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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

BigFix
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (6th), Patch Management (2nd), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
27th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Security Incident Response (2nd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (20th), Ransomware Protection (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of BigFix is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is 1.6%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"BigFix is a great product. The flexibility of putting together your own relevance and retrieving custom data from any one of your agents is a valuable feature. It is one of my favorite features because if a boss asks me, "How many of these devices do we have?", I can put together a report in two seconds."
"The most valuable and essential features of BigFix are all of them, they are needed when serving the purpose of the desktop operation framework. We cannot run operations without patching or without having an appropriate mechanism for deploying software, et cetera. The features all serve their purpose for our use case."
"The BigFix features that have proven most effective include inventory, software delivery, software distribution, software catalog, and both software and hardware management."
"It is a one-stop tool that allows you to do everything. It supports reporting, vulnerability management, patch management, and configuration. All things can be done in one tool."
"I’ve found patching to be the most valuable feature of the solution."
"The most valuable feature of BigFix is the software deployment."
"Patch management, because it very much improved the patch compliance and has the capability to manage Windows and non-Windows clients."
"It has intelligent learning behind it and we have been very successful in preventing attacks."
"The whole purpose of the product, like application control, is very good, and also if you need to update some policies, it works well and instantly."
"We have another piece of that infrastructure that does what they call threat emulation. It's like sandboxing where it takes files that it doesn't know about, puts them in a VM-type environment, and it kicks them off to see if there's any malware or tendencies that might look like malware, that kind of thing."
"Once the solution is installed and configured correctly it does not require a lot of hands-on attention until you need upgrading."
"The offline networking is the most important feature. Some of our users are engineers that work offsite, and they can still be on the solution, which is also great."
"I feel that the initial setup was straightforward and not complex."
"The feature I found most valuable in Carbon Black CB Defense is the ongoing monitoring feature that works by emailing updates about any detections found."
"It is a scalable solution...The initial setup was straightforward."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more integration with external data."
"The sub-capacity licensing was a challenge for some of it. We had trouble getting it to calculate right."
"Needs to improve Network Access Protection (NAP) technologies to prevent computers with vulnerabilities from gaining access to networks."
"They need better integration."
"I would like to see more custom content."
"There is no support for patch management on SLES on IBM pSeries (only the Intel platform is supported)."
"The scalability of the web UI product doesn't scale to the size that we need for our implementation so it needs to expand. I would also like to see the capability to develop on the back of the web UI capability. There are lots of web features and integrations that we could do with web UI that it would be nice to be able to put on top of what's already there, rather than waiting for IBM to develop what we need."
"One aspect that could be improved is the speed of the console. Sometimes it can be slow, which is something that needs to be addressed."
"It could be a bit complicated. You have to be very familiar with Carbon Black to understand what it is doing and why it is doing. I would like to have more explanations and simplification in the user interface. It would be good to get help and see more explanations. It should tell us that a software is blocked and the reason for it. It would be good to be able to build chains in terms of what caused what, what worked, and what caused an issue. We are now moving from Carbon Black to Cortex XDR. While choosing antivirus software, we were also looking at Carbon Black because it also has an antivirus package, and it is next-generation, but we were told that Carbon Black doesn't support firewalls. We have Palo Alto firewalls. We would have chosen this solution if it supported firewalls, in particular next-generation firewalls, but unfortunately, it doesn't. Therefore, we decided on Cortex XDR because it integrates with Palo Alto firewalls."
"As far as I know, Carbon Defense has nothing that can be installed on mobile devices. It lacks a defense solution for mobile devices, especially mobile tablets. I would like to see support for mobile devices and the pricing should be less than the pricing for a normal workstation."
"The application control can be improved. It should also have an automatic update of the agents."
"Report generation can be improved."
"Sensor deployment requires extensive fine-tuning, and creating deployment packages is time-consuming."
"Performing a malware scan usually takes a lot of time, more than 24 hours."
"There could be more knowledge. I think they made a mistake when they took away the Check Point integration, because it provides more automation and also more threat intelligence."
"In our company, we also wanted to have network detection, like a host-based IDS on VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, but we did not get it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So, the pricing is slightly more expensive than the others. I have to keep buying licenses every time I add a new device."
"The price of BigFix could be lower. However, I am always seeking a lower price."
"The cost is slightly high."
"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."
"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."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"The price is reasonable, but our customers find it expensive."
"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 am not really involved in the pricing of this product. But, from my understanding, it is OK for us."
"It's reasonable in price"
"The licensing cost is on the more expensive side, but I thought it was worth it because they did a good job. It was one of the vendors I truly didn't have to worry about too much until this latest upgrade."
"Carbon Black might be a touch more expensive than Symantec. They tend to get a premium for their capabilities. They're sort of an industry leader in a lot of areas with the functionality that they provide."
"We have branches, we have different companies, but we cannot buy less than 100 licenses. This does not make sense to me... It should be more flexible. I can understand their saying, "Okay, to be a customer you need 100," but to add on to that number it should be something very straightforward. If I need to add five, for example, I shouldn't need to add 100."
"Overall, it was cost-effective too."
"The pricing [is] more or less the same as other similar solutions."
"Its pricing was very good, which is one of the reasons I went to it as an alternative. It is on a yearly basis. There are no additional fees."
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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
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.