Everything About Apple Business Essentials

Apple Business Essentials

Apple recently announced that it will be releasing a subscription service that provides device management, cloud storage, and support for small businesses (up to 500 employees). The service is called Apple Business Essentials, and it is set to release in Spring 2022. Currently, the service is available for free for beta testers. Beta customers are said to get a free subscription for Apple Business Essentials once the service is officially released next year.

Apple is well-known for its consumer services and customer support, bringing the company a huge part of its revenue, second only to the profits made from selling iPhones, so it makes sense to release services such as Apple Business Essentials, and the focus on small businesses would mean that there would be a much larger number of customers.

Concerning the service itself, it will cover everything from setting up and employee onboarding, to security and backup, to repairs and updates. Smaller businesses rarely have the time or resources to spare for extensive management of IT operations and are therefore oftentimes forced to cut corners which could, in turn, result in different problems, such as network vulnerabilities, underqualified staff, outdated software, etc. Apple Business Essentials would allow business managers and owners to streamline their working process by delegating a lot of their work to Apple’s expert consumer service, which would then leave more time and resources that could be spent on “big-picture” aspects of the business.

Device management with Apple Business Essentials

Talking about specifics, Apple Business Essentials would give its subscribers the option to remotely manage and configure the settings of the devices that form the business network for groups and individuals, depending on the specific roles that they have in the company’s environment. For instance, the business’ project management team could be given a certain set of permissions for certain apps on their company devices that would differ from the set of permissions that the marketing team would have, and the process of setting all this up can be done quickly and easily with the tools and customer support that Apple’s Business Essentials service provides.

AppleCare+

Speaking of support, a part of the Business Essentials service is AppleCare+ – Apple’s extended device warranty and technical support. With AppleCare+ for Business Essentials, customers would have access to 24/7 live support over the phone, IT training for their employees, as well as up to two device repairs per year for devices damaged in accidental incidents. The repairs would be handled by certified Apple technicians, possibly within a time frame of as little as 4 hours. AppleCare+ also provides overnight mail and carry-in repairs performed in Apple Stores.

iCloud Storage

One other thing that is available with Apple Business Essentials is cloud storage space accessible to the company’s employees via a dedicated iCloud work account. The size of the available storage space depends on the chosen subscription plan. The tier 1 subscription offers 50 GB of iCloud storage, the second plan increases it to 200 GB, and the tier 3 plan rams it up to 2 TB.

Pricing of Apple Business Essentials

Concerning the pricing of the service, there are three subscription plan options:

Single device – With this plan, the service is available for a single device, comes with 50 GB iCloud storage, and is priced at $2.99 a month per device.

Multidevice – This plan allows you to manage up to three devices for each user for a price of $6.99 per user/month, and gives you 200 GB iCloud storage.

Multidevice + more storage space – The number of devices here is also 3, but the iCloud storage space is 2 TB, and the pricing is $12.99 per user every month.

Direct Apple Business Essentials link to sign up.