the most part, the application deployment works well. Occasionally, when moving a gun, we'll see that we have to manually intervene, when working with the setup.

It has been very stable, so far.

The scalabililty is very good. We've not seen any issues. We have five sites, so far, that are using it.

So far, tech support has been very good. They're responsive and they've been able to provide solutions to the issues that we've brought up.

We used MSP previously. We switched to SOTI because MSP was out-of-support.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had to work with our server team so that it was set up the way QC likes to have things set up. To set up the server, it took about a week or two, and that was more just a matter of coordinating. It was very reasonable. It took longer, on our side, to do the legal part.

Our strategy has been to use SOTI to move away from MSP and to get legacy equipment operational, before trying to get anything new going.

In terms of deployment, we've mostly had one person from each of our sites focused on this particular implementation. At some sites, the configuration changes more rapidly than at others.

We worked with SOTI on the set up.

We really haven't had that much time with it yet. It's working well. We have more flexibility with the solution, but there isn't really a fixed number that I can give for ROI at this point.

SOTI's pricing seems to be competitive.

AirWatch was the other one we looked at.

Make sure you can gather your equipment and thoroughly test the configuration before you start rolling out.

We use the remote control technology and screen sharing features for both Android and IOS. At my location, we are using it more for Windows, while some of the other sites are using it for Android. There have not been any complaints or any concerns, they've been working well. I don't know that it's reduced device downtime, as of yet. We're relatively new using it.

We also lock down units and that has also been working fine. We do not have the location services on at this point in time, with our configuration. 

We will be increasing usage of SOTI when we bring on the new DC site that we're planning to put up in the middle of next year. I can't say it's been a cost-savings. It's been more of an update solution, for us.

I'm using it with the handheld pocket devices from Motorola and Internic to provide remote support and employee packages. I also use it for tracking the devices.

When we use SOTI for SAP, if there is an issue where the user cannot connect, we can work on it by remoting to the device, getting some logs and finding if the problem is with the software, SAP, with the network, or maybe the end-user is doing something wrong with his scanner. It helps us to identify the issues the user is having. That means we don't need our expert IT guys to be in that place. If there is one setting that needs adjusting we don't need IT guys to be there, we can do it from here, remotely.

It saves time in supporting end-users.

The most valuable feature is the remote support because there are plants here where IT staff is not present. We can use it to provide support remotely.

The previous version, for example, had the networking signal and that feature was great. When we were troubleshooting, we could find the level of the network I/O. If the worker was working in a corner of the warehouse where the signal was not as strong as in another part of the warehouse, we could say, "Just move a little and you will have coverage for your device." That was great. I don't know why they removed it from the newer version.

The interface works really well with Internet Explorer but when I use the router and I try to get a huge number of devices the max goes from 25 to 50 to 100 or 200 or 250. I don't know why I cannot go forward with the 250 on Internet Explorer. On the screen, when collections are in transfer, I cannot move or see the whole collection.

It's pretty stable. We haven't experienced any issues. Twice in these last two years I had to restart the server but that was related to hardware and not the application.

It is scalable. As we grow, the solution can grow with us.

Technical support is pretty good. The response time is good and the results were that the cases I had were solved. There could be some improvement in the response time.

The setup of the solution was straightforward. Everything was okay with no problems related to the application. For the initial deployment, it took us about a week to enroll the devices.

Before MobiControl we had another solution from Zebra. We used that application to deploy the environment to all the devices that we had on that system. That was how we enrolled all our devices to the new solution.

We did it on our own, myself and another IT guy here.

Pricing is okay, but when you buy your renewal of licenses - at the end of the period or the year - if you have a lot of devices, obviously, it's going to increase. In the end, it's kind of expensive.

I believe we evaluated VMware AirWatch. That was the only other solution we looked at.

I would recommend SOTI for the features that it has and the uses that we have. It supports many platforms. We are working right now with Windows and we are synching with Android and Macs.

In terms of users of the solution, there are 15 IT guys from the Service Desk who use it and about 30 users, who are still IT Operations guys at the facilities. We have several offices here in America, so IT guys use the platform to support end-users in those offices. We have three administrators for the application. The three administrators were involved in the deployment at the start of the project.

I rate it at nine out of ten. To be a ten they would need to improve the pricing.