JumpCloud Directory Platform

The price is probably number 1 thing i like! Free for under 10 users. A great way for me as an IT professional to help smaller businesses get onto a stable platform for properly managing their users and devices, with room to expand as their companies grow. Great integrations with other apps (we use Office365 for most clients). With JumpCloud a small company really doesn't need a Windows Active Directory server on premises any longer.

No customer service for the free licenses - I get why, but I don't have to like it. It would be less annoying if the knowledgebase was a bit streamlined better. Can be difficult to find How-To information. Usually the article is there but is not intuitive and easy to find.

SSO integrations are incredibly easy to configure, no matter if you are using a prebuilt configuration or need to make a custom connector. Having SSO, LDAP, Radius, MFA in the same platform as device authentication and configuration policies is something I have not found outside of Microsoft AD and JumpCloud. There are remote management and monitoring tools out there that claim to do these things, but so far JumpCloud has proven to be incredibly simple. I am constantly amazed that my tests just work within the first few tries. I am used to Microsoft environments where testing gets very tedious and gives minimal feedback on how to make things work. JumpCloud supports MacBooks like a champion. If your office is heavily invested in MacBooks, and you are looking for an easy way to centrally manage authentication and hardening, JumpCloud is the tool for you. By far my favorite feature is "Submit an idea" right in the admin console. You get the sense that they really care about their admins and want to make a tool that is always getting better.

1) No nested user groups! I feel this is essential for identity and access governance.
2) The device policies that they have available cover a lot of the base security hardening needs, but I am excited to see just how much of the various supported OS jumpcloud will eventually be able to tap into. I would love to see JC mirror Active Directory Group Policies as much as possible, and continue to get more configurations added for MacOS.
3) iOS and Android devices are not able to be managed by JumpCloud, but I have been told this is coming by the end of 2021/early 2022.
4) Only TOTP MFA is supported for the admin console, and after getting SSO set up on a lot of tools the pain of that is getting to me, but I know they are working on this feature as well.
5) I personally believe that a remote desktop tool would make JumpCloud the king of IT tools.

I like the flexibility in deployment and can use the features at my own pace. For example, integrating JumpCloud to manage Google Workspace while retaining Google Sign-In keeps the employee experience the same while allowing my IT teams to manage the workforce more efficiently. Another feature that I find most valuable is the device management solution, specifically Windows. We can deploy and control systems in seconds from anywhere in the world.

Directory Insights, a valuable tool for me, is still not polished enough. I would love to see more filtering, custom query building, reporting, and the ability to create alerts.

The parts that work well in JumpCloud are amazing. The best feature, in my opinion, is the local user account management on computers. Being able to remotely reset a password, add a new account, or shut down an account instantly is something that no other SaaS offering can match at this level.

There are some pretty big gaps in features and functionality. No smart user or computer groups. No FileVault key rotation. Software deployment leaves a lot to be desired.