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reviewer1915362 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Service Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
Real User
Provides threat detection and an excellent UI in a highly stable solution, with outstanding technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "I am the organizational deployment administrator for this tool, and I, along with other users in our company, especially the security team, appreciate the solution for several reasons. The UI is excellent, and scanning for security threats fits well into our workflow."
  • "We have been looking at how we could improve the automation to human involvement ratio from 60:40 to 70:30, or even potentially 80:20, as there is room for improvement here. We are discussing this internally and with Mend; they are very accommodating to us. We think they openly receive our feedback and do their best to implement our thoughts into the roadmap."

What is our primary use case?

We use open-source libraries or software in projects across our company. We conducted an internal study regarding the legalities, security, vulnerabilities, and license compliance, which is when we decided to implement and deploy Mend. It automates the software composition analysis, which is vital when we want to use third-party and open-source software. 

We have a total of around 1000 projects running in Mend; some of those are being trialed and may be withdrawn, and others will go on to the production stage. We have between 300 and 400 end users, primarily integrators and fewer admins and approvers.

How has it helped my organization?

The tool is now a mandatory part of our organization to use as a benchmark, giving us a technical advantage. When we acquire other companies, we look to determine if Mend is applicable to them and bring them into our culture of using the solution where possible. We can leverage it for financial benefits when implemented and used to scan on the technical front. We consider Mend a permanent integration with our company for the foreseeable future, so we decided to reinvest in the solution by renewing our contract twice up to this point.

What is most valuable?

I am the organizational deployment administrator for this tool, and I, along with other users in our company, especially the security team, appreciate the solution for several reasons. The UI is excellent, and scanning for security threats fits well into our workflow.

The solution is also highly valuable to our Intellectual Property Councils, because as a company that uses open-source software, we need to be aware of intellectual properties, code violations, and adherence to our regulations when we include such software. There are, of course, areas for improvement, but it has become mandatory within our organization to run scans using Mend as part of our workflows.

We don't always use WhiteSource SmartFix, and that depends on the recommendations provided by the solution's analysis. On occasion, we have challenged those recommendations, so for us, the software is not entirely a decision-making tool but a tool that assists us in making decisions. Therefore, there is still a human component in the process, and there is always an admin or approver to accept or reject the recommendation. There have been instances where smart fixes were challenged due to a lack of compatibility with project requirements. For example, the solution recommends a version of PostgreSQL, but the decision is made on the product level to go with a different version because it has better integration with the specific product requirements. However, I would say that SmartFix increases our decision-making effectiveness and successfully alerts us. As a leading lighting company, some product decisions must adhere to strict requirements, which require human involvement in the decision-making process.

Initially, the product didn't save us time but required us to spend more time. Many of our processes require a manual component, so we can't entirely rely on automated processes. Therefore, when we run Mend scans on our projects, around 60% of the software development life cycle is sped up, while the remaining 40% requires human intervention. Per our IP Councils, automation does not help us beyond a certain point, and manual intervention is required. If 60% of a project can be streamlined via automation, that certainly saves us time. 

I would say that Mend certainly helps us detect and reduce vulnerabilities. We bring in the solution at the very beginning of a project, so we build early and often and detect vulnerabilities early. This is a significant contributor to our projects' success. 

Integration using the unified agent and other methodologies has been at the forefront of our deployment. The plugins have been merged into the unified agent approach. The integration methodologies have worked wonders for our CICD pipelines and workflows, and each project team can decide whether to run scans pre or post-build.  

What needs improvement?

We have been looking at how we could improve the automation to human involvement ratio from 60:40 to 70:30, or even potentially 80:20, as there is room for improvement here. We are discussing this internally and with Mend; they are very accommodating to us. We think they openly receive our feedback and do their best to implement our thoughts into the roadmap.

I consider scan reports to be another area for improvement, but this is also an area of improvement for user management on our end. We need to train end users on how to deal with alerts and the best approach to take for new projects.

We have weekly meetings with Mend and encourage all users who integrate the solution into their product life cycle to attend. This has been very useful, as these technical meetings assist our staff in the best use practices and improving their interpretation of reports, which allows us to leverage the product to our greatest advantage. We are also able to ask for solutions adaptations to suit our requirements, as we produce hardware as a company, not virtual products. 

Buyer's Guide
Mend.io
May 2025
Learn what your peers think about Mend.io. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
851,823 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for almost five years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is highly stable; we had downtime on one occasion for two hours, which was scheduled. Aside from that, I haven't seen any downtime or performance issues, so in terms of stability, I rate the product very highly because we can depend on it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable, and scalability is vital for such an integral piece of software. Software development scenarios can change fast, requiring support for new languages and apps, so we constantly learn and communicate with Mend to fulfil our fluid requirements and adapt to changes within our environment.

How are customer service and support?

I'm delighted with the technical support, especially as someone involved in the deployment. Technical support has been highly responsive to bugs or errors, helping us mitigate or fix them quickly. It was easy to interpret their technical guidance, which made my job much more manageable. I'm very satisfied and would rate them highly.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use any other solution.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment was mixed; there's always a window in which we are required to adapt to a tool. This solution isn't an out-of-the-box kind of model. There was some fine-tuning involved in the deployment according to our needs and specific projects, which is expected but somewhat challenging nonetheless. 

The key staff involved in the deployment included me as the deployment manager, a customer success manager from Mend, a leading member of our IP Council, and the security advisers for each product. Once the deployment strategy is decided, the IP Council and security team take a back seat, and I work closely with the product architects moving forward. Deployment, fine-tuning, and getting the scans up and running takes two to two and a half days maximum per product. Ultimately, five or six key staff are involved in the solution's deployment, configuration, and maintenance. 

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI for our projects, and our project managers are happy. This could still be improved, however.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We always negotiate for the best price possible, and as far as I know, Mend has done an excellent job with their pricing. Our management is happy with the pricing, which has led to renewals.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Black Duck, but it has several limitations that drove us toward choosing Mend. Black Duck is very expensive, and we require a SaaS solution to ensure the privacy of our source code, and they couldn't provide that. Therefore, our team decided to choose the more affordable and secure product.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

As a deployment admin, I would say the solution is straightforward to deploy, and deployment is simply the beginning of the process. Then comes the discipline of running scans along the life cycle of a project and deciding to accept or ignore the yielded alerts. This isn't a daily process, but it's an integral part of every project's workflow, and we have successfully made this an embedded part of our product development. Over time, our users have realized the advantages of using this software and appreciate the deployment.

Our staff must be open to change, especially when adapting to alerts and violations yielded by scans. Every scanned report has its interpretations and challenges, which is where input from the Intellectual Property team and Mend's technical team comes in. They support us throughout the product development process and help us calibrate our interpretations of reports. This gives us a clear picture of whether we are legally and technically conforming to our project and company requirements. 

I'm a deployment manager, so I don't know if the merge confidence feature is used, as I'm not involved in projects throughout the entire development cycle. Some teams may be using it, but I can't say with confidence.

We use the SaaS version of the solution, which provides full compliance when it comes to privacy. At no point can Mend view our source code, and we have a complete legal understanding with them.

We currently don't use any other products in conjunction with the SCA product because we are at the beginning of our exposure to these tools. We are in the process of evaluating the tools, and we have a relatively elaborate process. It's also essential to consider different tools fairly by comparing like with like and having consistent parameters for comparison. That process can take some time and requires some patience. These kinds of evaluations should not be rushed, and it's okay to take weeks or even months to determine if a new tool can be a commercial and technical success within an organization.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Product Security Architect at Pitney Bowes Inc.
Real User
Top 20
Helps to identify open-source vulnerabilities and eliminate any licensing risks
Pros and Cons
  • "The best feature is that the Mend R&D team does their due diligence for all the vulnerabilities. In case they observe any important or critical vulnerabilities, such as the Log4j-related vulnerability, we usually get a dedicated email from our R&D team saying that this particular vulnerability has been exploited in the world, and we should definitely check our project for this and take corrective actions."
  • "I would like to have an additional compliance pack. Currently, it does not have anything for the CIS framework or the NIST framework. If we directly run a scan, and it is under the CIS framework, we can directly tell the auditor that this product is now CIS compliant."

What is our primary use case?

We have two primary use cases. One use case is to find the vulnerabilities related to the open-source libraries that are included in multiple products in our company.

The second use case is to find out whether the licenses associated are for general use or not, or whether there are any license-related restrictions. Sometimes, when you use open-source components, depending on the type of licenses, they may be applicable only for internal use. We use it to check whether we are violating any licensing or not.

How has it helped my organization?

Using Mend SCA, it is easy to identify open-source vulnerabilities, but it is not easy to remediate because there are multiple moving components or moving parts in a build frame or a small library, so the impact of one component can be different on different products. To identify open-source vulnerabilities, you just run a scan in your pipeline, but to fix them, you need to do multiple regression tests and check whether your application or product is getting affected by that upgrade or not.

Mend SCA has helped reduce our mean time to resolution (MTTR). Knowing a risk does not necessarily help us in remediating or fixing that vulnerability, but it helps at least in deploying certain compensatory controls so that we can take on the upgrade part later on. Our protection is deployed at the parameter level, at the system level, or at the network level. It has reduced our MTTR roughly by 20%.

Mend SCA has definitely helped us reduce the number of open-source software vulnerabilities running in our production at any given point in time. We have now started to break the build in case there are any high-level or critical vulnerabilities. Certain teams, not all, are now forced to fix them, which is why the vulnerability count is going down. There is about a 20% reduction in vulnerabilities.

What is most valuable?

The best feature is that the Mend R&D team does their due diligence for all the vulnerabilities. In case they observe any important or critical vulnerabilities, such as the Log4j-related vulnerability, we usually get a dedicated email from our R&D team saying that this particular vulnerability has been exploited in the world, and we should definitely check our project for this and take corrective actions.

What needs improvement?

I would like to have an additional compliance pack. Currently, it does not have anything for the CIS framework or the NIST framework. If we directly run a scan, and it is under the CIS framework, we can directly tell the auditor that this product is now CIS compliant.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Mend SCA for more than three years, and we started with Mend SAST this year in January.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a SaaS solution, so scalability is something that their teams need to handle on their side. Scalability is in their control, and we are just sending those results over there.

We have about 450 users. We only use the portal. We scan via a unified agent or a CLI component, and we have two extra components. We have the Chrome plug-in and the IDE plug-in. The best thing is that on the CI/CD pipeline that we are using, we only need to call a unified agent that does the scan and then posts the results on the dashboard or the portal. It is deployed at multiple locations and at multiple levels of our pipeline. We are using Gitlab Cloud, Bitbucket and Jenkins. We are using many different tools at different locations.

How are customer service and support?

All levels of their support have very good technical knowledge. They know their tool better than us, so when we cannot find a solution, they give us that in 15 minutes. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not use any other solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

It is a SaaS solution. I was not involved in its deployment. It was already in the company for six months when I got my hands on it.

In terms of maintenance, we just need to check which users have left the organization so that we can maintain the number of users under the license that we have purchased. That is a small thing required on our side even though we have SSO integrated.

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI. We were able to find vulnerabilities. If our products were not attacked by an external entity, we consider that as an ROI, but it is difficult to put a dollar value on that.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is fairly priced.

What other advice do I have?

Mend SCA is better than Mend SAST. They are a market leader in SCA. The adoption of Mend SCA and the scanning of Mend SCA are pretty good. It is one of the best solutions for SCA. It was already deployed for at least six months before I got this tool. At one point, I saw WhiteSource's name on the Microsoft website as a critical solution for open-source scanning, which made me think that this solution must be good if Microsoft mentioned it on its website.

Its adoption was very slow in the beginning. Three years ago, there was no awareness of using this solution, so we had to tell the team about what the solution is for, what are its advantages, how it impacts their product, and so on. The adoption is good now, and people know exactly what it is being used for. They know the types of vulnerabilities that are there. They know the types of features that are there. Earlier, they used to go through me for any support program, but now they are directly raising tickets depending on the priority of the ticket and then directly communicating with my support representative to fix them. The initial one and a half years were difficult. 

We are also using Mend SAST. They have a variety of different application security solutions in addition to SCA. These solutions are complementary. When you use solutions from different vendors, more diversity can lead to problems. When you have a Mend solution for SCA and a Mend solution for SAST, they are complementary, so the results of those scans would be far more helpful than having different vendors at each and every level. Diversification is good to a certain extent, but if you diversify too much, you might get a lot of false positives.

Overall, I would rate Mend SCA a 10 out of 10. It is definitely one of the best ones in the market.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Mend.io
May 2025
Learn what your peers think about Mend.io. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
851,823 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Shashidhar Gowda - PeerSpot reviewer
Program and Portfolio Management at Acceldata
Real User
Highly scalable, reliable, and knowledgeable support
Pros and Cons
  • "We use a lot of open sources with a variety of containers, and the different open sources come with different licenses. Some come with dual licenses, some are risky and some are not. All our three use cases are equally important to us and we found WhiteSource handles them decently."
  • "I rated the solution an eight out of ten because WhiteSource hasn't built in a couple of features that we would have loved to use and they say they're on their roadmap. I'm hoping that they'll be able to build and deliver in 2022."

What is our primary use case?

We have started the trial version of WhiteSource last week. We concluded the trial this week and we are beginning to use the full licensed solution later on in the week.

We use WhiteSource for automating open-source vulnerability, by finding the open-source libraries that were used and fixing them. Additionally, we set up policies to disallow some of the risky open sources to be used in our solutions by developers. We are able to scan and fix vulnerabilities in our containers, to ensure that if there are any licenses that violate the open source usage or put our product at risk, we make sure that either we remove or remediate the open sources with risky licenses. Those are the main three use cases.

How has it helped my organization?

We did not have much security compliance implemented in our solutions. Whatever we did, we had to use the AWS built-in OWASP scanning, and we had to manually find out the versions of the open sources that fixed the issues of vulnerability. We then had to make sure that that updated version is sent in and code merged for a test. We found sometimes it took a lot of research to make sure that the version that we are upgrading to did fix the issue, et cetera. However, this is all manual research and is dependent on the knowledge of the developer or the engineer who did this work. It took time and did not ensure a high percentage of security compliance. With WhiteSource in place, we are going to be able to do the whole process automatically and it will be confident that we removed the vulnerabilities and license violations.

We are saving time that we spent on resources because we no longer have to do it manually. We will now have confidence that there are not many errors made.  We are able to do much more vulnerability fixing than we did manually, there are cost-savings, and less work involved.

What is most valuable?

We use a lot of open sources with a variety of containers, and the different open sources come with different licenses. Some come with dual licenses, some are risky and some are not. All our three use cases are equally important to us and we found WhiteSource handles them decently.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using WhiteSource for approximately one week.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not used the solution very long to give us a full picture of the stability. However, from what we have seen from the trials it is impressive.

The solution only required a few hours of work from one DevOps engineer in a week.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

WhiteSource's scalability is extremely good. We can add more repositories, projects, and people as we need. There's no problem with the scalability. We did not find any slowness, performance stress, or load-related issues when we did the trials. WhiteSource can handle up to a few thousand concurrent users without any issues.

Once we have the solution fully licensed we will have approximately 50 people using it.

Ou usage of WhiteSource will increase as we add more people, but it's going to be the same code base. The number of users will increase, but the scope of the solution usage in terms of the number of solutions will remain the same.

How are customer service and support?

Their pricing is different for many of the solutions we have tried. In Sonatype, especially, the agents are extremely technically knowledgeable. The sales team and the sales engineering we spoke to are extremely knowledgeable. They had 100 percent of all the answers to the questions that we asked. In the case of Snyk, their support had to go and come back to us and their support pricing is very expensive. Even with the trials that we did, we did not try the paid version of their software that included dedicated customer support.

WhiteSource agents are knowledgeable. In a couple of cases, they had to go back and work with the engineering for a resolution. However, the support that is included in the plan that we bought is good. In the other two options, the pricing did not include the ongoing SLA-based support. With WhiteSource, they include SLA-based support, 24/7, in their enterprise plan, which is comparable to the plans with Sonatype and Snyk where they don't include the support.

I rate the support of WhiteSource a seven out of ten.

I rated the solution an eight out of ten because WhiteSource hasn't built in a couple of features that we would have loved to use and they say they're on their roadmap. I'm hoping that they'll be able to build and deliver in 2022.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We use trials of many solutions, such as Snyk and Sonatype.

How was the initial setup?

WhiteSource's initial setup is very straightforward. In all three use cases, it was very straightforward. With Sonatype, we used the on-premise version, but with Snyk and WhiteSource, we used their cloud version. It did take a little time to set up Sonatype, but it was straightforward. We had people helping and guiding us on a Zoom call in all three use cases. It did not take long or was it complicated in either of the use cases. Overall all it took was under an hour.

What about the implementation team?

We did the implementation ourselves with the sales engineers.

What was our ROI?

We haven't calculated our return on investment in terms of resource savings. While we were doing everything manually, but still we were not able to do everything. Now we have a solution, we can save the human resources that are being paid for. Our return on investment, in terms of our ability to showcase our solutions as secure and sell them, is going to be multifold. I'm expecting, at least, the return on investment of new sales and cross-sales will be at least six times higher.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

When comparing the price of WhiteSource to the competition it is priced well. The cost for 50 users is approximately $18,000 annually.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated many solutions, such as Snyk, Sonatype, SonarQube, Checkmarx, and a couple of others.

What other advice do I have?

When people start looking at solutions that are available for open source, static code analysis, container scanning, and infrastructure as a code, there are many solutions. Many companies have productized these different services into different solutions, but when they sell them they combine everything into one platform. This can be extremely expensive and confusing. In the beginning, it all starts looking like they're all interdependent and buy and use all of them to be able to make them work, which is not the case. Finalize your use cases, what exactly you need a solution for, before even starting your evaluation. For example, our primary use case was open source and open source alone. When we started looking at the solutions, the companies threw at us things that we did not need, and we were confused at some stages. We did not give up and continued our POCs and went into more detail on the solutions that the vendors are offering.

In some cases, we didn't have the ability to evaluate some of the solutions they were providing, because we did not want them. We did not have the solution's codebases. For example, to evaluate some of the features, it's extremely important to discuss internally and make sure your use cases are before starting the evaluation of the solution. During the evaluation, stick to only the solutions or part of the solution that the vendors are providing that satisfies your use cases. Do not go beyond it and pay for something that you will not use once you buy them. It's confusing once you start the trials unless you have not done the background work or homework, you may end up buying things that you don't need at expensive prices.

I rate WhiteSource an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
ZvikaRonen - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at FOSSAware
Real User
Top 10
It has good dashboard and management views, and it is helpful for early fixing and post-production management
Pros and Cons
  • "The dashboard view and the management view are most valuable."
  • "It should support multiple SBOM formats to be able to integrate with old industry standards."

What is our primary use case?

It is used to manage open-source associated risks. I'm a consultant, and I provide consultancy and management services in the domain of open-source risk management. I use this product as a part of the services to my customers. I'm not using it in my company because my company is not developing anything.

Its deployment is hybrid where scans are on-premise and the knowledge base is on the cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

It saves a lot of money with early fixing. If you can figure out an open-source bug earlier, rather than in production, it can save a lot of, almost 100 times, cost.

It also helps with post-production management because it gives alerts on new vulnerabilities.

What is most valuable?

The dashboard view and the management view are most valuable.

What needs improvement?

The pricing model needs some changes. It is being offered in bulks of a minimum of 20 developers, which means that small startups with less than 20 developers cannot afford to buy the minimum bulk. There is no flexible pricing model to choose a plan with partial functionality and for less than 20.

The GUI should support the export of multiple SBOM formats, today this is the transparency expected by federal agencies from companies that write software. 
There is no one standard yet in the industry for SBOM, so leading tools like WhiteSource should be able to support multiple formats.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are hundreds of users who use this solution.

How are customer service and support?

I have used their support, and they were excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I use multiple solutions, such as Snyk, Black Duck, and Sonatype.

How was the initial setup?

It is quite simple. Its implementation takes days, and its implementation strategy is a part of our management plan.

What about the implementation team?

I'm a consultant, and I help with its implementation. It requires very few people.

What was our ROI?

There is definitely an ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Its pricing model is per developer. It depends on the number of developers in the company. The license is for a minimum of 20 developers. So, even if you are a small startup with less than 10 developers, you have to buy a license for 20 developers on a yearly subscription, which makes it quite expensive for startup customers. I provide consultation to startup accelerators. They're small at the beginning, and only once they grow to 20 developers, they can afford this tool. As a result, WhiteSource is missing this target audience. Their licensing is not flexible.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I evaluated other options, but some of those, such as Protecode, do not exist today. They used to be tools based on the actual reading of the content. They were snippet-based.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be to get ready for implementation by preparing the right structure. Before implementing this tool, you should define the company policy and processes and get accurate training. This creates trust between the developer and the newly-implemented tool. For instance, when there is a violation of a policy, you need to understand why it happened. You should not try to bypass that just because it would fail the build. Developers' trust is the most important thing. So, you should plan ahead with a clear management program for open-source involving all key holders. Implementation of such a tool requires collaboration. It is not the job of just the development team or the head of security. It is supposed to be a joint effort of the entire development group in a company.

I would rate WhiteSource a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1623255 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Lead Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Integrates well with Azure DevOps, stable, and affordable
Pros and Cons
  • "The results and the dashboard they provide are good."
  • "I would like to see the static analysis included with the open-source version."

What is most valuable?

The integration with Azure DevOps was good.

The results and the dashboard they provide are good.

It was pretty straightforward for me.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see the static analysis included with the open-source version. That would be good.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used the trial version of WhiteSource for a month. We chose to work with Veracode instead.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's was pretty stable. I don't have any complaints about the stability of WhiteSource.

How are customer service and technical support?

I did not have any contact with the technical support. I did not have any issues in the time that I used this solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It was approximately $2,000 per year or per month, I don't recall exactly.

When compared with Veracode, Veracode was very very expensive. It was approximately $200,000.00 per year for the whole Suite.

WhiteSource is much more affordable than Veracode.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are evaluating Veracode.

What other advice do I have?

It was pretty good. I would rate WhiteSource an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1250697 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Vulnerability and license alerts help us stay compliant with software releases
Pros and Cons
  • "Attribution and license due diligence reports help us with aggregating the necessary data that we, in turn, have to provide to satisfy the various licenses copyright and component usage disclosures in our software."
  • "Some detected libraries do not specify a location of where in the source they were matched from, which is something that should be enhanced to enable quicker troubleshooting."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use for WhiteSource is security and license risk detection in open-source, third-party libraries and components. We run scans from multiple source control and build systems (TFS, ADO, Jenkins, ...). Some of our scans are automated, while others are done manually with the unified file agent in offline mode scan, and then the resulting "wsjson" file is uploaded to the WS SaaS portal.

How has it helped my organization?

We moved from Black Duck to WhiteSource as it was a more modern and scalable solution, with better integration support to various build and source environments. The ease of running scans and getting results quickly enables our developers to address issues quicker. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of this solution are:

  1. The vulnerability and license alerts are the main purposes of us utilizing this tool. We don't want to ship software and mistakenly include a GPL component. Similarly, we want to stay up to date on all vulnerabilities in third-party libraries so we can take action if our software solutions are impacted.
  2. Implementing policies is helpful because it's great when certain "no-nos" can be codified as policies and auto-rejected.
  3. Attribution and license due diligence reports help us with aggregating the necessary data that we, in turn, have to provide to satisfy the various licenses copyright and component usage disclosures in our software.

What needs improvement?

Places in need of improvement are:

  1. Some detected libraries do not specify a location of where in the source they were matched from, which is something that should be enhanced to enable quicker troubleshooting.
  2. Manual uploads of "wsjson" files can only be done by a global admin. Product administrators should be given this right for uploading files to their products/projects.
  3. Better support for proxies is needed when running the unified file agent behind a proxy. It can be made to work, but the Java proxy config and cert trust for MitM traffic inspection are very painful to set up.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using WhiteSource for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In our two years of usage, there has been a negligible amount of downtime. We have, however, experienced occasional issues with certain features of the offer that created some friction and grumblings from our devs using the portal, but those have typically been resolved fairly quickly. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a SaaS offering that has so far taken everything we have thrown at it (150+ products, with multiple projects in each). Certain reports that aggregate data globally could take a while to churn, but well within acceptable time-frames.

How are customer service and technical support?

Responses are quick; TS works hard to resolve issues quickly. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Prior to this solution, we used Black Duck. As of two years ago, when we made the switch, WhiteSource's UI was more modern, the SaaS solution more scalable, and the integration capabilities far superior. The detection accuracy between the two was quite similar. 

How was the initial setup?

Setting up the tool for automated usage is very straightforward. Follow the documentation carefully and you will likely be fully up and running in between 15 and 60 mins.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented this solution using our in-house team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing is competitive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also use NPM Audit and Snyk, but as an augmentation; not as competitors. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Nils Hedström - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect/Developer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Useful report automation, beneficial reports, but report triggered operation halting needed
Pros and Cons
  • "WhiteSource is unique in the scanning of open-source licenses. Additionally, the vulnerabilities aspect of the solution is a benefit. We don't use WhiteSource in the whole organization, but we use it for some projects. There we receive a sense of the vulnerabilities of the open-source components, which improves our security work. The reports are automated which is useful."
  • "WhiteSource only produces a report, which is nice to look at. However, you have to check that report every week, to see if something was found that you don't want. It would be great if the build that's generating a report would fail if it finds a very important vulnerability, for instance."

What is our primary use case?

We use WhiteSource for scanning open source libraries called SCA and both the vulnerabilities and open source licenses. We deployed WhiteSource with Azure DevOps.

What is most valuable?

WhiteSource is unique in the scanning of open-source licenses. Additionally, the vulnerabilities aspect of the solution is a benefit. We don't use WhiteSource in the whole organization, but we use it for some projects. There we receive a sense of the vulnerabilities of the open-source components, which improves our security work. The reports are automated which is useful.

What needs improvement?

WhiteSource only produces a report, which is nice to look at. However, you have to check that report every week, to see if something was found that you don't want. It would be great if the build that's generating a report would fail if it finds a very important vulnerability, for instance.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using WhiteSource for a few years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

WhiteSource is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have approximately 20 people using this solution in my organization.

How are customer service and support?

I have not used technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have previously used other solutions, such as OWASP Dependency-Check, Snyk open-source, and CheckMark

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of WhiteSource is straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We did the deployment of the solution ourselves. We used one person for the deployment.

What was our ROI?

We have received a return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

WhiteSource is a free solution to use.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other solutions before choosing WhiteSource. We ended up choosing WhiteSource because of some of its unique features.

What other advice do I have?

I rate WhiteSource a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user832698 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Department for Software Engineering and Integration
Real User
Using it, we can take some measures to improve things, replace a library, or update a library which was too old
Pros and Cons
  • "The overall support that we receive is pretty good. ​"
  • "We find licenses together with WhiteSource which are associated with a certain library, then we get a classification of the license. This is with respect to criticality and vulnerability, so we could take action and improve some things, or replace a third-party library which seems to be too risky for us to use on legal grounds."
  • "We can take some measures to improve things, replace a library, or update a library which was too old or showed severe bugs."
  • "Make the product available in a very stable way for other web browsers."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use is to find all the third-party libraries and open source libraries which are hidden in the software, such that no third-party libraries are forgotten.

  1. To get an overview of all these third-party components.
  2. To get some information from WhiteSource about which licenses are behind the third-party tool, and what implications these might have for us.

How has it helped my organization?

We find licenses together with WhiteSource which are associated with a certain library, then we get a classification of the license. This is with respect to criticality and vulnerability, so we could take action and improve some things, or replace a third-party library which seems to be too risky for us to use on legal grounds. Then, we can take some measures to improve things, replace a library, or update a library which was too old or showed severe bugs, etc.

What is most valuable?

Several dashboards. The licenses dashboard, which gives me an overview of all the licenses used in our software. For example, right at the moment, there are several hundreds of licenses used. The licenses dashboard and release management dashboard along with reports (like risk, vulnerabilities, high severity, bug alerts, etc.).

What needs improvement?

Every product has room for improvement, including WhiteSource. The stability of the product is web-based. We are obliged to use the Internet Explorer, and from time-to-time I get messages which tells me that I do not have the rights to use WhiteSource, which is obviously wrong. I also suggested it to WhiteSource, and they told me that WhiteSource only works reliably for Firefox and Chrome. This has some room for improvement for me. Make the product available in a very stable way for other web browsers. 

From time to time, the dashboards don't display the full content that I expect. It seems that licenses are not shown nor are products are shown in full detail. I am just missing things at times. This might be due to the Internet Explorer issue, and if I am not using the right web browser, then maybe it does not work correctly. 

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From time-to-time, it seems in Internet Explorer, which we use here in our company, the product is not stable in all cases. I get wrong error messages, and it seems that WhiteSource does not display all the contents that should be there. 

It is good enough. We can live with it in this situation. Though maybe it would be much better if we used Chrome or Firefox.

The picture that I have of it is that it is not yet a fully 100% stable software. This is the impression that I have. It is not 100% stable and reliable, but it is good enough that we can work with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have only six software projects included right now. Altogether, we have several hundred third-party open source components. With this amount of objects displayed in the dashboards, it is working pretty well. I cannot say anything which goes beyond that amount. 

From time-to-time, I have the impression that if it is a long list (e.g., if I have several hundreds of entries in a list), that this list might somehow get a little bit difficult to handle with the scroll bar in finding things. This could be improved, in regards to handling a lot of data. It seems a little bit limited.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have tech calls with WhiteSource on a regular basis, about every four weeks. 

The customer success manager, who is responsible for us, works with us pretty well. Every several weeks, we have a phone call, then we try to move one step forward to improve things, and so on. 

The overall support that we receive is pretty good. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use anything before WhiteSource. 

How was the initial setup?

It was not that easy, but easy enough to go ahead. 

From time-to-time, we get some hints from the support on how to work with it. The dashboard is pretty good, so one can easily find things that they are looking for. However, the topic search, it is very complex and complicated to get a qualified picture of all these licenses. I know that there are online resources for us which we can take into account, but taking everything together, it still remains quite complicated for us to work with it.

What was our ROI?

Up until now, we were convinced that the return of investment was not really the case. However, we will see if maybe we get enough benefit out of the tool that we can argue internally that it is really worth using it.

When using WhiteSource, you cannot really be sure what the ROI is. It is an indication, a hint, that maybe you should look at these licenses or those licenses. However, maybe it has not found everything. Nobody can guarantee that we now have the complete picture. It is maybe an improved picture on all this third-party open-source stuff, but maybe it is also not the complete picture.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are paying a lot of money to use WhiteSource. In our company, it is not easy to argue that it is worth the price. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did evaluate another tool along with WhiteSource, but we decided to take WhiteSource. There was this other tool, Black Duck, but we decided to work with WhiteSource.

However, we have not fully evaluated this tool. It seemed too complicated for us, so at a certain point, we just decided to work with WhiteSource further on.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend using WhiteSource to other companies if they are in a similar situation that we are. If they are having real problems in dealing with all these open source licenses, then it is a good approach to use WhiteSource and get a handle of the whole topic. 

I do recommend it.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
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Updated: May 2025
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