I'm seeing conflicting suggestions from MS about whether to use MDM or Intune. One says to use MDM when possible despite Intune having more features.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/intune/pc-management-comparison
I'm leaning towards Intune, since we aren't close to having 7000 devices. Aside from cost, what are the reasons to go with one or the other?
I think you’re confused between 3 slightly different things, and the fault is Microsoft’s, not yours.
The first link is describing installing a piece of software on Windows to introduce some Intune management capabilities into all versions of Windows, including “legacy” ones, vs. Using the native ability of Windows 10 to be “natively” managed by a MDM solution (of which Intune is one, and a good choice for Windows 10) by using the MDM management hooks built into the OS.
The second link describes the difference between different licence levels of Microsoft Intune that are available via the O365 portal.
In all cases, your devices are managed by Intune, just that different subsets of management options are available depending on how you connect the device to Intune (e.g. link 1) and what version of Intune you’re licensed to use (link 2).
So to follow this through, you should use MDM to manage your devices, assuming they’re either Win 10, iOS or Android, and you should decide based on your needs and licence affordability which management portal in Azure/O365 to use.
