Managing multiple devices in a BYOD environment can be challenging for IT administrators. They need to ensure that the devices are secure, compliant, and up to date, while providing support and service to the users. That's where mobile device management (MDM) software comes in. MDM lets IT administrators remotely control and manage all your employees' devices, including desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. It makes it possible to provision, monitor, update, secure, and wipe these devices from a central console, too.

There are many MDM software options available in the market, each with its own features and benefits. To help you choose the best one for your needs, we tested and reviewed leading MDM software. Below are our top-ranked picks, along with links to our full-length reviews and buying tips to consider when choosing an MDM platform.

What Is Mobile Device Management Software?

MDM has evolved in recent years. The biggest challenge in this refresh was drawing a line between MDM and other functionality, including app management and delivery, advanced endpoint threat management, and document protection. The featured vendors have many additional capabilities beyond basic MDM. Managing desktop computers is another area where traditional mobile management platforms are making inroads.

A lost corporate mobile device represents a significant threat. It's essential to be able to locate, lock, and potentially wipe lost devices. Being able to automate that process is even better. Many of the products reviewed here provide a geofencing capability that generates alerts and takes action should a device cross a specific boundary. This works great for a company with a local workforce, where the devices should never be more than some fixed number of miles away from the home office. This feature can be tweaked for traveling employees and, in many cases, time-restricted, as well.

Policy-based security is pretty standard across all of the products in this roundup. Configuring devices to use a personal identification number (PIN) to lock the device is just one of many policies which can be set as mandatory. Other policies to restrict behavior or to lock down specific apps are also common. The boundaries get a little blurry when you move from corporate-owned devices to the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) scenario. Having the ability to restrict the gathering of sensitive data from a BYOD helps keep employees happy, while letting them use their own devices for company work.

Enrolling lots of devices might not seem like a big deal, but it can be a showstopper without an automated process. Providing a connection to a local AD domain to process users is one method. Most of these products also offer a way to import users and devices from a flat file to streamline enrollment in where either users or devices aren't identified in a directory service.

What's New In Mobile Device Management?

In addition to the essential features discussed above, MDM platforms have added new, cutting-edge features to differentiate their offerings. For example, many MDM vendors have enhanced their systems with artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help analyze device behavior, detect anomalies, and provide insights and recommendations for optimization and troubleshooting.

Some products have matured into a new category known as unified endpoint management (UEM). This is an approach that more tightly integrates MDM with other endpoint management solutions, such as desktops, laptops, wearables, and the internet of things (IoT), including smart home devices.

On the security front, experts are increasingly encouraging a move toward what's known as "zero trust security." This is a security model that assumes that no device or user is trusted by default, and requires continuous verification of identity and context before granting access to enterprise resources. It provides devices advanced protection from data breaches, malware, phishing, and other cyberattacks, by implementing such features as multi-factor authentication, encryption, device posture assessment, and conditional access policies.

Another recent development in MDM is user-centric management. This is a strategy that focuses on the needs and preferences of the device users, rather than the devices themselves. This can improve user satisfaction, engagement, and productivity by providing self-service options, customized profiles, feedback mechanisms, and gamification features. It can also respect user privacy and autonomy by allowing personal use of devices, and limiting data collection to work-related activities.

How We Review MDM Software

For this roundup, we focused on several key areas which can help with any evaluation. Enrollment can be a significant issue for a large number of devices. Any added capabilities to make that process easier goes a long way in judging a product as acceptable or not. That can spill over into the user enrollment experience, too. Making a user enter information that could be entered either by using a specific URL or a QR code scores extra points.

At the administrator level, it's all about tracking down problems. Presenting a dashboard with easy access to key information (and using color to help you quickly identify problem areas) gets the highest marks. Another nice-to-have feature is the ability to customize the dashboard screen to present important information. The same goes for custom reports. Canned reports are all well and good, but everyone doesn't necessarily want the same displayed information.

Easy device control is another key feature, and by that we mean being able to quickly find a device and then take action, such as locking the device or performing a secure wipe. If you get a phone call from an employee who just landed at a distant airport, and they lost their mobile device, then you must be able to take action right away. Removing devices from MDM control shouldn't be a big deal, especially when you let employees BYOD.

Data security is the final big item to evaluate, and this is where the products take different approaches. Some vendors provide secure file sharing and syncing, while others go further to protect the copying and pasting of information from corporate email to a personal account. The same goes for moving data from a corporate location to a private storage service, such as Dropbox.

For more on business software, check out The Best CRM Software and The Best Video Conferencing Software.