AppDeploy vs SimpleMDM | SimpleMDM Alternative for Private App Distribution
SimpleMDM charges $2.50–$3 per device per month and requires every device to be enrolled in MDM. AppDeploy distributes private apps through a branded portal with no enrolment and a flat £599/year. Compared honestly, with current pricing.
The structural difference: enrolment
SimpleMDM is a well-regarded lightweight Apple MDM. Its model is per-device: every iPhone, iPad or Mac that receives an app must first be enrolled in device management, and every enrolled device is billed — $3/device/month, or $2.50/device/month paid annually (pricing checked 28 August 2026).
AppDeploy separates the two jobs. Private apps are distributed through a branded portal that requires no device enrolment at all — employees sign in and install, and the flat Business plan (£79/month or £599/year) covers unlimited portal users and apps. Silent, MDM-based install is an optional per-device add-on (AutoDeploy) only for the devices that actually need it, with the first five included.
What a 100-person rollout costs
On SimpleMDM, distributing an app to 100 devices means enrolling 100 devices: about $3,000/year on annual billing — and BYOD users must accept management of a personal phone before they can receive anything.
On AppDeploy, 100 employees installing through the portal costs £599/year total, with no enrolment on personal devices. If, say, 20 company-owned devices need silent install, AutoDeploy capacity for them adds roughly £420/year at the 6–25 device tier — still around a third of the per-device MDM bill, and the other 80 people never enrol at all.
Feature comparison for app distribution
Both products cover Apple Business Manager integration, VPP app assignment, enterprise-signed .ipa delivery, configuration profiles and device actions on enrolled devices.
AppDeploy adds the unmanaged distribution path SimpleMDM does not have: a white-labelled employee portal on your own domain, role-based app entitlement without enrolment, per-install audit trails across both managed and unmanaged delivery, rollout rings with auto-pause, and Release Guard build preflight. SimpleMDM's app catalogue reaches enrolled devices only.
Where SimpleMDM is the better choice
If you manage Macs, SimpleMDM's Munki integration makes it a genuinely strong macOS management platform — AppDeploy does not manage macOS.
If you want full Apple MDM as the product — OS policy enforcement across the fleet, zero-day Apple release support as a headline commitment, US-based support — SimpleMDM is built for exactly that, and its 30-day trial is longer than ours. Choose AppDeploy when the job is app distribution and enrolment-for-everyone is the obstacle, not the goal.