Mend.io vs Sonatype Repository Firewall comparison

Mend.io and Sonatype are both solutions in the Application Security Tools category. Mend.io is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.3, while Sonatype is ranked #31 with an average rating of 8.0. Mend.io holds a 3.6% mindshare in AS, compared to Sonatype’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Mend.io users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sonatype users who would recommend it.

Mend.io

Read 31 Mend.io reviews

4,825 Views
3,013 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Sonatype Repository Firewall

Read 4 Sonatype Repository Firewall reviews

631 Views
264 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Mend.io

Sonatype Repository Firewall

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Mend.io and Sonatype Repository Firewall compete in software management, each offering specific solutions. Mend.io holds an advantage in cost-effectiveness and support, while Sonatype is noted for its superior features.

Features: Mend.io offers integration compatibility, automation capabilities, and strong support. Sonatype Repository Firewall is recognized for security measures, detailed analytics, and a streamlined deployment process.

Room for Improvement: Mend.io could benefit from enhanced reporting capabilities, more frequent updates, and improved analytics. Sonatype Repository Firewall users suggest simplifying the configuration process, improving customer service responsiveness, and adding more integration options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Mend.io offers flexible deployment options and responsive customer service. Sonatype Repository Firewall provides a streamlined deployment model, but customer service responsiveness could be improved.

Pricing and ROI: Mend.io is seen as cost-effective with satisfactory ROI, while Sonatype Repository Firewall has higher initial setup costs but delivers substantial ROI, justifying the investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Mend.io vs. Sonatype Repository Firewall Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Mend.io vs. Sonatype Repository Firewall

May 2025

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Helped 860,632 peers since 2012

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

Mend.io

Ranking in Application Security Tools

17th

Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

7th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Static Code Analysis (4th), Software Supply Chain Security (1st)

Sonatype Repository Firewall

Ranking in Application Security Tools

31st

Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

15th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Mend.io is 3.6%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sonatype Repository Firewall is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools

Featured Reviews

meetharoon

CEO at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Enables smooth management of vulnerabilities and promotes a shift towards a culture of security

We have witnessed Mend.io for its high stability, consistently living up to our expectations in terms of performance and reliability. Our developers have reported very few issues and almost minimal to zero downtime, which is a critical factor for our organization to rely on Mend SCA to secure our applications. We didn't experience any major issues in the stability of the product. This level of dependability is crucial for our hundreds of development teams that need to maintain continuous integration and deployment processes without interruptions. We realize the solution's architecture is designed to support a wide range of use cases, making it suitable for organizations of varying sizes and complexities. As a SaaS (Software as a Service) offering, Mend.io eliminates the need for physical server management, which further contributes to its stability. Users can access the platform without worrying about hardware failures or maintenance issues that can affect on-premises solutions. Moreover, Mend.io's integration capabilities with existing workflows—including IDEs, repositories, and CI/CD pipelines—enhance its stability by providing a seamless user experience. This integration allows teams to incorporate security scanning into their development processes without significant disruptions, which is often a challenge with less stable solutions. Feedback from our developers and architects highlights the tool's effectiveness in reducing open-source software vulnerabilities while maintaining a streamlined development lifecycle. Our organization have experienced improved code quality and faster incident response times as a result of using Mend.io. The platform's intuitive dashboard and management views are also praised by our developers for their usability, contributing to a positive user experience. In short, Mend.io stands out as a dependable and reliable solution in the realm of software composition analysis. Its high stability, combined with robust integration capabilities and user-friendly features, makes it an excellent choice for organizations seeking to enhance their security posture while minimizing operational disruptions.

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Ashish Shukla

Global Treasurer at Genpact

You will get clean code every time, and that's a great achievement

For the QA team, it's a really good tool. For those who are not on the QA team, it is also a good tool to use for SDL in the SDLC. It plays a very critical role of doing the automatic quality check recommendation. Meaning, when using this tool, people can easily rectify the issues in the environment itself, instead of going to a higher environment and identifying them. This tool is quite easy to use and learn. We decided that there was no need to hire anyone new who would specialize in this. We had a team of about five to ten people who learned how to use this tool. There are some other automation tools like Jenkins, for example, that require a lot of effort to configure and write out the code, but you do not need to do such for this tool. I thought outside of the box and saw that there are many options available to us when using this tool. The plugins are there, you can download and use the tool at ease and you do not need to do any kind of development. Overall, it’s quite easy to use.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"WhiteSource is unique in the scanning of open-source licenses. Additionally, the vulnerabilities aspect of the solution is a benefit. We don't use WhiteSource in the whole organization, but we use it for some projects. There we receive a sense of the vulnerabilities of the open-source components, which improves our security work. The reports are automated which is useful."

"We set the solution up and enabled it and we had everything running pretty quickly."

"There are multiple different integrations there. We use Mend for CI/CD that goes through Azure as well. It works seamlessly. We never have any issues with it."

"Mend.io is very robust in terms of managing third-party dependencies."

"The solution boasts a broad range of features and covers much of what an ideal SCA tool should."

"Mend has reduced our open-source software vulnerabilities and helped us remediate issues quickly. My company's policy is to ensure that vulnerabilities are fixed before it gets to production."

"Enables scanning/collecting third-party libraries and classifying license types. In this way we ensure our third-party software policy is followed."

"The most valuable features are the reporting, customizing libraries "In-house, White list, license selection", comparing the products/projects, and License & Copyright resolution."

More Mend.io pros

"The firewall is the only solution that supports Nexus Repository."

"The customer service is fantastic."

"Another thing that I like about Sonatype is that if you download something today, and five days from today it becomes vulnerable, it will notify you."

"The product's network and intrusion protection features are valuable. It also has rules and compliance features for security."

Cons

"It should support multiple SBOM formats to be able to integrate with old industry standards."

"Mend lets you create custom policies. They're not too complicated to set up, but it would be helpful if they had some preconfigured policies to match what we have in Azure DevOps. That would save us a lot of time. It's tedious to configure the policies manually, and I lack the capacity to do it right now. Other products have preconfigured packs and templates, and Mend doesn't."

"It would be good if it can do dynamic code analysis. It is not necessarily in that space, but it can do more because we have too many tools. Their partner relationship support is a little bit confusing. They haven't really streamlined the support process when we buy through a reseller. They should improve their process."

"The UI can be slow once in a while, and we're not sure if it's because of the amount of data we have, or it is just a slow product, but it would be nice if it could be improved."

"WhiteSource only produces a report, which is nice to look at. However, you have to check that report every week, to see if something was found that you don't want. It would be great if the build that's generating a report would fail if it finds a very important vulnerability, for instance."

"The solution lacks the code snippet part."

"The main consideration is the cost. The products always have their maturity."

"We have ended our relationship with WhiteSource. We were using an agent that we built in the pipeline so that you can scan the projects during build time. But unfortunately, that agent didn't work at all. We have more than 500 projects, and it doubled or tripled the build time. For other projects, we had the failure of the builds without any known reason. It was not usable at all. We spent maybe one year working on the issues to try to make it work, but it didn't in the end. We should be able to integrate it with ID and Shift Left so that the developers are able to see the scan results without waiting for the build to fail."

More Mend.io cons

"What I don't like is the lack of an option to pick up the phone and call someone for support. That is something they need to improve on. They need to have a professional services package, or they need to include that option with their services."

"The tool needs to improve its file systems. The product should also include zero test feature."

"There are several features lacking in the current offering, particularly concerning container support and AI packages."

"There are several features lacking in the current offering, particularly concerning container support and AI packages, like humming phase support."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is fairly priced."

"This is an expensive solution."

"Pricing and licensing are comparable to other tools. When we started, it was less than our existing solution. I can't go into specifics, but it isn't cheap."

"As we were using an SaaS-based service, the solution must be scalable, although my understanding is that this is based on the licensing model one is using."

"We always negotiate for the best price possible, and as far as I know, Mend has done an excellent job with their pricing. Our management is happy with the pricing, which has led to renewals."

"Mend is costly but not overly expensive. The license was quite expensive this year, but we managed to negotiate the price down to the same as last year. At the same time, it's a good value. We're getting what we're paying for and still not using all the features. We could probably get more out of the tool and make it more valuable. At the moment, we don't have the capacity to do that."

"Pricing is competitive."

"The version that we are using, WhiteSource Bolt, is a free integration with Azure DevOps."

More Mend.io pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is reasonable if you're a large enterprise developing code. It's not super-expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

25%

Government

12%

University

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with SonarQube?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...

See all answers

How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?

We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...

See all answers

What do you like most about Mend.io?

The best feature is that the Mend R&D team does their due diligence for all the vulnerabilities. In case they observe any important or critical vulnerabilities, such as the Log4j-related vulner...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sonatype Nexus Firewall?

Also, I consider it average. Some people might consider it expensive, however, since it supports many beautiful features, I would say it is worth it.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Sonatype Nexus Firewall?

Many companies, including ours, use Nexus Repository due to concerns about malware and critical vulnerabilities. There should be a specific method to prevent malicious packages from entering the in...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Sonatype Nexus Firewall?

I would give the solution eight out of ten. I would look at the comparison of Sonatype to some other firewalls. There is room for improvement, especially mentioning container support and AI packages.

See all answers

Comparisons

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs Mend.io

Compared 22% of the time

Black Duck vs Mend.io

Compared 12% of the time

Snyk vs Mend.io

Compared 9% of the time

Veracode vs Mend.io

Compared 7% of the time

GitHub Dependabot vs Mend.io

Compared 7% of the time

More Mend.io Competitors

JFrog Xray vs Sonatype Repository Firewall

Compared 26% of the time

Black Duck vs Sonatype Repository Firewall

Compared 15% of the time

Snyk vs Sonatype Repository Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

Sonatype Lifecycle vs Sonatype Repository Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

GitLab vs Sonatype Repository Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

More Sonatype Repository Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Mend.io

June 2025

Download Mend.io product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Security Tools

June 2025

Download Sonatype Repository Firewall product report

Also Known As

WhiteSource, Mend SCA, Mend.io Supply Chain Defender, Mend SAST

Sonatype Nexus Firewall, Nexus Firewall

Overview

Mend.io is a software composition analysis tool that secures what developers create. The solution provides an automated reduction of the software attack surface, reduces developer burdens, and accelerates app delivery. Mend.io provides open-source analysis with its in-house and other multiple sources of software vulnerabilities. In addition, the solution offers license and policy violation alerts, has great pipeline integration, and, since it is a SaaS (software as a service), it doesn’t require you to physically maintain servers or data centers for any implementation. Not only does Mend.io reduce enterprise application security risk, it also helps developers meet deadlines faster.

Mend.io Features

Mend.io has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Vulnerability analysis
Automated remediation
Seamless integration
Business prioritization
Limitless scalability
Intuitive interface
Language support
Integration
Continuous monitoring
Remediation suggestions
Customization

Mend.io Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Mend.io. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Easy to use: The Mend.io platform is very user-friendly and easy to set up.

Third-party libraries: The solution eases the process of keeping track of all the used third-party dependencies within a product. It not only scans for the pure occurrence (also transitively) but also takes care of licenses and vulnerabilities.

Static code analysis: With Mend.io’s static code analysis, you can quickly identify security weaknesses in custom code across desktop, web, and mobile applications.

Broad support: Mend.io provides 27 different programming languages and various programming frameworks.

Easy integration: Mend.io makes integration very easy with existing DevOps environments and CI/CD pipelines so developers don’t need to manually configure or trigger the scan.

Ultra-fast scanning engine: The solution’s scanning engine generates results up to ten times faster than legacy SAST solutions.

Unified developer experience: Mend.io has a unified developer experience inside the code repository that shows side-by-side security alerts and remediation suggestions for custom code and open-source code.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Mend.io solution.

Jeffrey H., System Manager of Cloud Engineering at Common Spirit, says, “Finding vulnerabilities is pretty easy. Mend.io (formerly WhiteSource) does a great job of that and we had quite a few when we first put this in place. Mend.io does a very good job of finding the open-source, checking the versions, and making sure they're secure. They notify us of critical high, medium, and low impacts, and if anything is wrong. We find the product very easy to use and we use it as a core part of our strategy for scanning product code moving toward release.”

PeerSpot reviewer Ben D., Head of Software Engineering at a legal firm, mentions, “The way WhiteSource scans the code is great. It’s easy to identify and remediate open source vulnerabilities using this solution. WhiteSource helped reduce our mean time to resolution since we adopted the product. In terms of integration, it's pretty easy.”

An IT Service Manager at a wholesaler/distributor comments, “Mend.io provides threat detection and an excellent UI in a highly stable solution, with outstanding technical support.”

Another reviewer, Kevin D., Intramural OfficialIntramural at Northeastern University, states, "The vulnerability analysis is the best aspect of the solution."

Mend.io

Sonatype Repository Firewall is a cloud-based security solution designed to safeguard your software supply chain against malicious components. It operates by meticulously scanning and evaluating each new component against customized governance policies, thereby effectively identifying and blocking potential threats before they infiltrate your development pipeline. What sets Sonatype Repository Firewall apart is its user-friendly setup, seamless integration with existing workflows, and remarkable scalability, making it suitable for software development environments of any size. Key features include blocking malicious components through behavioral analysis, malware scanning, and vulnerability assessment, as well as the ability to enforce custom governance policies. By utilizing this tool, organizations can enhance their software supply chain security, mitigate risks related to supply chain attacks, bolster compliance with industry standards, and ultimately reduce costs associated with security incidents.

Sonatype

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Autodesk, NCR, Target, IBM, vodafone, Siemens, GE digital, KPMG, LivePerson, Jack Henry and Associates

EDF, Tomitribe, Crosskey, Blackboard, Travel audience

Buyer's Guide

Mend.io vs. Sonatype Repository Firewall

May 2025

Free Report: Mend.io vs. Sonatype Repository Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about Mend.io vs. Sonatype Repository Firewall and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

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