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BigFix vs VMware Carbon Black Endpoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.2
BigFix delivers fast ROI, improves efficiency in patch management, compliance reporting, and reduces costs through streamlined processes.
Sentiment score
6.0
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint delivers strong ROI with enhanced security, reducing costs and malware incidents within six months.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
BigFix customer support is praised for quick responses, knowledgeable assistance, and improved personal interactions under HCL management.
Sentiment score
6.3
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint support is knowledgeable but inconsistent, with varied satisfaction and room for improvement in response times.
On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the highest quality, enterprise support provides timely responses, typically within four to eight hours.
Technical support from HCL is satisfactory unless there are customization requirements.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.7
BigFix efficiently scales for large environments but requires careful setup and hardware adjustments for optimal performance.
Sentiment score
7.3
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is highly scalable, supporting diverse environments efficiently, despite some data extraction and management complexities.
BigFix requires some minimum configuration requirements.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
5.9
BigFix is highly stable, reliable, and efficient, handling tasks well with minimal maintenance even in large deployments.
Sentiment score
7.5
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint offers reliable security, but some users experience stability issues and update-related challenges for resource allocation.
 

Room For Improvement

Users want BigFix's web UI modernized with enhanced reporting, automation, API, scalability, and better multi-tenant management.
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint needs better integration, UI, mobile support, pricing, responsiveness, threat detection, and stability improvements.
In addition to reporting improvements, there should be a feature for application control to allow or disallow certain applications from being executed on endpoints.
Building a management console is quick and simple, taking only one to two hours for setup.
BigFix requires some minimum configuration requirements.
 

Setup Cost

BigFix pricing varies by modules, number of servers, is subscription-based, and offers discounts with IBM tools; license complexity noted.
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is seen as pricey, varying by deployment size, with mixed views on its value and flexibility.
The pricing is pretty good and now follows a subscription model similar to SolarWinds, making it easier for customers to subscribe and unsubscribe.
 

Valuable Features

BigFix enhances operational efficiency with user-friendly patch management, multi-platform support, automation, and insightful reporting for comprehensive IT management.
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint excels in threat detection, management, and integration, providing scalable and efficient security with minimal resource use.
BigFix supports something known as Patch Policies, which allows users to define that whenever critical patches are released, they should get evaluated against machines and automatically deploy them.
I use this mainly to capture inventory for IBM products, and as BigFix was part of IBM, it gets easily integrated with IBM solutions.
The BigFix features that have proven most effective include inventory, software delivery, software distribution, software catalog, and both software and hardware management.
 

Categories and Ranking

BigFix
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
27th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Patch Management (4th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
32nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Security Incident Response (2nd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (24th), Ransomware Protection (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of BigFix is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is 1.7%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BigFix1.2%
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint1.7%
Other97.1%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 15, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Nikunj Kamboj - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates well with our existing SIEM tool and helps in identifying suspicious activities
The solution's integration with our existing security infrastructure is good. Whenever we have any alert in VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, we can easily that alert in our SIEM tool and check logs from the SIEM tool itself. VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is just a secondary security tool for us, and we are just monitoring the alerts from it. The solution's behavioral analytics feature helps in identifying suspicious activities pretty well. Whenever we have even a small thing, we get an alert. The solution is deployed on the cloud in our organization. Performance-wise, the solution is doing great in terms of connecting to the host directly. Performing a malware scan usually takes a lot of time, more than 24 hours. A malware scan is something that we do only on Carbon Black for the old endpoint devices and servers. It used to take sometimes three days to perform. I would recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
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Answers from the Community

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 23, 2019
Apr 23, 2019
BigFix and Carbon Black are really two different products from a functionality standpoint and are not really competing products. Carbon Black Defense is essentially an anti-malware (with more smarts and they refer to it as Next-gen AV) BigFix does not provide anti-malware functionality. BigFix has multiple components that you would use to protect your environment BigFix Patch: As the name sug...
2 out of 8 answers
MP
Apr 15, 2019
These are complementary solutions. Cb Defense is a combination of next-gen AV and EDR capabilities. BigFix is used to identify assets, distribute software, Patch OS� and applications, provision systems, keep systems continuously compliant and much more. Many enterprises use BigFix to find which endpoints need Cb, distribute Cb agents, keep them updated and fix what Cb finds either by quarantining the endpoint, patching it, distributing a new application or wiping and reimaging it.
MW
Apr 15, 2019
Hey Nick, We chose MS SCCM not Bigfix at the end. Thanks
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise66
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

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 that can help users to mitigate them. The problem was related to the hardware co...
What to choose: an endpoint antivirus, an EDR solution or both?
I can recommend Carbon Black, an award-winning next-gen anti-virus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) security solution. The CB Predictive Security Cloud platform combines multiple hi...
What's the difference between Carbon Black CB Response and Carbon Black CB Defense?
Carbon Black offers two different levels of Endpoint Detection and Response. One is the VM Carbon Black Cloud Endpoint Standard (CB Defense), and the other is the Carbon Black Endpoint Detection an...
What do you like most about Carbon Black CB Defense?
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is a highly stable solution.
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Endpoint Manager
Carbon Black CB Defense, Bit9, Confer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Netflix, Progress Residential, Indeed, Hologic, Gentle Giant, Samsung Research America
Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. VMware Carbon Black Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
866,685 professionals have used our research since 2012.