The Case for Self-Hosting
Cloud-hosted MDM platforms are convenient — someone else handles the infrastructure, updates, and uptime. But convenience comes with trade-offs that are increasingly hard to ignore.
When you use a cloud MDM, your device inventory data, location history, command logs, and compliance records all live on someone else's servers. For organizations in regulated industries — healthcare, finance, government — this creates compliance headaches. For MSPs managing client data, it introduces third-party risk.
Self-hosted MDM puts you back in control.
Data Sovereignty
Device management data is more sensitive than it appears. Your MDM knows every device IMEI, every location ping, every command sent, every app installed. In aggregate, this data paints a detailed picture of your operations.
With self-hosted MDM, this data stays on your infrastructure. You choose where it's stored, how it's encrypted, and who has access. No third-party data processing agreements needed. No wondering where your data physically lives.
For organizations subject to GDPR, HIPAA, or state-level privacy laws, self-hosting simplifies compliance significantly.
Cost Control at Scale
Cloud MDM pricing scales linearly — more devices means proportionally more cost. At 1,000+ devices, the monthly bill becomes substantial.
Self-hosted MDM inverts this curve. Your primary costs are infrastructure (a modest server) and the software license. Adding devices doesn't meaningfully increase infrastructure costs until you hit very large scale.
Et'al MDM runs comfortably on a single Docker host for fleets up to 5,000 devices. The infrastructure cost for that? A few hundred dollars per month, depending on your provider. Compare that to $3,000-5,000/month for a cloud MDM at the same scale.
How Et'al MDM Supports Self-Hosting
Et'al MDM was designed from the ground up to work in self-hosted environments:
- **Docker deployment** — single command to get up and running - **PostgreSQL database** — industry-standard, no proprietary data formats - **Automatic updates** — pull the latest image, restart, done - **Monitoring hooks** — Prometheus metrics endpoint for your existing observability stack - **Backup friendly** — standard pg_dump for database backups
You get the same modern dashboard, the same policy engine, the same command queue — just running on your servers instead of ours.
Enterprise customers also get deployment support, migration assistance, and a custom SLA tailored to their infrastructure.