Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

AWS CloudFormation vs BigFix comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
296
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
AWS CloudFormation
Ranking in Configuration Management
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
BigFix
Ranking in Configuration Management
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (26th), Patch Management (3rd), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.9%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS CloudFormation is 1.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigFix is 8.7%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license
The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.
Mbula Mboma - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates efficient infrastructure deployment with visibility into resource connections
I primarily use AWS CloudFormation for deploying infrastructure efficiently. For instance, if I want to create load balancers with target groups and EC2 instances, I find CloudFormation simplifies the process of deployment and configuration, reducing the possibility of errors AWS CloudFormation…
Bella Yakoby - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers third-party patching feature, good scalability, and enhance endpoint management capabilities
From the perspective of the team that's handling the environment, it's not so user-friendly compared to other solutions, the competitors. We hire new teams from time to time, and they are complaining, look, although BigFix is very robust and cross-platform, it's not so fun to work with. The user interface for the technical teams is not so advanced. It's not so intuitive compared to SCCM, compared to ManageEngine. And this is the fact that they have, with the teams, because they have the rejection. The look and feel of the system are old-fashioned. For new employees, it's less easy to find someone I don't need to educate on how to work with BigFix. Although it's easy, it's not as intuitive as the other solutions, and the functionality of the other solutions is less advanced. Let's summarize: The user interface has to be changed from the perspective of the teams that are managing the product. It's old school.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The tool's most valuable feature is Autopilot."
"When managing a large number of devices in an organization, it becomes easy to handle them on one platform using Microsoft Intune."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Intune as eight out of ten."
"The most valuable feature for us is the security, including risk analysis and patch management."
"It helps us manage user certificates."
"This solution saves us a lot of time once it's implemented."
"The compliance and configuration policies in Microsoft Intune are the most valuable features, saving significant time compared to manual implementation."
"The most valuable feature of Intune is the ability to reset a lost device and remove all the data."
"I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. We use it every day."
"The product uses a simple JSON file format, so it's easy for a beginner to start. But you can use Terraform once you get good hands-on experience and know the infrastructure and resources well."
"AWS CloudFormation has automated the resource-building process, thereby removing the scope of human errors. We can tag the resources which help the billing process."
"AWS Cloud automation reduces the time needed to create AWS resources."
"The most valuable features of AWS CloudFormation are all the resources documentation is located in one location, simple resource reverting, and ease of use of the full package for new users."
"AWS CloudFormation is valuable because it allows me to create resources using YAML files without needing to learn a specific language."
"The CloudFormation template can be reused to create multiple stacks, reducing duplications and improving our infrastructure."
"There is a cost-benefit to using CloudFormation that comes about because of the automation that it provides."
"BigFix has drastically reduced the maintenance window period to patch and reboot servers."
"It's very straightforward."
"Patch management, because it very much improved the patch compliance and has the capability to manage Windows and non-Windows clients."
"Prior to BigFix we used Altiris, which was distributed. We had to manage multiple servers, and duplicate the tasks that we did on each server. BigFix tremendously reduced the amount of work that we had to do on each server in a centralized manner. We could minimize the work that we had to do, and we had a lot more control over the tasks and what machines they ran on."
"I think BigFix is a very good solution, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"BigFix can manage lost devices, so you can wipe them remotely to ensure the IP doesn't get out in public. Unified endpoint security is a new perspective. I know that HCL is also collaborating with IBM, but I'm not sure if there is any cooperation between them and MaaS360 or other endpoint components."
"Vulnerability scanning and patch automation."
"Servers are patched more consistently than they have been previously."
 

Cons

"They need to add more group policies. Intune currently does not have many group policies that you can deploy. Its reporting, which is very limited at the moment, also needs improvement. It will be great if they can add report customization. Its stability needs to be improved. Sometimes, when you register a device in Intune, it doesn't show up instantly on the engine portal on the admin side. They need to provide better support for complicated issues. They also have a long turnaround time."
"I think there should be a better tracking of the cell phones used on the Intune."
"The closest Microsoft Intune can be to GPOs, the better. There needs to be more granularity on application deployments. However, they have done better recently with the application deployments."
"There can be delays in the deployment of new policies."
"It should be simplified. I've worked with many different mobile device management solutions, and Intune is one of the more complex ones. It could be more simplified, and some of it is related to the wording that is being used, such as a configuration profile versus a policy. They really should have had different names to make it less confusing."
"Microsoft needs to strategize its licensing structure. When using Microsoft Intune, we bought a small scale of controls, only controlling part of the devices, though Microsoft Intune can do much more. The Intune Suite offers more features, allowing extensive integration with either internal or cloud environments without requiring third-party licensing. However, each feature has a separate license, making logistics and cost management difficult if not strategically bundled together."
"Integrating certain group policies can be challenging and may necessitate using on-premises systems to integrate them with Microsoft Intune."
"It would be interesting to integrate the server side of Intune. Some group policy updates we have on the Windows Server side and possibly some on the client side could also be included."
"I prefer Terraform over AWS CloudFormation because AWS CloudFormation is specific to just AWS. But if I want to use a multi-cloud or hybrid setup, then Terraform works better. It uses a simple language, HCL. So, if you learn HCL, you can manage your infrastructures across different cloud providers. You don't need to be specific to one cloud provider."
"The solution needs to offer better support to other cloud vendors."
"The speed of the replication process could improve. It can take some time to replicate that could use a speed increase."
"For improvement, it's crucial that AWS provides options in terms of computing services, DB related services, and machine learning solutions. If I'm not hands-on with a particular service, like machine learning applications, I struggle to write the CloudFormation code."
"Error-handling features can be improved."
"This tool is not intuitive and there are others that are easier to understand."
"AWS CloudFormation allows you to use the code templates written in JSON and YAML, but not directly in Python. Adding this feature would be beneficial."
"One area where AWS CloudFormation could improve is by offering more flexibility in creating custom templates."
"License management isn't quite as easy as it should be to deal with the licensing. You need to take the server down to import the new licenses which I find to be annoying."
"I'd definitely like to see additional feature parody in the web UI versus the console. There are certain things that you can only do in the console and they're very cumbersome to do, like secure parameters, for example. That's definitely something that has a wide degree of utility but it needs to be easier to surface. At this particular juncture between the transition, between the legacy console and the web UI, it's hard to justify dealing with the cumbersome aspects of the legacy console when theoretically everything's been through the web UI."
"I would like to see more emphasis on using the web console, to have the same power as the full fat client console that they do they now. It's a lighter way to log in and it would be faster for our operators to do their work. The console tends to take a long time for a large number of clients."
"The BigFix Inventory could have an increased scope regarding the tools that can be detected. It does not cover all the possible software installed in Asset."
"The main shortcoming of BigFix was integration with vulnerability management. If you had a vulnerability in your software and BigFix on the endpoint, you needed integration with Qualys, Tenable, or another vulnerability management solution to fix that. It was like, "Okay, we can identify issues, and get that information back from the endpoint, but what are we doing about it?""
"I would like to see different types of reporting and the ability to integrate closer with the cloud."
"BigFix is actually a little bit on the expensive side in Turkey because of the dollar's exchange rate in our currency."
"I would eventually like to see a SaaS offering, a cloud-hosted BigFix instance where we only have to put a relay in our environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Intune has a user-based subscription model. You can go for a monthly or a yearly payment."
"I have no comment on pricing of the solution."
"The pricing is good because customers are not complaining about it."
"For Microsoft 365 E5 clients, cost is not an issue as this product is one of the benefits."
"It comes with the E5 plan. We bought the E5 plan from Microsoft."
"Intune's pricing is competitive. For example, the license of Blackberry's Enterprise Mobility Suite was costly, but Intune is affordable. It is included as an additional feature when you buy security enhancements for your organization. For example, let's say I have fifty users in my organization and all of them are using Microsoft cloud services, like Teams, Office 365, and OneDrive."
"The price of Intune is often included as part of a bundle with other Microsoft licenses, which makes it somewhat cheaper."
"It's affordable for the protection it gives. There are no additional costs."
"There's no cost for launching any template using CloudFormation."
"The solution's cost is normal, neither cheap nor expensive."
"If you compared serverless and container-based, serverless is less expensive. If you use certain instances the price can increase and become too expensive."
"The product is free."
"AWS CloudFormation's pricing is cheaper than that of other cloud providers."
"The tool is free for the AWS environment."
"The tool's pricing depends on the page model."
"AWS CloudFormation doesn't have any cost because it's only the resources that you deploy with the solution that'll incur costs."
"The tool's price continues to go up. The cost per endpoint can vary, ranging from approximately 30 to 80 dollars per year. Compared to other products, pricing is in the middle. You need to buy an additional database license, but most users already have it."
"I would stay with the Managed Virtual Server license model, which is a 1-to-1 license per OS whether it is virtual or physical."
"The cost is slightly high."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing one out of ten."
"The price of BigFix is better than the solutions. You are able to pay monthly or annually. There are not any hidden costs with BigFix. There is an additional cost for the SQL database."
"You are charged per server and per workstation when using BigFix. ManageEngine is a lot cheaper than BigFix. There are some additional costs, such as support."
"The product is less costly when compared to other solutions, and this is a good solid solution for what we have paid."
"When purchasing, buying with other IBM tools provided us with a very good discount in pricing."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management solutions are best for your needs.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
7%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What do you like most about AWS CloudFormation?
AWS Cloud automation reduces the time needed to create AWS resources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CloudFormation?
AWS CloudFormation is free. However, there may be unexpected costs if developers deploy services incorrectly without ...
What needs improvement with AWS CloudFormation?
Improvements are needed for sharing resources between template files, especially when using AWS ( /products/amazon-aw...
What do you like most about BigFix?
The most valuable features of the solution are Windows patching and the hardware and software inventory.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
The pricing is competitive, but not the most competitive.
What needs improvement with BigFix?
While performing integration, we face many issues with IBM solution. We need detailed information about those issues ...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
CloudFormation
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Nextdoor, Coinbase, Expedia
US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CloudFormation vs. BigFix and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.