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BigFix vs Symantec Endpoint Security 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)
22nd
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)
Symantec Endpoint Security
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
144
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 Symantec Endpoint Security is 4.0%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

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.
Hakeem_Abdulkareem - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution has given us visibility into compliance within our whole system and helped us ensure everything is updated
Symantec's application security module needs some improvement. You need to create a lot of fingerprints for application security. For instance, let's say I have different brands of ATMs in my environment, like Wincor and NCR. I use GRG to deploy an application control to whitelist some applications. I have to get the exact image of the different models of ATMs. When I tested in the past, some machines would not connect to the server without that. Only the approved software on the ATM should run. Anything outside that should not even come up at all. We did this so that an outside person doesn't introduce malicious software to the ATM. That's the essence of locking down with application control. Using Symantec for application control has been hectic, so I use Carbon Black to do the lockdown. Checking that data security will work fine with Carbon Black. Carbon Black worked fine. Setting up approval in Carbon Black works differently than Symantec. In Symantec, we first need the fingerprints of the applications running underneath. Before setting up Carbon Black, you first install the agent, allowing it to learn the environment. It will analyze all the software's behavior and provide recommendations for what should be allowed. It's more straightforward, whereas configuring application control in Symantec is a bit cumbersome.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"All the vendor patches are synchronized automatically."
"We are able to go from patching thousands of machines by twenty to thirty people to one person."
"The most valuable features are patch management, software installation, and asset management."
"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."
"BigFix is a great product. The flexibility of putting together your own relevance and retrieving custom data from any one of your agents is a valuable feature. It is one of my favorite features because if a boss asks me, "How many of these devices do we have?", I can put together a report in two seconds."
"Patch Management for a variety of operating systems makes it valuable as we can rely on a single tool for obtaining patch compliance of the entire compute infrastructure."
"The best feature of BigFix is its multi-platform support."
"We've had no issues with stability."
"Symantec is very user-friendly, the interface and functions are very simple for everyone to understand. Additionally, it's a very robust system."
"With Symantec, I always know this tool will be reliable and with the latest protection."
"The installation was very easy."
"Some of the features that were important were a built-in firewall and device control."
"Symantec End-user Endpoint Security is a very powerful solution."
"The single-pane management is the solution's most valuable feature. It makes administrative control very easy."
"Endpoint Protection is the next generation. It covers antivirus, spamware, ransomware..."
"We use the solution for our endpoint security."
 

Cons

"I remember doing restarts a few times. So, making sure that it is rock solid from an executable perspective is important."
"BigFix could improve its asset management capabilities to discover assets, including hardware."
"The self-service application seems to need some work to replace the client UI. There are a lot of pop-ups if you use a baseline as the object that you're setting to a workstation. Unless you're using web UI, the message is not customizable in the user notification."
"I would like to see improvements in the Web UI program and also a BigFix console for Mac OS."
"I would like to see more integration with external data."
"The reporting and dashboard parts have room for improvement."
"The remote software installation could be better."
"BigFix is actually a little bit on the expensive side in Turkey because of the dollar's exchange rate in our currency."
"It can maybe send notifications when there is an update and everything is successful."
"We communicate with our local partners and they give us the license key. Then, we have to go to the portal and apply it, but sometimes it doesn't work. We then have to create a new administrative account and migrate all our endpoints. That is the only major issue we have been battling with."
"Reporting in this solution needs improvement."
"The technical support could improve because when you reach level one support there is a lot of delays."
"They provide the updates of the client, and those clients need a reboot after the upgrade, which is something we don't like. We don't like to reboot the server after the upgrade because we have live applications. If we do a reboot, it can impact the business as well."
"We must have complete dissolution with advance care protection but we are finding out that we need more Symantec technical specialists. We have identified a need to hire at least one more technical specialist familiar with Symantec to improve our solutions capabilities."
"They should work on making the virus definition file lighter."
"Multi-domain policy options for exceptions and global blocks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is less costly when compared to other solutions, and this is a good solid solution for what we have paid."
"The tool's price continues to go up. The cost per endpoint can vary, ranging from approximately 30 to 80 dollars per year. Compared to other products, pricing is in the middle. You need to buy an additional database license, but most users already have it."
"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."
"The cost is slightly high."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"The price is very fair."
"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."
"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."
"Zero-day threat or advanced attacks should be part of the endpoint. The product should not require you to buy a separate license."
"I rate the product's pricing a six out of ten."
"The pricing is a little bit more expensive than other competitors, if you compare it to Kaspersky, for example, or McAfee."
"Licensing is based on a yearly subscription."
"Its price should be reasonable."
"Regarding the licensing, it was important negotiate a long contract to get a more attractive price, including advanced support in case of crisis."
"What we have paid for this product is good value for the work and the services that they are providing to us."
"There are subscription costs, we typically purchase the annual subscription. There can be other expenses too, for example, we use CrowdStrike also as part of our policy."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
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?
Implementing a business solution with BigFix has some issues, primarily concerning the time required for distribution to clients if there are too many. Building a management console is quick and si...
Which is better - Cortex XDR or Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
What do you like most about Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?
Symantec have everything – documentation, videos, data sheets.
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Endpoint Manager
Symantec EPP, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP)
 

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
Audio Visual Dynamics, Red Deer Advocate, Asia Pacific Telecom Co. Ltd., Kibbutz Ein Gedi, and AMETEK, Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. Symantec Endpoint Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.