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AWS Systems Manager vs BigFix 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
6.8
Number of Reviews
294
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
AWS Systems Manager
Ranking in Configuration Management
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 (3rd), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.9%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Systems Manager is 10.4%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigFix is 8.7%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license
The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.
Ambe Frankline - PeerSpot reviewer
Tracks every action on AWS accounts in a centralized way
Setting up AWS Systems Manager to monitor and control other services is easy. You need to link the services you want to observe and track. The time it takes to deploy depends on factors like connectivity, latency, and the complexity of the services. For example, setting up a simple application is faster than setting up a more complicated three-tier or multi-tier system. Using the solution for batch updates varies depending on the number of servers involved and the commands needed. Personally, when I do small projects at home, deploying a few servers doesn't take long. But at work, where we handle larger deployments with hundreds of servers, it's faster due to better connectivity and resources.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If I assess Intune's user experience, I would say it is perfect and simple."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is that it is more of a one-stop shop, providing an easier experience."
"The features of Microsoft Intune that I appreciate the most are its user-friendly interface and robust security options."
"Microsoft Intune has been a time saver and reduces the time and effort IT admins have to invest."
"Microsoft Intune has helped us by improving our security posture, leading to fewer security problems, and helping us understand where we have issues."
"The most valuable features are the ones that make sure that the deployment is of a standard operating system and the Zero Touch deployment, which is very useful. This allows users to have an out of box experience."
"The stability of Microsoft Intune is ten out of ten."
"The feature I find most valuable in Microsoft Intune is being able to configure policies and push them directly to mobile phones."
"The store organizes parameters hierarchically, making it easier to configure and control versions. It also ensures scalability and high availability, automatically scaling to handle increasing workloads and providing reliable access to configuration data across multiple AWS availability zones."
"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts."
"Has a variety of automation options."
"The solution's ability to scale is good."
"I use AWS Systems Manager primarily for infrastructure management and automation. One of its key benefits is managing patches and updates for our EC2 instances, including both Windows and Linux workloads. It can perform compliance checks on all managed workloads, identifying which systems aren't compliant or haven't been patched."
"It is beginner-friendly with extensive features that can be learned gradually based on the user's needs and tasks."
"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts"
"AWS provides Auto Scaling groups."
"It covers multiple operating systems and helps with patch management."
"Patch management, because it very much improved the patch compliance and has the capability to manage Windows and non-Windows clients."
"Servers are patched more consistently than they have been previously."
"I’ve found patching to be the most valuable feature of the solution."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the patching."
"It's enabled us to have a highly successful endpoint patching program for the past decade. It's been enormously successful there. It's also become a core part of many of our business processes, from compliance monitoring of endpoints, encryption management, key escrow, and local administrator password escrow. It's built into our inventory. It's very much everywhere."
"All the vendor patches are synchronized automatically."
 

Cons

"Since the devices are configured over the Internet, whatever policy we apply from the compliance portal does not reflect immediately on the endpoint."
"Intune endpoint analytics can be challenging."
"I know that their AI pieces are at the infancy stage, but allowing users to do more tagging for information would be an interesting thing because Intune also directly integrates with Azure. Because a lot of the devices are hosted with that, you also get a lot of tagging of user data and other things like that."
"Microsoft Intune could improve by being more user-friendly and having it geared toward device management. The graphic interface is not very good."
"Currently, Microsoft Intune's focus is mainly on Windows, but they can make much more improvement in terms of other platforms."
"Reporting could be improved. It needs to be more expensive and robust."
"The Mac integration has room for improvement."
"It would be helpful if there was proactive remediation."
"Lacks sufficient integrations."
"Ensuring broader OS coverage in patch management could be beneficial for the product."
"The cost is a very important factor to keep in mind because the cost of cloud services, not just AWS cloud, can be substantial if not controlled."
"The current challenge is that we can't pull any incidents from other accounts."
"One area that could be enhanced is dynamic configuration management. Additionally, improving integration with other AWS services like Lambda and CloudFormation would be beneficial."
"I'd like to see more automation for monitoring and managing things like AWS CloudWatch and AWS Config. It would be a significant improvement if it could automatically handle these tasks and address issues as they arise."
"It could be agentless if there's room for improvement in the AWS Systems Manager. Currently, you have to install agents, although, for most of the latest EC2 images, the agents come preinstalled. If it could be at the level of Ansible, which is agentless, that would be fantastic. When you compare the solution to Ansible, one of the most widely accepted tools, the agentless feature stands out. So, if the AWS Systems Manager could become agentless, that would be a significant improvement."
"The fact that AWS Systems Manager takes time to complete the patching process, makes it an area where improvements are required."
"They don't have a proper mobile device management capability. They're working on it, however, that's the one thing that needs improvement so that you can have full unified endpoint management."
"Implementing a business solution with BigFix has some issues, primarily concerning the time required for distribution to clients if there are too many."
"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."
"BigFix can improve the way machines report back to the console. In the external relay management environment, it has become more of a hybrid environment with most of the machines not being on-site. The need of having public-facing reporting items interconnected is becoming more and more crucial. In general, the reporting could use some enhancement."
"I would like to see a web UI SDK so we could take what is provided currently and be able to build our own customized web UI for particular customers that want to sell service."
"I would like to see more integration with external data."
"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."
"The remote software installation could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Based on the features that it gives, it is cost-efficient. It is not necessarily on the expensive side of the scale. It provides a hefty number of features that any organization would want. It is in a good price range."
"Even if they charge a premium, they aim to provide equal value."
"There is a license needed to use the solution and we are on an annual license."
"The Intune license model is costly."
"The price of Microsoft Intune is reasonable."
"Intune is linked with Microsoft. We can deploy the Microsoft E365 license to users by Intune. There are different types of licenses, such as device administrator licenses, E5 licenses for device enrollment manually, and P1 and p2 licenses for device enrollment automatically. These are the licenses required for the administration."
"It's reasonable. They're not giving it away, but it's reasonable."
"While Microsoft charges for actual usage, it lacks discount options."
"As we were doing a government project so the government got the project at a very nominal cost."
"Most of the features are free. I'm not entirely certain, but I believe the pricing is generally very low. Some services that are part of Ops Manager might have associated costs."
"The platform provides excellent value for the capabilities it offers when compared to third-party tools for similar tasks."
"An AWS cloud engineer can bring down the costs."
"When purchasing, buying with other IBM tools provided us with a very good discount in pricing."
"It might be about $23 a client."
"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."
"So, the pricing is slightly more expensive than the others. I have to keep buying licenses every time I add a new device."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"The license is subscription-based."
"The price of BigFix is better than the solutions. You are able to pay monthly or annually. There are not any hidden costs with BigFix. There is an additional cost for the SQL database."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

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 AWS Systems Manager?
With AWS Systems Manager, our company can patch our systems directly from it, so we don't need to patch our systems m...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Systems Manager?
Every AWS service comes with some associated costs. While using AWS Systems Manager, we continually monitor to optimi...
What needs improvement with AWS Systems Manager?
There isn't anything specific I remember at the moment.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Amazon Elastic Container Registry
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
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
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Systems Manager vs. BigFix and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.