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DefectDojo vs Qualys Exposure Management comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 8, 2026

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

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (8th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
DefectDojo
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
55th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
DevSecOps (17th)
Qualys Exposure Management
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (5th), Configuration Management Databases (4th), Container Security (11th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DefectDojo is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys Exposure Management is 4.0%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys Exposure Management4.0%
Qualys TotalCloud1.2%
DefectDojo0.7%
Other94.1%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
reviewer2267097 - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration and Solution Architect at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Easy to use with efficient vulnerability reporting and team collaboration
Use case, so all the reports from GitLeaks, DefectDojo, GitLeaks or dependency check or Trivy, they make reports, and we send this report to DefectDojo to have CVMs, Central Vulnerability Management. DefectDojo is Central Vulnerability Management. If you have a dashboard to set, we have…
Ajay Paul - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Vulnerability management has prioritized high‑risk patching and simplified bulk system reporting
The primary issue is with the reporting functionality. Even though we fix vulnerabilities, the reports do not reflect the changes immediately. Sometimes we need to manually run a script to scan the systems before Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Management will update the scan results. The main issue is the reporting delay, and sometimes the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Management agent will not scan the system, which means we do not receive accurate reports in a timely manner. Additionally, there are many metrics for calculating vulnerabilities, such as the Qualys ID, severity scores, CVSS scores, and other metrics. The abundance of information can be confusing. These two aspects are the most significant negatives I have experienced with this tool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The scalability is good as well. I would rate it ten out of ten."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our organization by helping us save time and manage all assets and remediation, allowing us to achieve quarterly and half-yearly goals."
"One of the features I appreciate is the ability to generate daily reports without relying on anyone else."
"The best part I like is the on-demand scans."
"While automatic inventory detection upon connection is a helpful feature, a truly valuable capability would be assessing an environment's security posture against Azure and CIS best practices."
"The most valuable feature of Qualys TotalCloud is the visibility it provides."
"Qualys TotalCloud has improved our security posture."
"Qualys TotalCloud helps you not just to identify misconfigurations, but you can actually also fix issues."
"With the pipeline of detection and DefectDojo, we are able to see the real vulnerabilities, and we fix them."
"It's worth it, really, when you see the complete picture and see all the factors."
"Qualys help identifies the weakness in our critical infrastructure and provides guidelines how to address them."
"Tech support is helpful."
"Patch supersedence."
"Technical support is fantastic."
"The product's patch management is excellent for keeping our critical servers and third-party applications updated efficiently."
"Continuous monitoring is a crucial feature that we use more frequently."
"I like the automated report generation and vulnerability report generation."
 

Cons

"Two areas for improvement in Qualys TotalCloud are the speed of the public cloud platform and vulnerability detection."
"The areas in the solution that have room for improvement include the UI/UX design, which should be improved, and they should integrate more artificial intelligence into the product."
"With the growing integration of AI, I would like Qualys to enhance its service offerings to better accommodate AI-related risks."
"Qualys TotalCloud's increasing complexity, due to the development and deployment of multiple solutions, is making the GUI difficult to navigate."
"Enhancing clarity regarding its compliance capabilities would be beneficial, as the current scope is limited in geographic coverage."
"I sometimes have difficulty detecting or uninstalling certain versions of applications, which I have to do manually."
"We encountered challenges identifying the correct resource category for certain items, such as those in containers or storage."
"There is room for improvement in vulnerability scanning, particularly for PaaS environments. Currently, Qualys does not have full access to these instances, which limits its effectiveness."
"We need something to notify the team responsible for a product when vulnerabilities are found."
"Regarding improvement, compliance features haven't been utilized much."
"Certain integration factors between different options could be improved."
"Qualys doesn't have its own tool to deploy the agents all at once, so we need to use third-party tools such as BigFix or something else to deploy the agents, which is my main concern and should be fixed by the Qualys team."
"The support needs to improve a lot, their response is absolutely slow."
"The IT infrastructure, especially server administration, needs to be improved."
"In terms of improvement for the web application console, in the older version, things were more segregated and presented in a brief format."
"The customer support is very bad."
"Qualys could improve the inbuilt dashboards."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"Although Qualys TotalCloud is relatively expensive due to its unique automation features, its cost-effectiveness is rated an eight out of ten, with ten being the most costly."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."
"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"Its price seems higher compared to other tools, but it is worth it. If they could adjust the pricing and make it comparable with other tools, that would be great."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
Information not available
"There is a license for the use of this solution. We pay annually instead of monthly to receive a better discount on the price."
"Qualys is cheaper and more affordable than other solutions."
"We have an annual contract for Qualys VMDR. I believe it's for either two years or five years."
"Qualys VM is reasonably priced."
"The tool's pricing is expensive and I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"Qualys is a pay-as-you-go model, so there's flexibility to the pricing."
"In Nigerian Naira, we spend about roughly four to five million to use this solution and this is expensive compared to solutions like Nessus."
"It is more expensive than other products on the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise39
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise75
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?
We purchased Qualys TotalCloud for GCP and Azure as well. It is comparatively better than others regarding pricing. T...
What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
I am unsure about how Qualys TotalCloud can be improved. I do not have anything else to add about the needed improvem...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is telemetry, although I am unsure about the specifics. A quick specific examp...
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys VMDR?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that we can consider both time and money saved.
What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?
I haven't explored Qualys VMDR's vulnerability lifecycle automation yet. One of my analysts mentioned that qu...
What advice do you have for others considering Qualys VMDR?
I have some understanding about PeerSpot, and I have visited the website. PeerSpot is similar to TrustRadius. It take...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Qualys, Tenable and others in Vulnerability Management. Updated: October 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.