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BMC Helix Client Management vs BigFix comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
BigFix
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (9th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (21st), Patch Management (7th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (10th), Autonomous Endpoint Management (7th)
BMC Helix Client Management
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Device Management (MDM) (11th), Endpoint Compliance (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BigFix2.0%
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.4%
CrowdStrike Falcon5.5%
Other86.1%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
Mobile Device Management (MDM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC Helix Client Management4.5%
Jamf Pro11.4%
NinjaOne6.2%
Other77.9%
Mobile Device Management (MDM)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
InderjeetSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
End-to-end automation has simplified patching and software deployment across thousands of servers
There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement. When an action is initiated through the patch policy, it appears on the console but arrives in chunks. When targeting hundreds of servers from the patch policy, the actions come in chunks such as ten out of six, ten out of nine, or ten out of fifteen. This fragmented approach creates a significant challenge for the patching team to monitor the action status. I would recommend that the development team provide a single action or one to two actions instead of multiple actions requiring individual monitoring. A broad status update could be provided to the client indicating the overall progress of the patch policy implementation rather than requiring monitoring of every individual action. This would reduce the bandwidth required by the team to track multiple actions on the console.
AA
Senior Account Executive at FDS
Efficient remote control capabilities; compliance features greatly reduced customers' licensing costs
The on-premises version of BMC Client Management has powerful remote control functionality and decent compliance features, but these features both rely on the discovery tool in order to gain a complete set of insights about the endpoint's environment. Now, BMC's discovery solution depends on having an agent installed in each endpoint and sometimes the agent doesn't work properly, making it difficult to get an accurate understanding of the environment (including special topologies) even with BMC's discovery tool. This can be a pain when it comes to the area of compliance, since you might not have full access to everything running in the organization, including important infrastructural components such as servers and databases. For example, some endpoints may have gotten their software updates from servers not visible to the discovery tool, and this can further impact operations when it comes to patch management. Compare this scenario with the way Red Hat handles patch management: their software is always updated from the main patch providers, so you will always know what is running on the endpoints in this kind of environment. Although their endpoint management has its pros and cons, this is where BMC Client Management is at a bit of a disadvantage and I believe they need to improve on this area. Another area BMC could look into improving is the mobile device side of client management. It has lots of support for Microsoft products in terms of client management, but lacks comprehensive mobile device management support, such as for Android devices.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I can highlight that we have not faced any security incidents with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, and even though our environment is quite dynamic, we have not faced any security incident with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks until now."
"The solution helps find bugs, and it is safe to use to prevent attacks by hackers."
"It is an easy-to-use tool."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription."
"My advice for others looking into using Cortex is that it is very easy to use and very useful for the customer environment, whether it's a public or private one."
"It is a simple platform to use."
"Technical support is the best in class, in my opinion, because they have invested heavily in research and development."
"The solution allows control over the user and his machine through Cortex XDR security policies."
"The most valuable aspect of BigFix is its ability to patch desktops. While we have complete control over servers and can easily push patches to them, desktops pose a greater risk for leaks and vulnerabilities if patches are not installed in a timely manner. By using BigFix, we have significantly improved our ability to patch desktops, whether they are laptops, desktops, or other mobile devices used by end-users."
"We are able to decrease the number of high and critical vulnerabilities by at least 30% in six months, which is a huge improvement and makes the environment more secure."
"IBM BigFix is one of the easiest client management tools to install."
"BigFix's patch management automation feature is impressive."
"BigFix has always been easier to use when managing servers, especially when you deal with so many servers. We have 7,000. That's a lot of services to manage, and it's convenient to patch them all at once."
"BigFix is a good product with good technical support."
"If you are using BigFix and you have the client installed on every machine, you are nearly always audit-safe from out of the box."
"It has saved us maybe millions in funds."
"BMC Client Management has helped us be able to patch our OS or any software to the latest version."
"The solution provides multiple features in one place."
"The most valuable features of the solution are patch management and software license management."
"One of our customers is a financial institution with more than 15,000 endpoints, and we use BMC Client Management to manage their regulatory compliance needs, manage the endpoints from a security perspective, and integrate it with service management as well."
"BMC Client Management is a stable solution and one of the best in the market. It allows me to manage all recipe endpoints, including iOS, Android, Linux, Unix, and Windows, all within the same solution."
"It's a scalable solution. We have deployed it for customers using 3000 nodes to those using 300,000 nodes."
"One feature I like, that was especially valuable during the pandemic, is remote control. Remote control grants administrators and support personnel access to the laptops and PCs of employees (who might be working from home) in order to fix any issues that come up as and when they come up, even without having to wait for a support request."
"The support from BMC Client Management is very good."
 

Cons

"The solution needs better reports. I think they should let the customer go in and customize the reports."
"The encryption is not up to the mark."
"I recommend adding a data loss prevention (DLP) solution to Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. The inclusion of this feature would allow the application of DLP policies alongside antivirus policies via a single agent and console, making it more competitive as other OEMs often offer DLP solutions as part of their antivirus products."
"The solution should enhance the ADR and reporting."
"Additionally, I think the price is very high, and if it can be adjusted, I believe it will be a very good solution."
"The onboarding process could be better."
"However, if you do not have Palo Alto in your environment, you are paying these additional services just for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, so it is not a cost-effective solution."
"There are some third-party solutions that are difficult to integrate with, which is something that can be improved."
"Be careful. It's a super powerful tool. It can be unforgiving, i.e., if you do some of the things wrong, it can be a nightmare."
"BigFix could improve its asset management capabilities to discover assets, including hardware."
"I'd definitely like to see additional feature parody in the web UI versus the console. There are certain things that you can only do in the console and they're very cumbersome to do, like secure parameters, for example. That's definitely something that has a wide degree of utility but it needs to be easier to surface. At this particular juncture between the transition, between the legacy console and the web UI, it's hard to justify dealing with the cumbersome aspects of the legacy console when theoretically everything's been through the web UI."
"The first setup was complex."
"A major feature that I think they need to add to Detect is application whitelisting."
"The technical support is usually pretty good. However, I had a ticket that stayed open for a couple of weeks which I didn't get a response to, and when we got the response it wasn't really good."
"I would like to see SDK for Web UI included in the next release."
"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."
"BMC Client Management supports only iOS devices. It would be good if they would support Android as well."
"The solution does not offer the functionality of remote access to users."
"BMC Client Management could improve in the area of integration."
"The on-premises version of BMC Client Management has powerful remote control functionality and decent compliance features, but these features both rely on the discovery tool in order to gain a complete set of insights about the endpoint's environment. Now, BMC's discovery solution depends on having an agent installed in each endpoint and sometimes the agent doesn't work properly, making it difficult to get an accurate understanding of the environment (including special topologies) even with BMC's discovery tool."
"It would be good if BMC Client Management can perform vulnerability assessment scanning at the endpoint on its own and mitigate that. Then, we wouldn't have to rely on a third party VA tool. I would like to see this application move to being a web-based one."
"The solution needs to add whitelisting because many customers request it."
"In BMC Client Management, I would like to see more features for executing commands remotely. For example, with SAP, there isn't the capability to execute all the commands available in the console. The latest version includes more endpoints, but they do not cover everything the operations team needs. Additionally, I think improving the hierarchy for managing endpoints is crucial. Extending the endpoint capabilities would be highly beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. I have customers that have voiced that the solution is good for the value but if I want to sell more of the solution the price reduction would help."
"The tool's price is moderate."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"Very costly product."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"It has a yearly renewal."
"You get what we call the Platform Edition, which you get for free. The patch service is maybe $0.50 per workstation per month. Then there's the basic server cost, which is about $1.50 per server per month. You also get into Lifecycle which does power management, OSD remote control, and those types of things, and that might be about 10 times the price - which works out to about $13 per server and, maybe $5 per workstation per month."
"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."
"The license is subscription-based."
"Compliance, inventory, and licensing are really pricey. They should lower the price. It discourages users from getting onboard."
"The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"When purchasing, buying with other IBM tools provided us with a very good discount in pricing."
"It might be about $23 a client."
"The solution is low cost."
"To use BMC Client Management they charge annually per node."
"BMC Client Management is a high-priced solution, but given its performance and capabilities, I think it offers great value. I don't have the exact number for the yearly licensing costs. I believe there is an additional cost of around two hundred dollars."
"BMC Client Management is a very affordable solution. There is one main server license which I believe is around $1,000 per year, and then there is the license for the actual solution. With the solution license, you can opt for a suite license where you get access to all the features and benefits, or alternatively you can buy any of the five main components of the suite license individually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Retailer
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise68
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
I rate the price for BigFix as medium, neither low nor high.
What needs improvement with BigFix?
There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement. When an action is initia...
What is your primary use case for BigFix?
My current use case involves being one of the products and one of the clients implementing this tool.
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Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
BMC Helix Client Management, Helix Client Management, BMC Fromdistance Mobile Device Management
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
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
Charter Manufacturing
Find out what your peers are saying about SentinelOne, Microsoft, CrowdStrike and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.