The use cases would be for scanning purposes, for identifying assets, identifying and viewing assets, and setting up scan schedules. I use it primarily as a vulnerability management and scanning tool.
Cyber Security Specialist at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Effortless asset management, fast support, and an easy setup
Pros and Cons
- "I value the scheduling of scans and reports as per the desired timeframes."
- "The reporting section needs improvement as running reports can take several hours."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
When you have everything in one place, the job is very easy. Qualys VMDR having a Russian nesting doll sort of environment does take a steep learning curve, but having everything in one place is quite neat.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the asset view where I can find individual assets and take a deeper dive into their information gathering section, potential vulnerabilities, and confirmed vulnerabilities. I also value the scheduling of scans and reports as per the desired timeframes.
What needs improvement?
The reporting section needs improvement as running reports can take several hours. A more intuitive way to configure reports settings to reduce run time would be helpful. Improvements are needed for sorting QIDs and findings during the reporting section without downloading the entire report.
Additionally, there is a need to address the issue of retaining report sections when they exceed one or two GBs. For asset management, adding a notification for unscanned assets or those missing CVE ratings would help.
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Qualys VMDR
June 2025

Learn what your peers think about Qualys VMDR. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
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For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for close to three and a half to four years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There are rarely any stability issues. Discrepancies are usually anticipated due to the downtime and maintenance window provided in advance. It's a technological tool, and random anomalies may happen, but they are manageable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Qualys offers one of the best scalability capabilities for large-scale deployments. Its tools and solutions work effectively with large corporations. VMDR helps club multiple vulnerabilities into one QID, which assists with remediation cycles.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is fast, although there can be a lot of back and forth. However, the overall service is satisfactory and of great quality.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used Nessus and Burp Suite, however, Burp Suite isn't in close proximity with Qualys for scanning purposes. Microsoft Defender offers some advantages with real-time, agent-based scanning that consumes fewer resources.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was quite simple and straightforward. Setting up Qualys was fairly easy with clear documentation and guidance.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I am not familiar with the pricing side as I am not a part of that aspect. However, it is on the higher side, but it provides large-scale scalability for vulnerability management.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have evaluated Nessus and Microsoft Defender for vulnerability management.
What other advice do I have?
Users should go through the training offered by Qualys for all VMDR modules and take an introductory call on how to use and schedule tasks. Setting up one thing at a time and testing the desired results before moving on is advised.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Last updated: Oct 21, 2024
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Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Automated reporting enhances vulnerability management capabilities
Pros and Cons
- "I like the automated report generation and vulnerability report generation."
- "Using this product, we now have a vulnerability management cycle wherein VMDR plays a major role."
- "The response time of technical support takes a while."
- "The response time of technical support takes a while."
What is our primary use case?
We use it for vulnerability management and report generation mostly. I am trying to solve the issue wherein the stakeholders can get automated vulnerability reports to their mailbox.
How has it helped my organization?
Using this product, we now have a vulnerability management cycle wherein VMDR plays a major role. It has greatly increased the capability on the detection aspect of the vulnerability and improved our scope and visibility on all other endpoints.
What is most valuable?
I like the automated report generation and vulnerability report generation.
What needs improvement?
I don't have any improvement requests on top of my mind right now. The response time of technical support takes a while.
For how long have I used the solution?
It's been more than two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability as nine out of ten. It's quite stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
My rating for the technical support for Qualys is six out of ten. The response time takes a while.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I personally didn't use a different solution before Qualys.
How was the initial setup?
Although I was not present during the initial deployment process, it's pretty straightforward. It's just an agent installation, which automatically connects it to the cloud platform, so the implementation won't take as long.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Qualys VMDR to the other stakeholders because it already has its place in the market, and it's very reliable.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Last updated: Nov 11, 2024
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Qualys VMDR
June 2025

Learn what your peers think about Qualys VMDR. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Information Communication Technology Specialist at UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG
Simplifies asset discovery and management, ensuring comprehensive scanning and reporting
Pros and Cons
- "The product's patch management is excellent for keeping our critical servers and third-party applications updated efficiently."
- "One area of the product that could be improved is the management of vulnerabilities detected on disabled applications."
What is our primary use case?
I primarily use Qualys VMDR for daily scans, onboarding assets, scanning, reporting, and managing the entire vulnerability management process, including test management.
How has it helped my organization?
VMDR has significantly improved our organization by simplifying asset discovery and management. We can easily identify and categorize assets, ensuring comprehensive scanning and reporting.
What is most valuable?
Qualys Patch Management is excellent for keeping our critical servers and third-party applications updated efficiently.
What needs improvement?
One area of the product that could be improved is the management of vulnerabilities detected on disabled applications. We currently face challenges with unnecessary alerts for Microsoft Defender, which we do not use. Additionally, enhancing the alerts for agent communication failures would be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Qualys VMDR for approximately three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product has been very reliable in our day-to-day operations.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the product scalability a ten. It easily scales with our organization's growth, allowing us to add new assets and expand our coverage seamlessly. We are considering expanding our deployment to include 500 assets next year.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward, taking less than a week to configure and generate reports. The deployment process was smooth, and we were able to integrate it effectively into our hybrid environment.
What was our ROI?
Within three months of deployment, we began seeing improvements in vulnerability management. This helped us significantly reduce vulnerabilities and streamline our patch management processes, providing a notable return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is reasonably priced for the value it provides. Our contract renewal was approximately 2.5 million ZAR for three years, including managed services.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before selecting Qualys VMDR, we evaluated other options but ultimately chose Qualys due to its comprehensive features and effective proof of concept.
What other advice do I have?
We integrate Qualys VMDR with our infrastructure, conducting weekly scans and generating reports based on the findings. This provides daily views of vulnerabilities, and we use Qualys' patch management to deploy patches promptly, starting with the most severe vulnerabilities, thus reducing our threat exposure. Conducting a thorough proof of concept is essential to evaluate its effectiveness in your environment and to see how it integrates with your existing systems and handles your specific security needs.
I rate it a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Security Expert at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
The solution is efficient, with easy implementation, and simple to use
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of the solution is the external channel."
- "I would like to have CSPM, a continuous scan-like cloud added to the solution."
What is our primary use case?
Qualys VM is used for vulnerability scans for the internet and applications using application exchange. There are many applications. We also use the solution for asset management per team, and the network scan to discover the devices on our network.
How has it helped my organization?
We have an excellent relationship with the vendor, so we use the solution in our company and in two other companies. We have a communication program. Japanese people can't speak English, but most of the tools have only English support, Qualys VM offers support in other languages which are essential for our company.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the solution is the external channel. The cloud-based channel within the AWS, which we implement accordingly.
The vulnerability cycle feature of the solution is valuable.
What needs improvement?
I would like to have CSPM, a continuous scan-like cloud added to the solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
We have 25,000 storage devices that are currently using the solution.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used an AWS scanner but switched to Qualys VM because of the Japanese support and the cost.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward.
Qualys environment is implemented very easily, within one or two months. However, setting up the standard devices, such as opening a firewall, and preparing the network can take up to four or five months. The entire deployment takes about six months.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation was completed in-house.
What other advice do I have?
I give the solution an eight out of ten.
The maintenance is not difficult and we don't have any problems or concerns.
Implementation of the solution is very easy, using the solution is very easy, and it is very efficient.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Consultant at Tata Consultancy
Great support, good training, and lots of great features
Pros and Cons
- "It's stable and quite reliable."
- "There needs to be better documentation."
What is our primary use case?
Qualys has many products. However, the prominent one is for scanning the vulnerabilities on endpoints, including servers and desktops. The other can be for using multiple other products, like taking the certificate, inventory, and software inventory of endpoints through scanning.
Additionally, we use the solution for web application scanning. When they have web applications, they can scan applications for various vulnerabilities and give recommendations.
What is most valuable?
Almost all of the features are great. We use Qualys for vulnerability scanning of servers and web application scanning. These are the two prominent features that we often use.
The initial setup is very straightforward.
It's stable and quite reliable.
The product can scale.
Technical support is helpful, and the product provides a good amount of training.
What needs improvement?
Qualys has evolved a lot. It is one of the services that has evolved a lot, and we do recommend Qualys to the specs tent.
However, their products are very modular, so for customers, they need to provide some roadmap on how the customer can utilize their products. For example, starting with vulnerability scanning, they need to show how they can extend their products for multiple other use cases. They need to do a better job of educating customer more.
There needs to be better documentation.
Maybe their price scheduler could be made simpler.
It's expensive.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using Qualys for a long time. I've used it for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable. It is reliable. The solution doesn't have any bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's scalable. It's easy to expand.
Many people use the solution. There are likely more than 10,000 users.
The usage is based on the business requirements. It all depends on the service offering.
How are customer service and support?
They do offer a lot of support in the form of training for users. They also offer labs. The technical teams are reachable. Technical support is quite good with them.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
This is an easy product to set up. It's not very complex to implement.
The deployment was very fast. We could do it in about a week's time. It can be done very quickly. There are just some configurations on the cloud, and you can handle the agent deployment using some deployment tools.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We pay an annual licensing fee.
Prices do vary. If it is for a standard solution, they are the best. If a company goes for some advanced solutions, like web scanning, it does become pricey. However, the basic solution is good. It's just the advanced solutions that drive up the price.
What other advice do I have?
I am a consultant.
I'd recommend the solution to others.
I would rate the product ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Information Security Manager at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Accurate and effective with good reporting
Pros and Cons
- "The reporting functionality is great."
- "They're still evolving their platform in terms of reporting capabilities."
What is our primary use case?
We do vulnerability management mostly with the agents and sometimes with the scanner.
We use it to install for around 20 or 30 clients right now so that we can remotely monitor their vulnerability status and help them improve their patch management processes. When certain critical things come up, we help clients with the Log4J, identifying where they need to remediate some of the super trendy critical things that come out and identifying end-of-life operating systems and software that need to be updated.
What is most valuable?
The reporting functionality is great. The most prominent feature that made us move from Nessus Professional was the scanner-based scanning to the Qualys agent-based scanning to move to work from home and remote.
If somebody's not connected to the network, you're not going to catch them with an appliance-based scan. However, if you have the agent on, as long as they're on the network, they're constantly checking in and constantly scanning.
It's more accurate and effective to get a picture of what the vulnerabilities are in a more distributed workforce.
The reporting capabilities that are available in Qualys are a work in progress. I know they're still evolving, and it's not always perfect. However, we only have so much flexibility to pinpoint a specific thing that we want to follow or monitor across all of our clients. We can set it up in a dashboard or report and do it quickly.
What needs improvement?
They're still evolving their platform in terms of reporting capabilities. Every time they make a change, it's not always super smooth, and it's a little quirky with bugs sometimes. That said, they've been really responsive at helping resolve issues that we find. We've got a pretty close relationship with them and our account managers there. We’re working on it.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using it as a service provider for about a year or so.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution can sometimes be buggy.
The agent itself is stable. The reporting platform seems to go through quite a bit of change that they're trying to make it more robust and developing more things, and so we'll make customizations, and they make it update, and the customizations wipe out. I wouldn't say the reporting platform is super stable at the moment. However, it more than meets our needs far beyond what we had with Nessus Professional. The ability to monitor has been stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's incredibly scalable. We've got it across 20 or 30 clients, and so we're pretty happy with how scalable it is from that aspect of a multi-client platform as an MSTP of that type of service.
However, the reporting doesn't seem to be as scalable. The more clients we add to it, the slower it runs with the reporting and dashboards.
Most of our clients are small and medium-sized businesses, so each of those clients has maybe anywhere from 30 to 1,000 agents.
We do plan to increase usage. We're only a year in. We touch a couple of hundred clients a year, so we're just learning the capabilities of it and growing with Qualys as we go. We're definitely all in with Qualys at this point.
How are customer service and support?
I maybe had one meeting trying to understand how to build the dashboards, however, my colleague is the one that was selected to handle the solution and works closely with technical support. From what I heard, they've been great.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used Nessus Professional. We switched when we could no longer go use our paid scanner on a client environment due to COVID and not actually going to client offices and nobody being there. Therefore, at that time, it wouldn't have been an effective vulnerability scan, and we had to look at other options. While one of our larger clients does have Nessus iOS through the city government, and it's a great tool, the pricing model was just cost prohibitive for our users across so many clients, and so that's why we were looking at other tools.
How was the initial setup?
It's straightforward as long as the clients have any technical know-how or central management of their devices.
The agents update themselves. There isn’t maintenance necessary once it is deployed.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I’m not clear on the pricing. We don't use it as an in-house tool, and we use it more as a managed service provider. We provide information security consulting services for many companies. When they don't have vulnerability management, we'll offer to support Qualys for them. We've got the MSP platform, and so it's not the typical pricing structure or platform. Therefore, I can’t speak to the exact pricing or typical licensing.
What other advice do I have?
We pay for the Qualys platform, and we will maintain the vulnerability management for our clients until they get their own vulnerability management solution.
I’d recommend the solution to others.
In a world of the hybrid workforce and work from home, if you're looking for a more effective vulnerability management tool, you have to go to the agent-based vulnerability management tools that are out there, and we've been extremely happy with Qualys. We were also delighted with Nessus in terms of their ability to identify things. However, an agent-based scanner is above an appliance base for known devices. Ideally, you have both of them together so you can scan your network for devices that might have an agent on it. However, for known devices, we definitely have been switching and really appreciate the switch to agent-based in Qualys.
I’d rate the solution eight out of ten. The only downside is that reporting can be slow, knowing that we're dealing with trying to load dashboards with 20,000 to 30,000 agents.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Senior Manager -Cloud Security at Capgemini
Continuous endpoint monitoring and amazing dashboards
Pros and Cons
- "Qualys has a continuous endpoint monitoring feature for agent-based scanning. Once you deploy the solution, it monitors everything that is happening every 30 minutes. Then, if there are any vulnerabilities, they are reported."
- "Qualys should improve their customer experience. They need to improve the tech support experience and the turnaround time."
What is most valuable?
Qualys has a continuous endpoint monitoring feature for agent-based scanning. Once you deploy the solution, it monitors everything that is happening every 30 minutes. Then, if there are any vulnerabilities, they are reported. Plus, the dashboards are amazing. There are so many dashboards and things in the console that you can explore, which I think other solutions, Tenable.io for example, are still working on.
What needs improvement?
They have everything covered as far as features are concerned, but Qualys should improve their customer experience. They need to improve the tech support experience and the turnaround time.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been working with this solution for one to two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This solution is definitely stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
I am not happy with the technical support because I had a very bad experience with them. On a scale of one to five, I would give Qualys tech support a two.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
There were a few challenges. I had an integration issue with Qualys where they had to enable the data privacy from the back end because I couldn't integrate it with the SIEM.
What was our ROI?
The ROI is definitely good for this solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Qualys is a pay-as-you-go model, so there's flexibility to the pricing.
What other advice do I have?
Everything is well-documented by Qualys. Their white paper is published and they have much visibility across the globe and on different platforms. If you look into their educational YouTube channel, you get a lot of information. There are a lot of seminars and talks on Qualys VMDR features.
The advantage with Qualys is that you get a lot of features because it has been a market leader for quite a long time. The solution has an agent-based approach and I think it is highly evolved when compared to Tenable, for example. However, Qualys is a bit highly priced so if you're looking strictly at pricing, I think you will get a better value with Tenable.
I would rate this solution as a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Information Technology Security Analyst at Culina Group Limited
With an interesting dashboard, the solution offers stability and scalability
Pros and Cons
- "I find the solution's dashboard interesting...The response time is fine. You can pull up reports without dragging or consuming bandwidth."
- "It is a struggle to be able to pull our report and to be able to do onboarding using automated tools."
What is our primary use case?
Using the solution, I go through the reports and advise my organization on what needs to be done and how to go about it.
What is most valuable?
I find the solution's dashboard interesting since we get a proper view to streamline our findings and assist in prioritizing the schedule for patching or any other related incidents we believe have already been worked on.
What needs improvement?
Presently, I am more of the technical part. I am allowed to just go through the details of the report, which has been very interesting. It is a struggle to be able to pull our report and to be able to do onboarding using automated tools. So basically, the aforementioned aspect of the report needs improvement.
Presently, whatever I'm working on has been quite fantastic to the best of my knowledge.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Qualys VMDR. I have been using it on my own site as a client. I am just a consultant. I work with Qualys VMDR due to my understanding of the product so that I can help my clients check one or two things that can help improve the digital infrastructure part.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the tool is okay. Most of the time, you need to do the updates online to be able to get off from any vulnerability. As long as you are online since it's on the cloud, it's just as software of which the update has been handled on the cloud as well.
The response time is fine. You can pull up reports without dragging or consuming bandwidth.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of the tool is okay. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. I have not been able to have the solution function at a large scale. Hence, I will be able to categorically say that everything is fantastic.
How are customer service and support?
Presently on my own part, I've not been able to experience the support, but I can search the technical algorithm of which I've not yet got any reports.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup phase has been quite interesting because of our experience when we had to use the agents on most of the endpoints, which means it was okay for us.
The solution is deployed on the cloud.
What other advice do I have?
I would tell those planning to use it that it is definitely not about the technology. However, at the same time, if you have the technology, make sure you have the right person with the ability to assist you in addressing the advantages of the product.
I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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