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BMC Helix Client Management vs BigFix comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
BigFix
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (8th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (22nd), Patch Management (8th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (11th), Autonomous Endpoint Management (6th)
BMC Helix Client Management
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Device Management (MDM) (11th), Endpoint Compliance (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BigFix1.9%
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.5%
CrowdStrike Falcon5.6%
Other86.0%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
Mobile Device Management (MDM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC Helix Client Management4.4%
Jamf Pro11.3%
NinjaOne6.3%
Other78.0%
Mobile Device Management (MDM)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
InderjeetSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
End-to-end automation has simplified patching and software deployment across thousands of servers
There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement. When an action is initiated through the patch policy, it appears on the console but arrives in chunks. When targeting hundreds of servers from the patch policy, the actions come in chunks such as ten out of six, ten out of nine, or ten out of fifteen. This fragmented approach creates a significant challenge for the patching team to monitor the action status. I would recommend that the development team provide a single action or one to two actions instead of multiple actions requiring individual monitoring. A broad status update could be provided to the client indicating the overall progress of the patch policy implementation rather than requiring monitoring of every individual action. This would reduce the bandwidth required by the team to track multiple actions on the console.
Sagar Talreja - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. IT Technical Consultant at Fusion Business Solutions (UK) Ltd
A tool that offers great functionalities to manage reboot and patching
Right now, I don't have anything to say about which areas in BMC Client Management need improvement. The solution does not offer the functionality of remote access to users. From an improvement perspective, it would be great if a remote access functionality was added to BMC Client Management. I want something similar to Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) in BMC Client Management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Traps is quite a stable product. Once it was properly deployed and configured, you have nothing to be worried about."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is easy to use and does not consume a lot of hardware resources."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks saves time in various ways, although the user interface is fairly standard."
"We can visualize and control the activities in the environment from anywhere."
"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."
"Cortex is the best tool for endpoint detection, and I have used it to verify hashes or domains to identify malicious activity, trigger playbooks that automate and gather endpoint logs, block malicious processes, and update incident tickets, showcasing end-to-end processes with automation in investigation and reducing the analysis workflow."
"Once you become familiar with it, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a more powerful tool and I would say that I prefer it over MDE because it is a stronger tool for me."
"Cortex XDR is a simple platform that's easy for administrators and users. You have a lot of flexibility to change or customize the features."
"We are able to use BigFix through API connections to automate and reduce resources and time. The product's been great for us. It's increased the security posture ten-fold and it's increased our visibility across our endpoints enormously."
"It's good for reporting hardware and software."
"The most valuable and essential features of BigFix are all of them, they are needed when serving the purpose of the desktop operation framework. We cannot run operations without patching or without having an appropriate mechanism for deploying software, et cetera. The features all serve their purpose for our use case."
"I would advise someone considering this product to go for it. It's easy to use, cheaper than the value, and there is tons and tons of support from the BigFix community. With almost every challenge we have someone who has encountered it, and you will have a solution right away."
"It's easy to use, not complicated."
"I like the inventory and life cycle management feature."
"BigFix has drastically reduced the maintenance window period to patch and reboot servers."
"It has saved us maybe millions in funds."
"One feature I like, that was especially valuable during the pandemic, is remote control. Remote control grants administrators and support personnel access to the laptops and PCs of employees (who might be working from home) in order to fix any issues that come up as and when they come up, even without having to wait for a support request."
"BMC Client Management is a stable solution and one of the best in the market. It allows me to manage all recipe endpoints, including iOS, Android, Linux, Unix, and Windows, all within the same solution."
"The inventory and patch management tools are very valuable."
"The solution provides multiple features in one place."
"BMC Client Management has helped us be able to patch our OS or any software to the latest version."
"One of our customers is a financial institution with more than 15,000 endpoints, and we use BMC Client Management to manage their regulatory compliance needs, manage the endpoints from a security perspective, and integrate it with service management as well."
"It's a scalable solution. We have deployed it for customers using 3000 nodes to those using 300,000 nodes."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its patching capabilities and the help it offers when it comes to use cases, like prompting for the reboot after a certain period of time."
 

Cons

"Enhancing UI simplicity and playbook flexibility are areas that could benefit from more low-code automation options for smoother integrations."
"Based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"Cortex XDR could improve its sales support team, including better commission structures and referral programs."
"Dashboards do not allow everyone to see what's happening."
"We have found that there are times Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks does not detect some of the viruses, we have to use another protection solution called Kaspersky."
"The installation should be easier and the Palo Alto pre-sales and sales teams should have more information on the product because they don't know what they are selling."
"The solution should force customers to integrate with network traffic to see the full benefits of XDR."
"There is a severe gap in functionality between Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For example all folder restriction settings are Windows only. Traps 5.0+ does not have SAML / LDAP integration."
"Web reports. The interface for web reports is still pretty basic, and really hasn't changed in the seven years that we've had the product, so that would be one thing that would be really nice."
"Dynamic messaging needs improvement because one of the things that we deal with a lot is the messaging when pushing releases out."
"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."
"For improvements, it would be good if BigFix supported more databases. Currently, it only supports DB2 and Microsoft SQL. Adding support for other databases like Oracle would be beneficial."
"The scalability of the web UI product doesn't scale to the size that we need for our implementation so it needs to expand."
"I would like better support on the backend."
"They need better integration."
"The deployment has room for improvement and can be more streamlined."
"BMC Client Management could improve in the area of integration."
"The on-premises version of BMC Client Management has powerful remote control functionality and decent compliance features, but these features both rely on the discovery tool in order to gain a complete set of insights about the endpoint's environment. Now, BMC's discovery solution depends on having an agent installed in each endpoint and sometimes the agent doesn't work properly, making it difficult to get an accurate understanding of the environment (including special topologies) even with BMC's discovery tool."
"It would be good if BMC Client Management can perform vulnerability assessment scanning at the endpoint on its own and mitigate that. Then, we wouldn't have to rely on a third party VA tool. I would like to see this application move to being a web-based one."
"BMC Client Management supports only iOS devices. It would be good if they would support Android as well."
"In BMC Client Management, I would like to see more features for executing commands remotely. For example, with SAP, there isn't the capability to execute all the commands available in the console. The latest version includes more endpoints, but they do not cover everything the operations team needs. Additionally, I think improving the hierarchy for managing endpoints is crucial. Extending the endpoint capabilities would be highly beneficial."
"The solution needs to add whitelisting because many customers request it."
"The solution does not offer the functionality of remote access to users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Compared to CrowdStrike, Cortex XDR is an expensive solution."
"In terms of the cost Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very expensive because we are a Mexican company and when you translate dollars to pesos the cost is very high. The solution is very expensive for Mexican companies. I understand that they have international prices, but I do not think it offsets the price enough for many companies in countries, such as Mexico. The amount it is reduced is not a massive percentage."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"I would stay with the Managed Virtual Server license model, which is a 1-to-1 license per OS whether it is virtual or physical."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"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 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."
"The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license."
"The license is subscription-based."
"The cost is slightly high."
"To use BMC Client Management they charge annually per node."
"BMC Client Management is a high-priced solution, but given its performance and capabilities, I think it offers great value. I don't have the exact number for the yearly licensing costs. I believe there is an additional cost of around two hundred dollars."
"BMC Client Management is a very affordable solution. There is one main server license which I believe is around $1,000 per year, and then there is the license for the actual solution. With the solution license, you can opt for a suite license where you get access to all the features and benefits, or alternatively you can buy any of the five main components of the suite license individually."
"The solution is low cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Retailer
10%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business48
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise68
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
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,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
I rate the price for BigFix as medium, neither low nor high.
What needs improvement with BigFix?
There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement. When an action is initia...
What is your primary use case for BigFix?
My current use case involves being one of the products and one of the clients implementing this tool.
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Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
BMC Helix Client Management, Helix Client Management, BMC Fromdistance Mobile Device Management
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
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
Charter Manufacturing
Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, Microsoft, SentinelOne and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). Updated: October 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.