Pricey, gets the job done, but not Active Directory

Great LDAP solutions for small businesses

Small businesses that need to become more operational mature in handling their staff and managing users but maybe can't afford an on premise Windows server or want to keep everything in the cloud - this is where JumpCloud reigns supreme.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Look out Microsoft AD...

I was hired into my organization to bring on a directory platform and consolidate our IT practices among users and computers. I came from a microsoft active directory shop, but my new company was not interested in AD. That was a seemingly tall task, until I found JumpCloud. I thoroughly enjoy coming into work and using jumpcloud to build the next era of our IT practices and procedures. We are primarily focused on SSO at the moment, and that is proving to be very simple to configure. I am looking forward to getting devices managed with JC in the next coming months using their pre-defined policies, as well as their command runner feature and powershell module. JumpCloud will soon be a serious competitor to Microsoft's admin suite, and I am very happy to be on board.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Works well until it doesn't, then it'll take a long time to get right.

Pros

Seamless, Platform agnostic SSO and User account management. Cloud LDAP Sync to MS and Google. Does what it says on the tin, Managing Admin and User access is a breeze as is tracking our company assets while working from home. Highly portable (our workforce all WFH as primary place of work since Covid).

Cons

Mac installer is a bit temperamental. Console on mobile is not responsive. Clears saved payment details without warning. Customer Service takes ages (no international support outside US business hours), we had our account suspended and it took over 5 days to get access to our businesses IT SSO.

Cloud Directory Done Right!

Pros

JumpCloud offers a versatile interface, responsive support, and they embrace automation. I have used the policies feature to help manage Windows and MacOS. I deploy scripts using JumpCloud extensively, and they offer their own for different actions via GitHub. Various multi-factor authentication methods are supported, which I have used to further secure user VPN connections.

Cons

Managing scripts via the "Commands" window could use some fine-tuning. It can prove difficult to manage many at once or make bulk edits, for example.