3CX Mobile Device Manager review

Email client

The Mobile Device Manger includes free licences of premium email client AquaMail Pro for every Android device.  This allows you to remotely configure the email accounts for the phone, which saves a great deal of effort on the part of either individual users or your IT departments. iOS devices don't require a third-party app to be installed to do this. The main advantage of this is the ability to remove unwanted accounts remotely and remove corporate email access when someone leaves the company.

In theory, remote control over email accounts also means that your staff won't be able to set up their own personal accounts on a company phone, but as MDM can't delete core apps such Android's Gmail application and the iOS Mail app, there's no real control there. AquaMail and MDM also only allow you to set up POP and IMAP email systems if you use Microsoft Exchange Server, you'll have to rely on its own, admittedly very thorough, remote management and wiping capabilities.

Cost and Scalability

It's hard to complain about the cost of the service. If you're only running a microbusiness, then you'll be pleased to know that the service is free if you have five devices or fewer.

Larger businesses can buy licenses on a sliding scale, from 124 (107) per year for ten users, 225 (192) per year for 25 users, all the way to 1,995 (,1704) annually for 500 users. There's also a deployable "On Premise" version of the MDM which you can run on your own server, starting at 1,030 (880) for a 50-device server license.

Verdict

Mobile Device Manager is low-cost and provides versatile monitoring of a wide range of devices. Unfortunately, not every feature works as smoothly and we wanted more effective controls to prevent the installation of unwanted apps. It's got great potential, but it’s still a long way from fulfilling that in its semi-finished state.

Supported client platforms: Android 2.0+, iOS 5.0+, Windows 8