What's the most cost-effective way to monitor device health and connectivity using a device management platform?

The most cost-effective approach is usually to use the device management platform’s built-in health checks and connectivity telemetry first, and only add custom monitoring where it fills a gap.

Best low-cost pattern

1. Enable built-in device status signals

   • Last check-in / heartbeat
   • Online/offline state
   • Policy compliance
   • Battery, storage, OS version, app status where available

2. Set simple threshold-based alerts

   • Device hasn’t checked in for X hours
   • Device goes offline repeatedly
   • Low battery / storage below threshold
   • Critical app missing or out of date

3. Use aggregate dashboards, not per-device polling

   • Polling each device frequently is expensive and noisy
   • Event-based or heartbeat-based monitoring is cheaper and scales better

4. Integrate with existing ITSM/alerting tools

   • Send only actionable alerts to email, Slack, Teams, PagerDuty, etc.
   • Avoid building a separate monitoring stack unless needed

5. Sample or tier monitoring by device class

   • Monitor critical devices more aggressively
   • Use lighter monitoring for low-priority or high-volume fleets

Why this is cost-effective

• You’re already paying for the management platform
• Built-in telemetry avoids extra agents, infrastructure, and storage
• Event-driven monitoring reduces compute and alert noise
• One platform for management + health lowers operational overhead

When to add custom monitoring

Add lightweight custom scripts or a small agent only if you need:

• Application-level health not exposed by the platform
• Network path testing
• Hardware metrics not reported by the MDM/UEM
• More granular diagnostics for critical devices

Rule of thumb

If the platform exposes check-in time, compliance, and key device metrics, start there.
If you need deeper visibility, add only a minimal supplemental monitor rather than a full separate observability system.

If you want, I can also suggest a reference architecture for this on MDM/UEM tools like Intune, Jamf, Workspace ONE, or MobileIron.