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Automox vs BigFix comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 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

Automox
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
54th
Ranking in Patch Management
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (46th), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (18th)
BigFix
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
14th
Ranking in Patch Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (5th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Automox is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigFix is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Jack Leung - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and deploy agents but needs more stability
We just need to deploy the agent to the endpoints. We don't need to set up anything. For a single agent, it takes one or two minutes. However, we deployed globally, and you need to take into consideration the time it will take to deploy across each endpoint. It's very simple to deploy. We had three or four engineers take care of the implementation.
Bella Yakoby - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers third-party patching feature, good scalability, and enhance endpoint management capabilities
From the perspective of the team that's handling the environment, it's not so user-friendly compared to other solutions, the competitors. We hire new teams from time to time, and they are complaining, look, although BigFix is very robust and cross-platform, it's not so fun to work with. The user interface for the technical teams is not so advanced. It's not so intuitive compared to SCCM, compared to ManageEngine. And this is the fact that they have, with the teams, because they have the rejection. The look and feel of the system are old-fashioned. For new employees, it's less easy to find someone I don't need to educate on how to work with BigFix. Although it's easy, it's not as intuitive as the other solutions, and the functionality of the other solutions is less advanced. Let's summarize: The user interface has to be changed from the perspective of the teams that are managing the product. It's old school.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Previously, we would run a report, scan it, and compare it. We were spending 15 to 30 minutes a month on each machine on this stuff because you would find stuff that wasn't up to date, then you had to fix it. This solution takes that time down to minutes. Automox saves us easily many hours a month."
"Its flexibility is most valuable."
"Among the most valuable features are its ease of use and the Worklets. Both of them are time-savers. Worklets enable us to customize things for a given environment. It's something like when Apple lets other people create applications. Other peoples' Worklets can be used in our environment and in our customers' environments. That saves a lot of time, and it's really cool."
"The flexibility in creating tools to make changes on remote machines is most valuable to me. The reporting feature is also fantastic because on any given day I can bring up a list of machines that don't have patches, for example. Or I can bring up a list of machines that are in my environment on a certain day. The solution helps me with not only my own role, and what I look for internally myself, but it also helps during audits. I can go in and look at the number of machines in there, and their owners and timelines. It certainly helps tell a story for anything that IT requires."
"The biggest improvement to our organization involves the reduction in its man hours... We've probably saved hundreds of hours."
"It's easy to deploy agents to endpoints."
"Coming from prior solutions that were a lot more effort, Automox's patch management abilities are transformational. When I took over patching at my company, they were using on-premise architecture to patch. As the workforce shifted from being in the office into their home offices, I was able to lift and shift with no effort other than deploying the new agent out into the environment."
"They've been adding some new features lately, which I'm not nearly as familiar with, but the ability to just deploy patches and exempt certain machines from certain patches is helpful. For instance, for our servers, we may not want to roll out zero-day patches. We are able to exempt those and make sure that they don't get those policies. We've got certain servers that have to run a particular version of Java, and being able to exempt those servers from receiving Java updates is pretty fantastic."
"BigFix technical support is good."
"I’ve found patching to be the most valuable feature of the solution."
"BigFix has always been easier to use when managing servers, especially when you deal with so many servers. We have 7,000. That's a lot of services to manage, and it's convenient to patch them all at once."
"The solution is unbelievably scalable."
"It is a one-stop tool that allows you to do everything. It supports reporting, vulnerability management, patch management, and configuration. All things can be done in one tool."
"It has improved my organization because we can automate a lot of tasks. We went from manually patching machines or doing our best and having very little visibility into it to us being able to set it and forget it and getting really good results on first-pass patching."
"The most valuable feature for us is the ability to manage TWS, the relevance is really what sets it apart. Also, using it as a software deployment tool is the key for us."
"The most valuable features are patch management, software installation, and asset management."
 

Cons

"It should have integrated workstation access. So, there should be a remote desktop feature."
"There should be better inventory capabilities. Right now, they only allow you to have insight into software out-of-the-box. It would be nice to also extend that into custom inventory that can be modified and managed by the practitioner."
"When we bring on a new client, we need to go into that client and manually set up my account, my chief engineer's account, three technicians' accounts, and a billing person's account all over again, which is annoying. We have probably up to 15 or 16 of our clients on Automox now. For every single one of those, we have had to go in and set this up. Then, if anything changes, we have to remember to go to Automox and change it 15 or 16 times. So, we just want inheritable permissions, and that is it. We have talked to them about this, and they are like, "Yeah, we hear a lot of complaints about it." I am thinking, "Guys, I have been complaining about this for a year and a half. When are you going to do it?" It must be some tricky thing or not an easy fix, because I can only assume if it were easy, then they would have done it by now."
"Asset management would be a great feature to add to Automox. We would run easier scripts or more out of the box scripts that would help us in audits. \"
"They need to improve the automation features."
"The only thing that we've ever truly wanted is an onsite repository. Currently, all updates are provided directly from the internet. So, if you have 1,000 devices, all 1,000 devices go directly out to the internet. We would love the option of being able to put the updates on local storage so that we're not consuming as much bandwidth. That is literally the only thing that we've ever wanted."
"The stability has come a long way from what it was like when it started and now it's really good."
"As concerns the patching concepts, there's a bit of a learning curve in terms of working out how Automox wants you to work within the console, not only splitting up everything into groups, but then having the various policies assigned."
"The product should become cloud-based. Also, the peer nesting ability of the product is a little backward."
"I would like to see the Self Service section made more user-friendly."
"I would request them to build a robots, or an easier way for integration with the other tools, like ITSM tools."
"In-place and OS upgrades can be improved."
"The remote software installation could be better."
"The deployment has room for improvement and can be more streamlined."
"I remember doing restarts a few times. So, making sure that it is rock solid from an executable perspective is important."
"The self-service application seems to need some work to replace the client UI. There are a lot of pop-ups if you use a baseline as the object that you're setting to a workstation. Unless you're using web UI, the message is not customizable in the user notification."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing costs have been great for us... My advice to others who are evaluating or thinking of implementing Automox is to give it a shot. If a free trial is still available, definitely use it, because it makes life a lot easier."
"There are no additional costs in addition to the extended licensing fees with Automox. You get your support and your per endpoint license with what you purchased."
"For all these software tools, it is usually a subscription model. There is a monthly charge that we need to pass along to our clients because we are doing all this for their benefit. It is only a couple of bucks a month per computer, and that is a low enough price point where our clients, without exception, have accepted it, and said, "This is great. We will pay that. It sounds like a worthwhile thing.""
"We are on the premium licensing, which is the one that has the API capability that we use."
"We're doing it annually directly through Automox. It is per endpoint. It is $2 and some change per endpoint, but I believe the cost is right around $28,000. Everything is covered in this fee."
"The product is a great value."
"Automox just charges us a set amount per user, per month, for using the product. That is very important to us. Because it's a cloud-native solution, you're saving on the cost of hosting an on-premises solution on your servers."
"The cost is very reasonable compared to the competition."
"When purchasing, buying with other IBM tools provided us with a very good discount in pricing."
"I can estimate the reduced cost of servers maintenance to approximatively $500,000."
"You are charged per server and per workstation when using BigFix. ManageEngine is a lot cheaper than BigFix. There are some additional costs, such as support."
"The price is reasonable, but our customers find it expensive."
"You get what we call the Platform Edition, which you get for free. The patch service is maybe $0.50 per workstation per month. Then there's the basic server cost, which is about $1.50 per server per month. You also get into Lifecycle which does power management, OSD remote control, and those types of things, and that might be about 10 times the price - which works out to about $13 per server and, maybe $5 per workstation per month."
"So, the pricing is slightly more expensive than the others. I have to keep buying licenses every time I add a new device."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"The price is very fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
51%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Automox?
It's easy to deploy agents to endpoints.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Automox?
We do pay a monthly licensing fee. I'd rate the pricing as average. It's not cheap yet not too expensive. You can also pay for more support if you require them to provide consultancy services.
What needs improvement with Automox?
They need to improve the automation features. It could be more stable.
What do you like most about BigFix?
The most valuable features of the solution are Windows patching and the hardware and software inventory.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
The pricing is competitive, but not the most competitive.
What needs improvement with BigFix?
BigFix could improve its asset management capabilities to discover assets, including hardware. More improvements could be made in asset management.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Automox vs. BigFix and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.