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BMC Helix Client Management vs BigFix comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
BigFix
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (9th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (33rd), Patch Management (8th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (9th)
BMC Helix Client Management
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Device Management (MDM) (8th), Endpoint Compliance (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BigFix1.1%
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint7.8%
CrowdStrike Falcon6.6%
Other84.5%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
Mobile Device Management (MDM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC Helix Client Management5.9%
Jamf Pro13.5%
NinjaOne7.5%
Other73.1%
Mobile Device Management (MDM)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
AM
RPA Developer at Hexaware Technologies Limited
Successfully manage endpoint security and compliance while facing integration challenges
I have not come across any difficulties. I integrated it with ILMT (IBM License Metric Tool). It lets us identify all software being used in my organization with BigFix. It provides input of all types of software being used, including details and information about hardware specifications. I am more involved in software licensing and procurement, so I utilize this tool for procuring more licenses if needed for our company. After integration, we get different dashboards showcasing our IBM infrastructure, highlighting various issues in our environment that we can mitigate. I recommend BigFix to others. I rate BigFix a seven out of ten.
Cristian Testa - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Manager Product Manager - Latin America Region at tdi
A stable solution that allows you to manage IT clients from receipt to retirement
The initial setup is straightforward and easy to use, but you need to understand the different functionalities and modules. The console version and the Hub application are different, and you need some knowledge to make the process easier. Deployment typically takes about two months. You start with the initial setup and then continue with operations. The deployment process is straightforward. The master installation takes about thirty minutes. After that, you deploy different relays to discover the endpoints and create the credentials and sources to install the agents. Once the agent is installed on an endpoint, you can manage it as needed. The first step is always the installation. BMC Client Management can be deployed both on cloud and on-premises. After the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increased need for remote solutions, so we have customers using both models. In BMC Client Management, I'd rate the initial setup as an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is the best in class, in my opinion, because they have invested heavily in research and development."
"They have a new GUI which is just fantastic."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is its machine-learning capabilities. Additionally, there is full integration with other solutions."
"The multi-layered approach to the product gives you confidence that it will stop exploits, ransomware, worms, or viruses from compromising endpoints, essentially providing peace of mind."
"It blocks malicious files. It prevents attacks. It doesn't require many updates, it's a very light application."
"When the pandemic started, Palo Alto came up with many solutions, which helped with the quick shift from on-premises to the cloud."
"Palo Alto is the core of the security infrastructure in the environment."
"The most valuable features are incident creation, policy-based protection, IP whitelisting, and device encryption. These are beneficial for endpoint and server security."
"It is a one-stop tool that allows you to do everything; it supports reporting, vulnerability management, patch management, and configuration, and all things can be done in one tool."
"Using BigFix and the automation we built we've been able to reduce patch time from three hours and 37 minutes on average to less than twenty minutes per server."
"Overall, I think it's a great product and a product that most people would really get a lot of benefit out of."
"It has improved reliability upon delivery of software and has also helped reduce software expenses."
"The most valuable feature of BigFix is the software deployment."
"If you utilize the tool to the maximum capacity available to you, your ROI is significantly five to seven-fold over cost."
"The interface is easy to use, and it's not complicated to create tasks; it offers all of the features that we require."
"It has improved my organization because we can automate a lot of tasks; we went from manually patching machines or doing our best and having very little visibility into it to us being able to set it and forget it and getting really good results on first-pass patching."
"The solution provides multiple features in one place."
"One feature I like, that was especially valuable during the pandemic, is remote control. Remote control grants administrators and support personnel access to the laptops and PCs of employees (who might be working from home) in order to fix any issues that come up as and when they come up, even without having to wait for a support request."
"BMC Client Management is a stable solution and one of the best in the market. It allows me to manage all recipe endpoints, including iOS, Android, Linux, Unix, and Windows, all within the same solution."
"One of our customers is a financial institution with more than 15,000 endpoints, and we use BMC Client Management to manage their regulatory compliance needs, manage the endpoints from a security perspective, and integrate it with service management as well."
"The inventory and patch management tools are very valuable."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its patching capabilities and the help it offers when it comes to use cases, like prompting for the reboot after a certain period of time."
"It's a scalable solution. We have deployed it for customers using 3000 nodes to those using 300,000 nodes."
"BMC Client Management has helped us be able to patch our OS or any software to the latest version."
 

Cons

"The technical support is not very good. I find the process difficult."
"Basically, they don't provide customer support tools just to investigate the logs."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a strong tool, but it is true that digesting information sometimes makes the tool go a little bit slower."
"It is not very strong in terms of endpoint management. It should have additional features like DLP, encryption, or advanced device control."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"As an improvement, I would like to see enhanced connection speeds."
"In an upcoming release, the solution could improve by providing hard disk encryption."
"The solution needs better reports. I think they should let the customer go in and customize the reports."
"It could use better integration with Hypervisor products like VMware."
"I'd like to see better integration, with the different applications within BigFix. Instead of sometimes feeling like four or five different applications, they need to be integrated a little better within themselves."
"I want to see a solution for being able to deploy automated software to a Mac running OS X 10.13, something that's going to deal with kernel exceptions and answering prompts for user permissions for data folders and whatnot."
"I would like the dashboard to be improved to show the problematic machines and good machines."
"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?""
"It can be improved speed-wise. They can make it a little bit light. If you do any query for servers in bulk, it can take some time. Similarly, creating a job can take some time."
"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 only thing that I don't like about BigFix is that it does not support other devices such as printer firmware, router firmware, and things like that. I will be happy if I can control everything and get everything else in there, even if it is just a line item. They can do some enhancements to the Web UI. I am trying to get customers to be able to manage their environment by using Web UI, and it would be good if we can delete endpoints by using Web UI. We should also be able to generate Excel content or data tables from the Web UI without having to go to the console. It is small stuff, and it drives me crazy that I have to go to another console to do these things."
"BMC Client Management supports only iOS devices. It would be good if they would support Android as well."
"The solution needs to add whitelisting because many customers request it."
"It would be good if BMC Client Management can perform vulnerability assessment scanning at the endpoint on its own and mitigate that. Then, we wouldn't have to rely on a third party VA tool."
"BMC Client Management supports only iOS devices. It would be good if they would support Android as well."
"The on-premises version of BMC Client Management has powerful remote control functionality and decent compliance features, but these features both rely on the discovery tool in order to gain a complete set of insights about the endpoint's environment. Now, BMC's discovery solution depends on having an agent installed in each endpoint and sometimes the agent doesn't work properly, making it difficult to get an accurate understanding of the environment (including special topologies) even with BMC's discovery tool."
"The solution does not offer the functionality of remote access to users."
"BMC Client Management could improve in the area of integration."
"BMC Client Management could improve in the area of integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"Our license will require renewal in August, after which the maintenance will continue as usual."
"This is an expensive solution."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"This is an expensive solution."
"So, the pricing is slightly more expensive than the others. I have to keep buying licenses every time I add a new device."
"I can estimate the reduced cost of servers maintenance to approximatively $500,000."
"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."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"You get what we call the Platform Edition, which you get for free. The patch service is maybe $0.50 per workstation per month. Then there's the basic server cost, which is about $1.50 per server per month. You also get into Lifecycle which does power management, OSD remote control, and those types of things, and that might be about 10 times the price - which works out to about $13 per server and, maybe $5 per workstation per month."
"The license is subscription-based."
"The price is reasonable, but our customers find it expensive."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"To use BMC Client Management they charge annually per node."
"BMC Client Management is a very affordable solution. There is one main server license which I believe is around $1,000 per year, and then there is the license for the actual solution. With the solution license, you can opt for a suite license where you get access to all the features and benefits, or alternatively you can buy any of the five main components of the suite license individually."
"The solution is low cost."
"BMC Client Management is a high-priced solution, but given its performance and capabilities, I think it offers great value. I don't have the exact number for the yearly licensing costs. I believe there is an additional cost of around two hundred dollars."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Retailer
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise48
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise67
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
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 pretty good and now follows a subscription model similar to other major software solutions, making it ...
What needs improvement with BigFix?
I have concerns about BigFix's pricing, which I find to be slightly on the higher side. While it may not be the most ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Client Management?
BMC Client Management is a high-priced solution, but given its performance and capabilities, I think it offers great ...
What needs improvement with BMC Client Management?
In BMC Client Management, I would like to see more features for executing commands remotely. For example, with SAP, t...
What is your primary use case for BMC Client Management?
The most common use cases for BMC Client Management among my clients include managing inventory and deployment of a s...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
BMC Helix Client Management, Helix Client Management, BMC Fromdistance Mobile Device Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
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
Charter Manufacturing
Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, Microsoft, SentinelOne and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). Updated: April 2026.
885,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.