No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

BMC Helix Automation Console vs Tenable Nessus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 8, 2026

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

BMC Helix Automation Console
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
56th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of BMC Helix Automation Console is 0.9%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 4.1%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus4.1%
BMC Helix Automation Console0.9%
Other95.0%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

ShashiGupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Soo at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Reasonably Priced
In terms of improvement, the product could benefit from streamlining the implementation process, particularly regarding customization. Currently, the process involves navigating through multiple layers of custom and staging forms, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Another aspect to consider is the foundation data provided out of the box, particularly regarding categorization and its associated values. This foundational data may only sometimes meet the mark, as organizations often require more flexibility to tailor it to their needs. Discovering hardware, for instance, can lead to different category processing needs, with certain layers providing minimal benefits. The challenge lies in the inability to directly specify servers, hardware, software, and their respective details, highlighting a need for improvement in this area. As per the current state of the Helix product, it has seen some resolution to issues but still faces challenges when adding more attributes. It can lead to restrictions, particularly with the progressive view page, limiting flexibility in certain cases. While benefits can be gained in other aspects, such drawbacks are common. Improvements are necessary to enhance flexibility in this regard. Exploring alternative solutions like containerization or cloud services may offer opportunities for optimization, requiring careful consideration due to the complexity involved. I'm still determining the current strategy. While there have been improvements in the latest version, there's still a need for further enhancements in an extended version. Additionally, stakeholders, including manufacturing companies, emphasize the importance of fine-tuning performance for the Helix product. The search functionality remains problematic, often taking more than 15 seconds, undermining reliability.
MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Cipheroot
Has enabled me to reduce false positives and perform deep credential auditing with seamless integrations
I mostly use the configuration audit feature for the audit configuration as a scan policy, and I will use it for credential audit, which helps me scan credentials access such as local administrator or root access, performing a deeper and more accurate check of local configuration settings and file systems, making it a highly recommended feature. Regarding integration capabilities, we can integrate Tenable Nessus with SIM tools such as Splunk, IBM QRadar, and Azure Sentinel, as well as with ticketing systems such as ServiceNow, Jira, and Slack. There is no complexity as it is very easy to integrate everything. In terms of the reporting feature, while vulnerability scanning can throw some false positives, Tenable Nessus has very few, achieving a reduction of 75% to 80% false positives with manual analysis needed. We can generate standard Nessus reports that typically include host summaries and vulnerabilities by host and plugin, alongside solutions and remediation recommendations. The main benefits I get from Tenable Nessus are complete asset inventory and comprehensive attack surface management, allowing us to prioritize vulnerabilities based on risk, focusing on true risk and threat path analysis.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Takes reports from other vulnerabilities."
"It's reasonably priced."
"In terms of scalability, I can only tell you my experience from our clients: I had Remedy installed, and then we installed Discovery, two months ago we installed Server Automation and we've now completed the installation with Vulnerability Management, and everything is inter-operational, it's all automated now, and our customers are happy."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is vulnerability detection."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"Nessus is good at finding out what nodes you have in place. It will then provide you a report, by node, of what the vulnerabilities are. It does it quickly and stealthfully."
"The automatic scanner and scheduler are pretty cool."
"I have experience with it on my attack stations, and it's pretty good to optimize. Personally, I think Nessus is quite a good product."
"Among the most valuable features are scanning for vulnerabilities and the reporting. The reporting templates are okay. I like that I can see all the hosts with different vulnerabilities."
"User friendly and good dashboards."
"I find the features that are most valuable are the policies that help us identify the vulnerabilities, and these policies are then used for scanning and identifying instabilities."
 

Cons

"In terms of improvement, the product could benefit from streamlining the implementation process, particularly regarding customization."
"With BMC I'd like to see the ability to integrate with other software."
"No third-party applications or integrations with additional software solutions."
"The reports are okay, but the interface is a bit difficult to navigate in some cases."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the price."
"We feel the solution's technical support to be very bad."
"Some things in the user interface could be better. The user interface could allow more adjustments to plugins. The price could also be better."
"Offer a more flexible strategic and high-level dashboards based on previous comments (minus technical and more business-oriented)."
"We would like to have the option of using the solution for the cloud as well as on-premises with the same license at the same time. That would be very helpful."
"I would like to see an improvement in the ranking of high, medium and low vulnerability."
"It wasn't very clear how the scripts are running the scans. There's information about the script but it's not straightforward. The script information for each of the plugins should be available, but it doesn't give us straightforward direct information about how it was executed. That needs to be more clear."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We paid about six thousand dollars per license."
"This solution is affordable."
"The price is high for the solution. There are free tools with similar functionality available. The solution cost approximately $3,500."
"Nessus Manager is not an expensive product. It has its limitations, but the pricing reflects that. We have a yearly subscription."
"The price of Tenable Nessus is too expensive for each service center."
"Tenable Nessus is affordable."
"We incurred a single cost for a perpetual license, although I cannot comment on the price as this is above my management level."
"The solution has free options."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
How would you choose between Rapid7 InsightVM and Tenable Nessus?
You have full visibility across cloud, network, virtual, and containerized infrastructures with Rapid7 Insight VM. You can easily prioritize vulnerabilities using attacker analytics. Overall, Rapid...
What's the difference between Tenable Nessus and Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
Tenable Nessus is a vulnerability assessment solution that is both easy to deploy and easy to manage. The design of the program is such that if a company should desire to handle the installation t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable Nessus?
Based on my experience, the pricing for Tenable Nessus is somewhat higher, but customers still want to pay for it, so it remains acceptable. The annual price increase of six to seven percent could ...
 

Also Known As

TrueSight Vulnerability Management, SecOps Response Service, BladeLogic Threat Director, BMC Helix Remediate
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Online Business Systems
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Automation Console vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.