We performed a comparison between BigFix and SaltStack based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The ability to block and erase remote devices is valuable to us, especially when those devices are lost."
"It is a stable solution."
"It is very easy to use. It has a very easy interface."
"I believe that the solution is actually in Gartner's top quadrant at the moment for mobile device management."
"The biggest thing for us is enforcing logins only from devices that are managed by Intune."
"This product works very well for companies already using the full Microsoft suite."
"If the product works, remote access will be a benefit. To this point we have not had reason to have confidence in achieving that access."
"One of the main features of the solution is it allows the management of many devices in different ways."
"It's enabled us to have a highly successful endpoint patching program for the past decade. It's been enormously successful there. It's also become a core part of many of our business processes, from compliance monitoring of endpoints, encryption management, key escrow, and local administrator password escrow. It's built into our inventory. It's very much everywhere."
"It has plugins development options, which are great."
"The most valuable feature is the patching."
"BigFix has drastically reduced the maintenance window period to patch and reboot servers."
"Being able to intelligently create reports, gather data, export CSVs and give that to the leadership of some of the client groups that my team supports has helped my organization."
"We found the implementation partner to be very supportive in terms of explaining and training the in-house resources and deploying the solution."
"Having higher visibility on patching level, on patching successful, and non-successful has been a way that BigFix has improved my organization. Also, the ability to customize the content to do what we need it to do is very powerful and very flexible for us. Finally, in the area of custom interfaces like REST API really gives us the ability to provide for our external customers."
"The most valuable feature of BigFix is the software deployment."
"It is a highly stable solution."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack."
"I want to build automation that is intelligent, part of the fabric of our environment, and is somewhat self-sustaining. I think SaltStack can help me do this."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."
"SaltStack has given us the ability to deal with systems at scale and rectify issues at scale."
"The UI is not user-friendly and has room for improvement."
"The reports that are generated aren't so great. They don't give a lot of meaning so far, but that could be down to user knowledge than the actual reporting side of things. I'm not a big user of it, but I was a bigger user of MaaS360, and we used to be able to run weekly and monthly reports. In the case of any deviations. we'd get a warning immediately. That's not so easy to do or to get in place for Intune. This could be just a user issue, but when I compare both, that's the only thing that's lacking for me."
"Some enrollment features could be improved."
"It would help if administrators could pinpoint the exact location of a stolen device to help law enforcement retrieve it and apprehend the suspect."
"I have a lot of Apple products in my environment. It would be nice to have an improved integration of Apple products with Microsoft Intune without Jam."
"Microsoft Intune could enhance its patch management for various devices, ensuring regular updates and tracking of device privileges."
"A new Intune feature allows application packaging, but it incurs additional licensing costs for a significant number of applications."
"There is room for improvement in integration and security as well."
"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."
"There is no support for patch management on SLES on IBM pSeries (only the Intel platform is supported)."
"The product should become cloud-based. Also, the peer nesting ability of the product is a little backward."
"The reporting and dashboard parts have room for improvement."
"Sometimes there is a lag time for our users."
"I'd definitely like to see additional feature parody in the web UI versus the console. There are certain things that you can only do in the console and they're very cumbersome to do, like secure parameters, for example. That's definitely something that has a wide degree of utility but it needs to be easier to surface. At this particular juncture between the transition, between the legacy console and the web UI, it's hard to justify dealing with the cumbersome aspects of the legacy console when theoretically everything's been through the web UI."
"The product is quite buggy and complicated to use."
"We're a partner, so we deliver technical support to customers. When we need to talk to the product support, traditionally, with the product over the last five years, I would not say support has been supportive. I hope that changes."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"It is difficult to set up."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
"A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated."
"Web UI."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
BigFix is ranked 5th in Configuration Management with 91 reviews while SaltStack is ranked 14th in Configuration Management with 33 reviews. BigFix is rated 8.6, while SaltStack is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of BigFix writes "Very stable and easy to deploy with excellent patch compliance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SaltStack writes "Orchestration tool that powers automation of processes with the click of a button". BigFix is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, Microsoft Windows Server Update Services, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Tanium and ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus, whereas SaltStack is most compared with VMware Aria Automation, Microsoft Configuration Manager, HashiCorp Terraform, Red Hat Satellite and Automic Workload Automation. See our BigFix vs. SaltStack report.
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