Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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)
27th
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)
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Security Incident Response (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Ransomware Protection (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 2.4% 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.
KarthikR1 - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution has an easy setup but needs to mature on cloud environment security
The maturity of the Kubernetes security is absent in Carbon Black CB Defense. The solution has to mature on container security and a lot of cloud environment security. Security is available only for Windows, while security for Linux and Mac is not very strong. The deadlock issue causes me to put more effort into installing an upgrade. The numerous issues with the environment of the product solution should be addressed. Work orders are taking more than two months to get resolved. There's been one issue open for two months, and the solution they gave is being implemented step by step. Still, it is not meeting the requirements and breaking the system. Hence, our business is completely disturbed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Being able to intelligently create reports, gather data, export CSVs and give that to the leadership of some of the client groups that my team supports has helped my organization."
"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 patch management and the BigFix Inventory have been the most valuable features."
"BigFix has drastically reduced the maintenance window period to patch and reboot servers."
"BigFix is incredibly fast and accurate in patching, reporting, and remediation."
"The most valuable features of the solution are Windows patching and the hardware and software inventory."
"The technical support for BigFix is really amazing."
"All the vendor patches are synchronized automatically."
"I found it very valuable as a whole. It is good at detecting anything and has kept us very safe. It is also very easy to use."
"For Carbon Black Endpoint, the possibility of integration with different other software's log servers is the important thing. Having just one point of view is more interesting so you don't need to go to different places to see all the information."
"The tool is pretty stable."
"The biggest feature out of CarbonBlack is its ability to dive in with more depth. You can look at the entire kill chain and understand, not only if an alarm or identified incident is truly a true security issue versus a false positive, and it allows us to backtrack and figure out why it actually happened and how it got into the environment."
"The most valuable asset is the time-lining capability for any breach activity."
"I rate Carbon Black CB Defense an eight out of ten for the ease of its initial setup."
"It is a very complete platform."
"The product enables device controls, helping us protect the devices and prevent data leakages."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more custom content."
"The tool should be more friendly in terms of Web UI and should be having better vulnerability scanning mechanisms so a third-party application is not required to fulfill that aspect."
"The remote software installation could be better."
"To make it a ten they should improve the licensing. Second, if they could have one environment for everything it would be nice. For you to install compliance you need to install the server, and then you add the modules. For you to install inventory you install the server and then you add the modules. It's not easy to do. When I was doing it before I learned it, it was not straight forward."
"I would like to see for it to be a little easier for new users to be able to learn and create relevant statements. In my opinion, that's the hardest part for bringing on new people that haven't had BigFix experience. Being able to have easier ways to build relevance in ActionScript would be the biggest improvement I'd like to see."
"I would like to see more integration with external data."
"There is no support for patch management on SLES on IBM pSeries (only the Intel platform is supported)."
"I would like to see SDK for Web UI included in the next release."
"In my company, we face issues sometimes when there is a need to write custom rules or we want to write for some rules that are different from the standard rules provided by the solution."
"The product's reporting capabilities are an area of concern where improvements are required."
"This solution could have greater granular control on how certain applications work."
"The support is poor."
"Adding an application and a device control feature would be a great help for this solution."
"The solution would be more effective if there was a way to block automatically based on behavior."
"There is room for improvement in the support and service team."
"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

"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing one out of ten."
"It might be about $23 a client."
"The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license."
"Its price is very reasonable."
"The price of BigFix could be lower. However, I am always seeking a lower price."
"I would stay with the Managed Virtual Server license model, which is a 1-to-1 license per OS whether it is virtual or physical."
"I can estimate the reduced cost of servers maintenance to approximatively $500,000."
"CB Defense is available on a yearly subscription and is priced by the number of endpoints."
"The price for the solution is completely at government level, meaning one which is very high."
"This is a really expensive product and we pay licensing fees on a yearly basis."
"The pricing is very high."
"It is more expensive, but it's worth it. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"​The cost/benefit factor has great relevance in Cb Defense implementations​."
"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."
"The pricing is annually based and operates through another department than mine."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) solutions are best for your needs.
855,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Educational Organization
36%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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: April 2025.
855,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.