Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BigFix vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint 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

BigFix
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (6th), Patch Management (2nd), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
197
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of BigFix is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 10.4%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
John Rallo - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers excellent visibility into vulnerabilities and the attack surface itself
Attack surface reduction and limiting attack surface vectors are valuable features. It's helpful to isolate specific devices and get super granular with the features they offer. The visibility into the attack surface is good. It gets highly granular. I don't work on that side, but the people who do tell me they get more visibility.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The BigFix features that have proven most effective include inventory, software delivery, software distribution, software catalog, and both software and hardware management."
"BigFix helped us to identify the compliance of devices and has also improved the way that we manage our software inventory for reporting to vendors."
"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."
"I recommend BigFix to others."
"What I like most is that it is a powerful solution."
"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 technical support for BigFix is really amazing."
"I’ve found patching to be the most valuable feature of the solution."
"It is a very advanced system based on AI. It has a very large database of places or sites on the internet where you should not go. It is continuously online."
"The most important and the most relevant features of Defender for Endpoint are the malware and ransomware protection."
"The stability keeps getting better and better."
"It doesn't cause the slowness of the system, which is one of the reasons why I like it."
"Defender is stable. The performance is good."
"The best feature is the fact that for certain mobiles you can control your corporate profiles versus your personal profiles. That is amazingly important. Apple just supported the separation of corporate and personal profiles, whereas Android has been doing that for quite some time... Because Android supports that, if an Android phone is lost or stolen, I can wipe out all the corporate-related information from that phone and not touch the personal side. I can separate the apps and I can separate the ability to cut and paste between apps."
"Investigators can trace back to find the root cause."
"You can query and access useful information from logs and events, which is powerful and efficient."
 

Cons

"It can be improved speed-wise. They can make it a little bit light. If you do any query for servers in bulk, it can take some time. Similarly, creating a job can take some time."
"I want to see a solution for being able to deploy automated software to a Mac running OS X 10.13, something that's going to deal with kernel exceptions and answering prompts for user permissions for data folders and whatnot. They need to really streamline and automate the Mac software deployment."
"Implementing a business solution with BigFix has some issues, primarily concerning the time required for distribution to clients if there are too many."
"BigFix could improve its asset management capabilities to discover assets, including hardware."
"I would like to see different types of reporting and the ability to integrate closer with the cloud."
"In order to derive maximum benefit from BigFix, it is essential that we configure all of its features and implement them effectively. If the automation could be improved we would be able to mitigate the risks associated with zero-day threats."
"The product lacks AI, ML, and IIT."
"The solution should have some kind of a local caching methodology, where the patches can be taken locally into a localized relay server, and from there, the patch can be applied, so that there is not much usage of the network required."
"I would like to see better integration with their other security products to give better visibility from a higher level."
"It can be more secure."
"The major area for improvement is the integration with a managed service provider."
"With the XDR dashboard, when you're doing an investigation and you're drilling down to obtain further details it tends to open many different tabs that take you away from your main tabs. You can end up having 10 tabs open for one investigation. This is another area for improvement because you can end up getting lost in the multiple tabs. Therefore, the central console can be improved so that it does not take you to several different pages for each investigation."
"The profiling method currently in use is not very user-friendly and has ample scope for improvement."
"The deployment of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Windows 10 is not quite so straightforward. This could be made easier."
"One thing that was lacking in Defender was web filtering. Its web filtering wasn't as comprehensive. Sophos was a little bit better than Defender for blocking URLs or installing programs."
"Localization is always a challenge, especially with new products you typically want. Solutions are designed to be deployed where the most licenses are being consumed, such as in the United States. They focus on US products, devices, and networks. Specialized deployments for other countries would allow for a smoother experience in transition."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When purchasing, buying with other IBM tools provided us with a very good discount in pricing."
"The price is very fair."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"The price of BigFix could be lower. However, I am always seeking a lower price."
"It is too costly. It is one of the best tools, but because of pricing, not all clients support it. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license."
"I can estimate the reduced cost of servers maintenance to approximatively $500,000."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing one out of ten."
"The solution comes free with Microsoft Windows 10."
"The price was a problem for me three years ago, but they improved their E3, E5, and a la carte licensing. In other words, you have to get all of E5. That used to be a problem because you had E3, Defender, and guardrails, but you needed an E5 license to get the management suite and the analytics. It's more flexible now. You can switch from a la carte to the entire suite when it starts to make sense. It's becoming more economically competitive to go that route."
"The nice thing about Defender and Sentinel is that the cost is based on the data logs that you ingest from the Defender endpoints and data connectors. I don't have to buy a 25- or 50- or 1,000-user or enterprise license. I can buy one license at a time."
"You just pay Windows 10 prices, then you have antivirus software. As a price comparison, Defender's costs are very low."
"There is not a license required for this particular solution."
"For me, the pricing is very good, but for management it's very expensive. Other solutions are less expensive. But when I present all the information and all the reports they say, "Well, it's expensive, but the cost-benefit is very good.""
"AV solutions are pretty expensive because they are necessary, not just for protection, but many businesses need them to comply with regulatory bodies and receive accreditation. We recently purchased an E5 license, which gives us access to the entire Microsoft suite. I would say the pricing is competitive; most tools of this kind are similarly priced. There are minor differences between the competitors, but they aren't spectacularly different. Defender for Endpoint makes sense because all our solutions are in the same place, paid for with a single license. The subscription price is around £50 per user per month, though it may have increased slightly."
"This solution is part of an enterprise license we have."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) solutions are best for your needs.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
13%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
While performing integration, we face many issues with IBM solution. We need detailed information about those issues that can help users to mitigate them. The problem was related to the hardware co...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
 

Also Known As

Tivoli Endpoint Manager
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.