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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
17th
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 (23rd), DevSecOps (6th)
Fortify on Demand
Ranking in Application Security Tools
15th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
12th
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 April 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Acunetix is 2.7%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.5%, 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

"I haven't seen reporting of that level in any other tool."
"The product is really easy to use."
"The most important feature is that it's a web-based graphical user interface. That is a great addition. Also, the ability to schedule scans is great."
"I find it to be one of the most comprehensive tools, with support for manual intervention."
"It's very user-friendly for the testing teams. It's very easy for them to understand things and to fix vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable feature of Acunetix is the UI and the scan results are simple."
"Acunetix has an awesome crawler. It gives a referral site map of near targets and also goes really deep to find all the inputs without issues. This was valuable because it helped me find some files or directories, like web admin panels without authentication, which were hidden."
"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."
"Provides good depth of scanning and we get good results."
"There is not only one specific feature that we find valuable. The idea is to integrate the solution in DevSecOps which we were able to do."
"It is valuable in improving our overall security posture by catching significant errors."
"Fortify on Demand's best feature is that there's no need to install and configure it locally since it's on the cloud."
"While using Micro Focus Fortify on Demand we have been very happy with the results and findings."
"Fortify supports most languages. Other tools are limited to Java and other typical languages. IBM's solutions aren't flexible enough to support any language. Fortify also integrates with lots of tools because it has API support."
"The most valuable features are the server, scanning, and it has helped identify issues with the security analysis."
"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

"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."
"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."
"The only problem that they have is the price. It is a bit expensive, and you cannot change the number of applications for the whole year."
"When monitoring the traffic we always have issues with the bandwidth consumption and the throttling of traffic."
"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."
"Tools that would allow us to work more efficiently with the mobile environment, with Android and iOS."
"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."
"It would be nice to have a feature to "retest" only a single vulnerability that the customer reports as patched, and delete it from the next scans since it has already been patched."
"Fortify on Demand needs to improve its pricing."
"It does scanning for all virtual machines and other things, but it doesn't do the scanning for containers. It currently lacks the ability to do the scanning on containers. We're asking their product management team to expand this capability to containers."
"It would be highly beneficial if Fortify on Demand incorporated runtime analysis, similar to how Contrast Security utilizes agents for proactive application security."
"The technical support is actually a problem that needs to be addressed. Since the acquisition and merger with Hewlett Packard, it has been really hard to know who the technical or salesperson to talk to."
"An improvement would be the ability to get vulnerabilities flowing automatically into another system."
"There are many false positives identified by the solution."
"Temenos's (T-24) info basic is a separate programming interface, and such proprietary platforms and programming interfaces were not easily supported by the out-of-the-box versions of Fortify."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand could improve the user interface by making it more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would say that Acunetix is expensive because there are products on the market with similar features that are equally or better-priced."
"The cost is based on two types of licenses, ConsultLite, and ConsultPlus, as well as the number of domains that are scanned."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"It is a bit expensive. If you need to check five applications, you have to pay almost 14,000. It is an agreement for two years at 7,000 per year for only five applications. You cannot change the applications in the license. So, you are stuck with the same license for the five applications for one full year."
"The price is exceptionally high."
"Fortify on Demand is moderately priced, but its pricing could be more flexible."
"The licensing was good because the licenses have the heavy centralized server."
"The product's cost depends on the type of license."
"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."
"I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"We used the one-time application, Security Scan Dynamic. I believe the original fee was $8,000."
"The subscription model, on a per-scan basis, is a bit expensive. That's another reason we are not using it for all the apps."
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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
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
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: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.