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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)
22nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
96
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) (15th), Ransomware Protection (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 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 1.7%, down from 2.5% 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.
Nikunj Kamboj - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates well with our existing SIEM tool and helps in identifying suspicious activities
The solution's integration with our existing security infrastructure is good. Whenever we have any alert in VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, we can easily that alert in our SIEM tool and check logs from the SIEM tool itself. VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is just a secondary security tool for us, and we are just monitoring the alerts from it. The solution's behavioral analytics feature helps in identifying suspicious activities pretty well. Whenever we have even a small thing, we get an alert. The solution is deployed on the cloud in our organization. Performance-wise, the solution is doing great in terms of connecting to the host directly. Performing a malware scan usually takes a lot of time, more than 24 hours. A malware scan is something that we do only on Carbon Black for the old endpoint devices and servers. It used to take sometimes three days to perform. I would recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having higher visibility on patching level, on patching successful, and non-successful has been a way that BigFix has improved my organization. Also, the ability to customize the content to do what we need it to do is very powerful and very flexible for us. Finally, in the area of custom interfaces like REST API really gives us the ability to provide for our external customers."
"The use of fast query has been extremely valuable providing insight in real time of the endpoints."
"This has very much improved our organization by saving time to deploy thousands of endpoints to our customers."
"We've had no issues with stability."
"BigFix helped us to identify the compliance of devices and has also improved the way that we manage our software inventory for reporting to vendors."
"I think BigFix is a very good solution, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"It allows us to quickly deploy capabilities that we need, whether it be security or non-security. We use it to keep systems up to date, deploy new drivers, find the information we need in the case of security incidents. The capability allows us to gather a lot of information very quickly and it also allows us to have a centralized reporting feature and a centralized deployment capability which is nice."
"What I like most is that it is a powerful solution."
"The solution is extremely scalable."
"It actually does some heuristics, and some behavioral analysis."
"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."
"The feature I found most valuable in Carbon Black CB Defense is the ongoing monitoring feature that works by emailing updates about any detections found."
"The threat analysis functionality is good."
"The visibility provided has been great."
"It uses machine learning and behavioral analytics for advanced threat detection and response."
"I like its protection very much. It protects and allows us to lock the environment pretty tightly. Nothing that is not approved through Carbon Black can run in the environment. There is no default. Everything goes through Carbon Black Protect, and everything has to be first approved. Every software is considered to be guilty before prove innocent."
 

Cons

"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."
"For improvements, it would be good if BigFix supported more databases. Currently, it only supports DB2 and Microsoft SQL. Adding support for other databases like Oracle would be beneficial."
"The only thing that I don't like about BigFix is that it does not support other devices such as printer firmware, router firmware, and things like that. I will be happy if I can control everything and get everything else in there, even if it is just a line item. They can do some enhancements to the Web UI. I am trying to get customers to be able to manage their environment by using Web UI, and it would be good if we can delete endpoints by using Web UI. We should also be able to generate Excel content or data tables from the Web UI without having to go to the console. It is small stuff, and it drives me crazy that I have to go to another console to do these things."
"The deployment has room for improvement and can be more streamlined."
"The solution should have some kind of a local caching methodology, where the patches can be taken locally into a localized relay server, and from there, the patch can be applied, so that there is not much usage of the network required."
"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."
"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."
"Certain settings have limitations. For example, I cannot manually block some malware activities."
"They will most likely need to create or include a feature that checks the network."
"I haven't run into anything that needs improvement. The website interface can be a little bit better, but it's still good as compared to most others."
"The product cannot perform an on-demand scan. They could add this particular feature."
"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."
"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."
"What was rolled out to my company are mixed versions of Carbon Black CB Defense, so what I'd like to see in the next release is more synchronization, where it can detect the endpoint that's running an old version and suggest updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The price is very fair."
"Its price is very reasonable."
"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 product is less costly when compared to other solutions, and this is a good solid solution for what we have paid."
"The license is annual. It's a standard license."
"VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is an expensive product."
"The platform is expensive."
"The solution has almost the same price as other different kinds of infrastructures, but it offers a lot of different features."
"The product’s price is less expensive than other vendors."
"In terms of licensing costs, Carbon Black CB Defense was all associated with CROW and the services my company is using with them, so it came all-inclusive."
"Carbon Black might be a touch more expensive than Symantec. They tend to get a premium for their capabilities. They're sort of an industry leader in a lot of areas with the functionality that they provide."
"Carbon Black provides competitive pricing."
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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
52%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
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?
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...
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: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.