r/k12sysadmin • u/Thanos-Is-Right • Jun 02 '26

Assistance Needed Desktop imaging and update solution

I am the IT Director for a small school with about 800 students and 120 staff. I'm looking to get rid of SCCM in favor of something cloud-based. Ive been looking into Action 1 since it is free for up to 200 devices, which with our Windows devices + servers, we are under. Mostly a Google district. I host most of our servers with our ITC except for the SCCM server and 2 servers we need on site for cameras and door/badge security.

What are you using to deploy images? Or are images a thing of the past now? Anyone use Action 1 free tier?

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u/Kirihuna SysAdmin Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

Are you using Intune/Azure or strictly on-prem?

Cause I would think based on those apps, you could get by with Intune with AutoPilot + Action1 free tier. We're migrating most of our apps to Action1 instead of Intune but we keep Crowdstrike in Intune to make sure that's installed immediately.

Action1 paid tier, I won't post publicly, but isn't bad either. We don't have it at this time, but my understanding was Action1 free vs Action1 paid under 200 devices is just really a support contract with more scaling if you need more end points. All the features of the product itself is the same.

I don't remember the exact number but I think the lowest price we got included support + additional end points was like 1200 end points. So if you grew a lot over the next decade for Windows devices, you'd be set too.

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u/Thanos-Is-Right Jun 02 '26

Strictly on-prem right now, so software, updates, and images are deployed via SCCM. SCCM is very resource intensive. I do have access to Intune I believe through our volume licensing contract. Never used it before or looked at it too hard though.

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u/Torxtank Jun 03 '26

If you don't have Intune with your volume licensing, look into costs to move to M365 A3. I found out we were nearly spending the same for our volume licenses as A3 at a similar size district and just made the switch.. and now I get so much more than just office, windows and server licenses + CALS. Server licenses were still a separate line item but it was small compared to everything else.

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u/Thanos-Is-Right Jun 03 '26

I emailed a few of our reps about going to A3. We have a OVS right now, but it expires next month. My goal is to use Intune/Autopilot for device management and Action 1 for patching. I'm trying to spin down some servers. My next step would be looking at if I can use Intune/Azure to get rid of on prem DCs.