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BigFix vs Vicarius vRx comparison

 

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

BigFix
Ranking in Patch Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (6th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (23rd), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
Vicarius vRx
Ranking in Patch Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (15th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Patch Management category, the mindshare of BigFix is 7.9%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vicarius vRx is 3.4%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Patch Management
 

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.
OrenBen Shalom - PeerSpot reviewer
Consolidates vulnerability discovery, prioritization, and remediation in a single platform
Vicarius vRx offers several advantages, especially for organizations with diverse operating systems and applications requiring frequent patching. The platform helps prioritize patch installation by identifying high-risk vulnerabilities, allowing IT teams to focus on critical threats first. This prioritization is crucial because it prevents IT teams from being overwhelmed by the constant influx of patches, enabling them to create a manageable plan and allocate resources effectively. By distinguishing between critical, high-risk, and medium-risk vulnerabilities, Vicarius vRx empowers IT teams to address the most urgent threats promptly and schedule less critical patches for later. Both native operating system updates and Vicarius vRx offer vulnerability remediation. Native OS updates allow for the patching of system vulnerabilities on Windows, macOS, and Linux. However, Vicarius vRx provides a single solution for installing both operating system and application updates by also discovering application vulnerabilities. Another valuable feature is virtual patching, which allows us to protect an asset from a specific vulnerability without installing a patch. Sometimes, installing a patch alone is insufficient and requires restarting the asset. However, production servers often cannot be restarted during the day, restricting restarts to specific timeslots. Virtual patching creates a network-based protection layer that prevents exploitation of a vulnerability, offering a temporary safeguard. While not a foolproof solution for long-term use, it's a valuable tool that reduces tension between IT and security teams by providing time to properly install patches.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I’ve found patching to be the most valuable feature of the solution."
"It allows for visibility into the OT, the industrial environments, that didn't exist before which is a big piece and has benefited my organization. Second, the speed at which people can patch is night and day versus SCCM scan or another similar solution."
"Almost every feature is wonderful in BigFix. It is very stable, and we can rely on it. It is an awesome tool."
"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."
"It's good for reporting hardware and software."
"We've had no issues with stability."
"It is for multiple use cases. A lot of people are looking at it just for security, and that's really endpoint security. The endpoint management part of it in terms of being able to constantly do patching for Windows, Unix, macOS, Cloud, Raspberry, VMware, and all Linux flavors is important, and they are very good at that. They have support for virtually every OS on the market."
"This has very much improved our organization by saving time to deploy thousands of endpoints to our customers."
"The dashboard is quite easy to manage. The automation aspect is also very valuable."
"I liked the initial dashboard."
"vRx seemed to be user-friendly and very easy to use."
"While other vulnerability scanners overwhelm us with a huge list of problems after a scan, Vicarius vRx goes beyond that."
"The most valuable features of vRx would be virtualized patching and severity prioritization."
"The most efficient feature of Vicarius vRx is the ability to group assets, such as by time zone, allowing for targeted patching and streamlined management."
"Vicarius vRx has reduced our mean time to remediate vulnerabilities by 20%."
"The prioritization of the vulnerabilities and patches that we must apply immediately is valuable. The automation of the tasks allows us to spend less time in that area."
 

Cons

"It can be improved speed-wise. They can make it a little bit light. If you do any query for servers in bulk, it can take some time. Similarly, creating a job can take some time."
"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."
"Sometimes there is a lag time for our users."
"We need a much better multi-tenant option."
"The deployment has room for improvement and can be more streamlined."
"I'd like to see better integration, with the different applications within BigFix. Instead of sometimes feeling like four or five different applications, they need to be integrated a little better within themselves."
"We would like to see a different license plan, e.g. to include features from lifecycle with Patch Management, as an example."
"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."
"Unlike previous vulnerability management systems that relied on network scanning appliances to discover and assess endpoints, Vicarius' agent-based approach is less effective for devices like switches, routers, and printers where agent installation is impractical."
"I would be happy if the patch update could be downloaded to the Vicarius server and then implemented on the client."
"They do have a search function for device names. They already have a list of all our devices, however, if I'm looking for something, sometimes the name does not come up at the top of the list."
"I don't like logging in. The portal could be a better process. You could use some third-party push notification rather than sending an email, waiting for the link to generate, and clicking on it. That would be good. It's somewhat frustrating when I need to log in."
"Based on the request from our clients, it would be great to have an MDM solution. If they can manage vulnerabilities on mobile devices too, that would be great. Having scripting capabilities on mobile devices would be very useful. That was the request we had from lots of clients."
"Another complaint we've gotten is that the portal doesn't remember your username and password. You tell them your email, and it sends an invitation. You need to click that, and it takes you to a new portal, where you can finally log in. Maybe it's a security precaution, but it seems like a lot of extra steps to log in."
"We are now in the process of trying to get our money back because the tool does not work."
"There can be more scripting capability and more filtering capability. We should be able to filter more granular details in the operating system such as whether it is a service, application, executable, or something like that. For the most part, we are satisfied with what we are able to filter."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I can estimate the reduced cost of servers maintenance to approximatively $500,000."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"It might be about $23 a client."
"The price is very fair."
"The cost is slightly high."
"The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license."
"So, the pricing is slightly more expensive than the others. I have to keep buying licenses every time I add a new device."
"The product is less costly when compared to other solutions, and this is a good solid solution for what we have paid."
"In the past, Vicarius vRx was cheap, but now they have adjusted their pricing policy, resulting in higher renewal costs. We have had some conversations with them regarding a smaller jump in the renewal cost."
"Vicarius vRx's per-asset pricing makes it easy for me to market to clients as it scales with their needs."
"Vicarius vRx is reasonably priced."
"The pricing was very reasonable and fair compared to other products. I liked that there was no tiered system. One price gave access to everything, which is nice. It is not something you get too often with enterprise IT."
"The pricing is great because we are a reseller of the product. It is really up to us and Vicarius, and they are very easy to work with."
"I know we got it for a very cheap price, and I now see why. It was very cheap. It was maybe 12,000 or 14,000 dollars."
"I do not use other solutions, so I cannot compare its pricing to others, but its price seems okay."
"The price of vRx seems fair. None of our clients complained about the pricing. They all thought it was reasonable. Once people understood what it does, it didn't take much to get them to sign up."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
23%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Media Company
11%
Non Profit
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vicarius vRx?
I do not use other solutions, so I cannot compare its pricing to others, but its price seems okay.
What needs improvement with Vicarius vRx?
I would be happy if the patch update could be downloaded to the Vicarius server and then implemented on the client. Currently, they just send a link to the software. For example, if I want to updat...
What is your primary use case for Vicarius vRx?
We use Vicarius vRx to manage all third-party software updates. Previously, we could manage Windows updates, but third-party updates were an issue. It was difficult for us to manage the updates of ...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Endpoint Manager
No data available
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. Vicarius vRx and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.