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Automox vs Qualys Patch Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 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 Patch Management
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (46th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (54th), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (18th)
Qualys Patch Management
Ranking in Patch Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
Revathi VeeraRaghavan - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a centralized platform for managing assets and vulnerabilities, enabling assessment, prioritization, and remediation
Qualys Patch Management system requires several improvements. Firstly, the inability to download asset patches and the lack of third-party application integration limit patch accessibility. Additionally, rollback options are unreliable, and pre-deployment patch testing is crucial. Reporting needs enhancement, particularly with group-based compliance percentages and clearer, VMDR-like reporting in the Patch Management module. Furthermore, detection speed should be improved, as patches are released 24 hours after QIDs are published. The user interface could be more functional, with dashboards for patch compliance visualization and simplified error code language. Finally, the Mac patch catalogue needs expansion, and automated workflows, policy enforcement, and testing procedures should be streamlined for seamless, user-independent operation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Its flexibility is most valuable."
"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."
"The fact that it's just one product that can patch multiple operating systems is really great."
"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."
"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."
"It's easy to deploy agents to endpoints."
"The most valuable feature in Patch Management is the Qualys query language for set-it-and-forget-it patching for our preapproved patches, and our preapproved schedules, That is extremely helpful compared to the old days of patching."
"Patch Management offers pre-action and post-action features, which provide the ability to execute scripts during the installation or uninstallation of software. This helps me make changes from Qualys itself."
"Qualys Patch Management significantly improved our patch rates by 80 percent, scanning for vulnerabilities every four hours via the Qualys agent."
"Qualys Patch Management offers valuable features like scheduling and on-demand patching, allowing us to conveniently push patches to our servers at designated times."
"Qualys Patch Management has reduced our organization's risk by almost 90 percent."
"The integration of Qualys Gateway Scanner is my favorite feature."
"Qualys allows us to automate and fix patches through the tool, achieving a compliance rate of over 95%."
"Qualys Patch Management offers excellent features, most notably the Qualys Gateway Service, which caches patches and distributes them to agents, minimizing bandwidth consumption."
 

Cons

"They need to improve the automation features."
"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."
"It should have integrated workstation access. So, there should be a remote desktop feature."
"The biggest area they need to fix, without a doubt, is the ability to copy and sync profiles and worklets between all of the organizations you manage, and the ability to have top-level user access control across all of the companies that you manage."
"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."
"We would like to see additional detailed reporting for Service providers like us. We had to build our own reports via their APIs to meet our needs."
"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."
"Qualys could improve its randomized download feature and provide more detailed information about patch failures, including the reason for failure."
"There is a limitation where Qualys may not always offer solutions for remediation, particularly for end-of-life or end-of-service applications."
"Some patches require OEM consent or must be released by OEM. For example, if an outdated version of a tool like Falcon is detected, Qualys flags it as a vulnerability, but cannot automate the patch update."
"Reporting needs enhancement, particularly with group-based compliance percentages and clearer, VMDR-like reporting in the Patch Management module."
"However, it would be good to have more widgets and AI-generated reports. I have not seen anything related to AI with Qualys."
"The user interface could be more functional, with dashboards for patch compliance visualization and simplified error code language."
"The availability of Qualys Patch Management needs to be improved."
"There are certain integration parts that could be improved. Sometimes, legacy operating systems are not supported by Qualys Patch Management, which is an issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is very reasonable compared to the competition."
"We are on the premium licensing, which is the one that has the API capability that we use."
"Its licensing for a year was nine grand. There was no additional fee."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 product is a great value."
"The pricing is fair and within our budget."
"Qualys Patch Management is expensive."
"Qualys Patch Management's pricing could be more competitive, as it presents a significant obstacle for many companies who find it unaffordable."
"The pricing is reasonable and competitive. We get many more features at the same price compared to other solutions such as Microsoft SCCM. It is worth the money considering the services and features it has. Their support team is also awesome."
"Pricing for Qualys Patch Management is moderate."
"It is affordable, but they should provide features as per the rate they are charging. We have a big infrastructure with about 80,000 licenses. We expect better support from the Qualys team. So, it is affordable, but more features should be there, and the support should be better."
"Qualys Patch Management offers a moderate price point, neither cheap nor expensive, considering its comprehensive functionality."
"Qualys is fairly priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys Patch Management?
Qualys Patch Management comes as part of a bundled package with several modules, making it a cost-effective deal for us. I cannot speak to the separate cost, as we have always used it as part of th...
What needs improvement with Qualys Patch Management?
Some patches require OEM consent or must be released by OEM. For example, if an outdated version of a tool like Falcon is detected, Qualys flags it as a vulnerability, but cannot automate the patch...
What is your primary use case for Qualys Patch Management?
Our primary use case for Qualys Patch Management is vulnerability remediation and running scripts. It helps us detect vulnerabilities in our environment and identify specific patches that are requi...
 

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Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Automox vs. Qualys Patch Management and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.