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Acunetix vs Fortify on Demand comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 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

Acunetix
Ranking in Application Security Tools
16th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (21st), DevSecOps (6th)
Fortify on Demand
Ranking in Application Security Tools
15th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Acunetix is 2.8%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.4%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AnubhavGoswami - PeerSpot reviewer
Attractive automated reports with boost user productivity and an easy setup
The primary use is mainly related to vulnerability assessment, including both public and internal IP addresses By using this tool, we have reduced the workload and increased the productivity of users. It generates automated reports. This feature is beneficial when sharing reports with clients as…
Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our developers can run the attacks directly from their environments, desktops."
"It comes equipped with an internal applicator, which automatically identifies and addresses vulnerabilities within the program."
"Overall, it's a very good tool and a very good engine."
"The vulnerability scanning option for analyzing the security loopholes on the websites is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"I haven't seen reporting of that level in any other tool."
"The automated approach to these repetitive discovery attempts would take days to do manually and therefore it helps reduce the time needed to do an assessment."
"Their technical support has been very active. If I have an issue, I can reach out to them and get an answer pretty quick."
"There is a lot of documentation on their website which makes setting it up and using it quite simple."
"While using Micro Focus Fortify on Demand we have been very happy with the results and findings."
"The user interface is good."
"The most valuable features of Micro Focus Fortify on Demand have been SAT analysis and application security."
"The most valuable feature is that it connects with your development platforms, such as Microsoft Information Server and Jira."
"The solution scans our code and provides us with a dashboard of all the vulnerabilities and the criticality of the vulnerabilities. It is very useful that they provide right then and there all the information about the vulnerability, including possible fixes, as well as some additional documentation and links to the authoritative sources of why this is an issue and what's the correct way to deal with it."
"The UL is easy to use compared to that of other tools, and it is highly reliable. The findings provide a lower number of false positives."
"The vulnerability detection and scanning are awesome features."
"Once we have our project created with our application pipeline connected to the test scanning, it only takes two minutes. The report explaining what needs to be modified related to security and vulnerabilities in our code is very helpful. We are able to do static and dynamic code scanning."
 

Cons

"The vulnerability identification speed should be improved."
"You can't actually change your password after you've set it unless you go back into the administration account and you change it there. Thus, if you're locked out and don't remember your password, that's a thing."
"The jargon used makes it difficult for project managers to understand the issues, and the technical explanations used make it difficult for developers to understand issues. These things should be simplified much more. That would be very helpful for us when explaining to them what needs to be fixed. The report output needs to be simplified."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the way the licensing model is currently is not very convenient for us because initially, when we bought it, the licensing model was very flexible, but now it restricts us."
"I had some issues with the JSON parameters where it found some strange vulnerabilities, but it didn't alert the person using it or me about these vulnerabilities, e.g., an error for SQL injection."
"Integration into other tools is very limited for Acunetix. While we're trying to incorporate a CI/CD process where we're integrating with JIRA and we're integrating with Jenkins and Chef, it becomes problematic. Other tools give you a high integration capability to connect into different solutions that you may already have, like JIRA."
"The pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"It should be easier to recreate something manually, with the manual tool, because Acunetix is an automatic tool. If it finds something, it should be easier to manually replicate it. Sometimes you don't get the raw data from the input and output, so that could be improved."
"We want a user-based control and role-based access for developers. We want to give limited access to developers so that it only pertains to the code that they write and scanning of the codes for any vulnerabilities as they're progressing with writing the code. As of now, the interface to give restricted access to the developers is not the best. It gives them more access than what is basically required, but we don't want over-provisioning and over-access."
"We would like a reduction in the time frame of scans. It takes us three to five days to run a scan now. We would like that reduced to under three days."
"Fortify on Demand needs to improve its pricing."
"The solution has some issues with latency. Sometimes it takes a while to respond. This issue should be addressed."
"Primarily for a complex, advanced website, they don't really understand some of the functionalities. So for instance, they could tell us that there is a vulnerability because somebody could possibly do something, but they don't really understand the code to realize that we actually negate that vulnerability through some other mechanism in the program. In addition, the technical support is just not there. We have open tickets. They don't respond. Even if they respond, we're not seeing eye to eye. As the company got sold and bought, the support got worse."
"With Rapid7 I utilized its reporting capabilities to deliver Client Reports within just a few minutes of checking the data. I believe that HP’s FoD Clients could sell more services to clients if HP put more effort into delivering visually pleasing reporting capabilities."
"If you have a continuous integration in place, for example, and you want it to run along with your build and you want it to be fast, you're not going to get it. It adds to your development time."
"In terms of what could be improved, we need more strategic analysis reports, not just for one specific application, but for the whole enterprise. In the next release, we need more reports and more analytic views for all the applications. There is no enterprise view in Fortify. I would like enterprise views and reports."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Implementing Acunetix needs a medium or larger business agency, because you need some money to get Acunetix. It is costly, but if you care about your agency's security, then maybe it's a cost that might help you in the future."
"The price is exceptionally high."
"The cost is based on two types of licenses, ConsultLite, and ConsultPlus, as well as the number of domains that are scanned."
"All things considered, I think it has a good price/value ratio."
"The solution is expensive."
"The costs aren't very expensive. It costs around $3000 or $4000."
"The pricing is a little high, and moreover, it's kind of domain-based."
"When we looked at all other vendors and what they were asking for, to provide a third of what Acunetix was capable of doing, it was an easy decision... But now that it's coming to a cost where it's line with market value, it becomes more of a competition... Acunetix is raising the cost of licensing. It's 3.5 times what we were initially quoted."
"Buying a license would be feasible for regular use. For intermittent use, the cloud-based option can be used (Fortify on Demand)."
"We make an annual purchase of the licenses we need."
"If I exceed one million lines of code, there might be an extra cost or a change in the pricing bracket."
"It is cost-effective."
"There are different costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand depending on the assessments you want to use. There is only a standard license needed to use the solution."
"Their subscriptions could use a little bit of a reworking, but I am very happy with what they're able to provide."
"Fortify on Demand is affordable, and its licensing comes with a year of support."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand licenses are managed by our IT team and the license model is user-based."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
The tool's most valuable feature is scan configurations. We use it for external physical applications. The scanning time depends on the application's code.
What is your primary use case for Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
I typically use Acunetix ( /products/acunetix-reviews ) to identify vulnerabilities for clients.
What advice do you have for others considering Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
I would recommend Acunetix to others. Overall, I rate this solution seven out of ten.
What do you like most about Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing is competitive. The licenses for Fortify On Demand are generally bought in unit...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the next day, without any code changes, it will report vulnerabilities such as passw...
 

Also Known As

AcuSensor
Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Joomla!, Digicure, Team Random, Credit Suisse, Samsung, Air New Zealand
SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Acunetix vs. Fortify on Demand and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.