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BigFix vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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
7.3
Number of Reviews
271
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
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 (2nd), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.3%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigFix is 9.1%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 17.3%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi - PeerSpot reviewer
Everything has worked better since we started using it
Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.
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.
Muralitharan KS - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient server management and detailed reporting with flexible deployment capabilities
We are primarily using Ansible for automation purposes as it is a configuration management tool. It is utilized for various activities such as DNS activity, changes to web servers, virtual host settings, and other day-to-day tasks, all of which are templated in Ansible Ansible allows us to manage…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is probably mobile device management. Small businesses are coming under greater scrutiny and requirements for compliance as time goes on. We don't have to worry about a VPN because we can manage these devices, control company data, and lock users out. If needed, we can remotely wipe devices and deadman-switch them."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Technical support, in general, has been quite helpful."
"The solution appears to be stable and scalable."
"It is a cloud-based service. It is easy to use and offers privacy."
"Autopilot is the most valuable feature."
"I would rate the stability of Microsoft Intune nine out of ten."
"Everything has worked better since we started using Intune."
"BigFix is incredibly fast and accurate in patching, reporting, and remediation."
"Being able to intelligently create reports, gather data, export CSVs and give that to the leadership of some of the client groups that my team supports has helped my organization."
"Before we had BigFix, we had problems with some malware. BigFix allows us to immediately patch all instances of endpoints that were vulnerable to antivirus and initiate scans. That's key."
"We've had no issues with stability."
"DOWNLOADING-PATCHES; It has also helped to reduce network traffic when it comes to downloading patches. By only having to download the patch once to the central location and then utilizing the relay structure to then download the patch to a specific site and then everything gathering at local, it greatly reduces the bandwidth of multiple endpoints."
"Having higher visibility on patching level, on patching successful, and non-successful has been a way that BigFix has improved my organization. Also, the ability to customize the content to do what we need it to do is very powerful and very flexible for us. Finally, in the area of custom interfaces like REST API really gives us the ability to provide for our external customers."
"Software distribution and patch management are the most valuable."
"I like the inventory and life cycle management feature."
"The biggest thing I liked about Ansible is the check mode so that we can verify, after we've pushed, that the config there is actually what we intended."
"It has made our infrastructure more testable. We are able to build our infrastructure in CI, then are more confident in what we are deploying will work, not breaking everything."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is valuable due to the simplicity of the YAML language."
"It is agentless. I don't have to think about which client system my unit has understanding in or not, because I can execute from my system. It will go and configure it, and any module that it is looking for will be shipped out."
"The automation manager is very good."
"There are no agents by default, so adding a new server is a matter of a couple lines of configuration (on a new server and the configuration master)."
"The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature."
"The ease of being able to use the modules and collections to define what our business processes are is valuable. We are able to give non-technical people the ability to look at a process and say, "We need a step here. Someone do something and put it right here.""
 

Cons

"There should be more support for macOS. Even though macOS is supported by Intune and Microsoft is working very hard to get more features into Intune to manage macOS, that's one thing they can give a lot more attention to."
"They could also make it easier to use because there are some other products that may be easier to use in terms of the look and feel of the dashboard."
"Microsoft Intune has potential for improvement; I would like to see a lot more customization in the reporting tools."
"From my level of analysis, the feature I would prefer to see added to Microsoft Intune is extensive support. Anything that helps to diagnose the problem and solve it would be useful."
"In future releases, I would like to see better integration with Apple products."
"Intune should improve the management of non-Microsoft devices. It would be better to manage Mac, Android, and other non-Microsoft operating system devices within the same Intune interface."
"I'm still playing around with it and haven't had any issues with the product yet, but support can definitely be improved."
"We are currently unable to control aspects of group policy from Teams like we can for GPO. They are still not part of Intune. Microsoft is adding this, but it's currently in preview, and few GPO features have been added to the product."
"The reporting and dashboard parts have room for improvement."
"I would like to see much better web reporting because as it is now, it's convoluted, basic, it's not modern, and there are limitations to it."
"They need better integration."
"I would like to see the Self Service section made more user-friendly."
"It could use better integration with Hypervisor products like VMware."
"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. They need to really streamline and automate the Mac software deployment."
"The console interface is not friendly, and requires training before using it in production."
"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."
"Ansible can face scalability issues, such as limitations when trying to scale up infrastructure. It might struggle with connection dropping or spawning additional VMs under certain conditions."
"In modern infrastructure, there are more than just servers. The initial server-centric approach in Ansible is a bit strange."
"One problem that I'm facing right now is the mismatch between the new version of Python and Ansible. Sometimes it's Python 2, and sometimes it's Python 3. When things get a bit dicey, I wish that Ansible would solve this issue by itself. I don't want to have to specify if it is Python 3 or version 2."
"Improvements should be made in terms of execution speed, which is, I believe, the most lacking feature. Aside from that, re-triggering a failed task is another useful feature."
"There is always room for improvement in features or customer support."
"There should be better Windows support. We have had to develop a lot of our own roles because of the Windows platform. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux ones existed but not the Windows versions, so I have had to develop a bunch of Windows ones."
"It would be good to make the solution more user-friendly,"
"It should support more integration with different products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of the product price and licensing costs, my company finds the product to be reasonably priced."
"The purchase of the product was handled by someone else."
"No one can compete with Microsoft when it comes to price, and the features it is offering."
"Existing E5 license holders for M365, Intune, and Azure, receive a free license."
"Generally, we get favorable discounts, so it's not too bad. Obviously, we're looking at decreasing those wherever we can to bring value back to the public purse because it's all charity based. It's all publicly funded."
"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."
"For organizations that are a Microsoft shop, the pricing is compelling."
"Most of our clients come to us with licensing already in place. On average, it costs $6 per device per month to add Intune to an Office 365 subscription, but I am not sure."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"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 can estimate the reduced cost of servers maintenance to approximatively $500,000."
"It is too costly. It is one of the best tools, but because of pricing, not all clients support it. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The price is very fair."
"The product is less costly when compared to other solutions, and this is a good solid solution for what we have paid."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"The price of BigFix could be lower. However, I am always seeking a lower price."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."
"The cost is high, but it still works well."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
"We use the open-source version of the solution."
"The pricing for us is huge because we use twenty thousand nodes, so that is a huge infrastructure, but if someone is using a small infrastructure, then the pricing is not so much."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
33%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
21%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 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 ...
What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
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
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.