

Acunetix and Harness are prominent competitors in the security and deployment software category. Acunetix appears to have the upper hand in vulnerability detection, while Harness excels in deployment automation.
Features: Acunetix offers comprehensive vulnerability detection capabilities with fast scanning and support for various environments. It excels in cross-site scripting and SQL injection detection and provides extensive reporting and integration capabilities for seamless CI/CD pipeline integration. Harness shines in intelligent deployment strategies and powerful CI/CD pipeline automation, offering AI integration that enhances speed and reliability along with rollback and troubleshooting features.
Room for Improvement: Acunetix is often criticized for pricing concerns and lacks some advanced features like automated subdomain scanning and better handling of complex authentication flows. False positive rates and report customization could be improved. Harness users point to a steep learning curve and high licensing costs, with platform complexity posing challenges for smaller teams. UI, debugging capabilities, and documentation enhancements could improve usability.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Acunetix focuses more on on-premises and hybrid deployment options with generally reliable technical support, although users report slow response times and high costs. Harness provides optimized cloud deployments with a varied experience and is praised for its 24/7 support, though guidance for new users is needed.
Pricing and ROI: Acunetix pricing is high with concerns over flexibility, requiring large upfront commitments. The ROI is significant through improved security and reduced manual testing time. Harness also has relatively high pricing, especially for smaller teams, but justifies it with operational benefits for large enterprises through enhanced deployment efficiency. Improvements in pricing transparency are suggested for both products.
The AI features that they have and with which we can rewrite the pipeline and troubleshoot issues significantly saved time.
By adopting templates and various different pipelines across our own IDP platform, we have saved upwards of 30 to 40% of development time.
With Harness, the release process decreased from three or four hours to one or two hours, making deployments much quicker.
It saves a significant amount of time by covering attack surfaces.
I have seen a return on investment, as Acunetix helps reduce the man-days and effort needed for scanning bulk applications through automated assessments.
We have rarely faced issues with Harness tech support.
We have not faced any customer support issues, with tickets resolved in less than a four-day SLA.
There was an instance when I faced issues with third-party plugins, and after raising a support ticket, they responded in a few hours with a documentation link that resolved my issue.
For high-severity issues, they reach out within two to three hours, and for critical issues, a response is received within 15 minutes.
The technical support from Invicti is very good and fast.
Support staff not being familiar with the problem.
Our entire organization uses it with hundreds of applications, and it supports this scale effectively.
It is able to work on our infrastructure side, which is EKS, and we are able to handle our organization growth effectively for an enterprise use case.
When I integrated Harness to more than 20 applications in one place, it becomes less stable.
Acunetix can handle increasing workloads and more applications easily.
Harness is completely stable, and we are using it in production without facing any stability issues at all.
We have rarely faced issues with Harness tech support.
Harness is decently stable.
There is not a lot of good support for pipeline as code, and I often find myself not using pipeline as code the way other platforms such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins integrate pipeline as code.
Improved documentation and onboarding tutorials would help accelerate adoption.
Harness can be improved by providing more clarity on the credits it issues for Harness Cloud, as it has a tiered pricing structure involving license and credit costs, which can get confusing.
The main concern is related to false positives; Acunetix needs to work on identifying valid and invalid findings.
I could supply it with maybe a Swagger file or a JSON file, and Acunetix would pick it up, scan all the endpoints according to the OWASP Top Ten, and give me remediation and actionable remediation reports.
Acunetix should have better integration with newer tools such as GitHub and Azure DevOps.
From what I understand with respect to Harness, licensing and setup costs were relatively low for an enterprise, and the pricing was more catered toward enterprises who would invest in the technology.
The licensing cost is a little bit too high.
The pricing cost is affordable for small and mid-sized organizations, and when compared to Checkmarx, it is significantly affordable, as Checkmarx is quite expensive.
We secured a special licensing model for penetration testing companies, which is cost-effective.
The pricing of Acunetix is pretty expensive and could be improved.
Harness uses AI to suggest errors in case of deployment failures.
The platform also supports cloud-native environments and Kubernetes deployments, making pipeline management easier, and its automation capabilities significantly improve speed and reliability.
If something goes wrong, I can use AI troubleshooting to build or test my fails and analyze the logs, suggesting the fixes.
Its most valuable role is in enhancing security by identifying potential vulnerabilities efficiently.
The solution is excellent at detecting SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.
The best feature Acunetix offers is the centralized dashboard and the quality of reports it generates, which includes various options for selecting reports and developer options for directly sharing the reports with developers.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Harness | 0.8% |
| Acunetix | 2.6% |
| Other | 96.6% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 4 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 1 |
| Large Enterprise | 10 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 18 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 7 |
| Large Enterprise | 19 |
Harness offers a comprehensive toolset for automating deployment processes and enhancing software update efficiency. It's lauded for its CI/CD capabilities, feature flagging, and real-time deployment monitoring. Key features include an intuitive UI, secret management, and robust rollback functionalities, all contributing to improved productivity and reduced errors in DevOps environments.
Acunetix is a robust web application security testing tool offering rapid scanning, user-friendly interfaces, and accurate vulnerability detection with minimal false positives. It supports both cloud and on-premises deployment, making it versatile for various security needs.
Acunetix is distinguished by its capability to identify critical vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting and SQL injection with high precision. It integrates seamlessly with CI/CD tools, supporting continuous scanning and large-scale application management. The centralized dashboard and detailed automated reporting streamline operations. Despite its benefits, users suggest improvements like reducing false positives, flexible pricing, and enhanced API scanning. Better integration with platforms like GitHub and Azure DevOps is sought, alongside more comprehensive customization and faster scanning. Mobile application scanning and improved team collaboration tools are also desired.
What features make Acunetix stand out?Acunetix is widely implemented across industries undertaking web application security assessments, including those requiring penetration testing and vulnerability assessment. It ensures applications meet security protocols and complies with standards while fitting into CI/CD workflows for secure pre-release checks.
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