We performed a comparison between ManageEngine Endpoint Central and BigFix based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison results: Based on the parameters we compared, BigFix comes out ahead of ManageEngine Endpoint Central. While both solutions offer useful patch management and endpoint protection features, ManageEngine Endpoint’s lack of support for different operating systems, and the fact that not all of its features come in the same box, leave room for improvement.
"Autopilot is a great feature. Most users are looking for a zero-touch deployment."
"It provides control over all mobile devices that are being connected to the corporate network."
"I like that it's very good and very simple. I found that we just needed to have a proper subscription for an Intune tenant, and from the subscription, if we have the right role assigned, like the global admin role or the owner role, we can use Microsoft cloud resources. With the help of that, we can do many things like setting up Microsoft Intune in the cloud to create our virtual machines. All these can be done, and the steps are very simple. I really liked it. I like features like Windows Auto-Enrollment. I like it very much because whenever you supply it to the end-user, it will be ready to use immediately. The end-user only needs to provide the user credentials, and then they are good to go. I also really like Cloud PC, which was recently launched on Azure."
"As the solution is a software as a service, the scalability is unlimited."
"The aspects I find most valuable are the managing the data and applications. I can also restrict the users to install any applications. I can also wipe the data if the phone was missplaced or stolen. These are the basics for me."
"Users can make screenshots, and devices only need the minimal version of iOS."
"The most valuable features are the ones that make sure that the deployment is of a standard operating system and the Zero Touch deployment, which is very useful. This allows users to have an out of box experience."
"One of the most valuable aspects of Microsoft Intune is its seamless integration with Azure Active Directory, offering capabilities akin to Group Policy Objects."
"We rely on BigFix as part of our consulting engagements. It's more efficient from a visibility and discovery standpoint on the initial phase, the consulting engagement. It also increases our efficiencies on the remediation phase of our engagements."
"In terms of vulnerability management, it gives tough competition by providing a single management console with multiple benefits."
"From a security standpoint, it allows us to make sure that we're not leaving ourselves vulnerable to exploits and things like that. That's the biggest advantage that we see to the product from a security standpoint."
"The use of fast query has been extremely valuable providing insight in real time of the endpoints."
"The patch management and the BigFix Inventory have been the most valuable features."
"The architecture for patching and the 100% correct reporting makes BigFix stand apart from other solutions."
"BigFix has drastically reduced the maintenance window period to patch and reboot servers."
"The most valuable feature is the patching."
"Has good functionality and is user-friendly."
"ManageEngine Desktop Central's most valuable features are remote desktop control and image management. We can send things out from the desk here, it is a very good tool for us."
"ManageEngine has improved my organization because right now we can actually monitor and find out which software products are installed on each desktop. We can then figure out which ones have to get patched and so forth."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the Patch Management."
"All of Desktop Central's features are valuable, especially its simplicity."
"The most important feature we found to be useful in the COVID situation is the secure connection, which gives the IT support staff the ability to seamlessly connect with the users remotely and in a secure way."
"ManageEngine Desktop Central is stable."
"The product works perfectly for patch management and software deployments."
"It would be better if I could integrate it with my core group policy. I would like to have a group policy in my current environment, which has strict control, but those things are still missing. Although it has maximum compliance and security, it's not available on-premise."
"It's only good for a Microsoft environment."
"Due to the abundance of features, there's a lot to organize, which makes managing and setting up the solution challenging. The setup is immense, and it would be good to see improvement in this area."
"There needs to be more support for Mac operating systems."
"There are a lot of small use cases where we realized that some technical solution was missing in Microsoft in comparison to other products. For example, it lacks something similar to sensing or location-based rules and configurations."
"Lacks the ability to deploy more ways of management, managing devices and processing the policies."
"They could also make it easier to use because there are some other products that may be easier to use in terms of the look and feel of the dashboard."
"Microsoft Intune has a latency response time issue. The latency has room for improvement."
"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 reporting and dashboard parts have room for improvement."
"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."
"I remember doing restarts a few times. So, making sure that it is rock solid from an executable perspective is important."
"There is no support for patch management on SLES on IBM pSeries (only the Intel platform is supported)."
"The only thing that I don't like about BigFix is that it does not support other devices such as printer firmware, router firmware, and things like that. I will be happy if I can control everything and get everything else in there, even if it is just a line item. They can do some enhancements to the Web UI. I am trying to get customers to be able to manage their environment by using Web UI, and it would be good if we can delete endpoints by using Web UI. We should also be able to generate Excel content or data tables from the Web UI without having to go to the console. It is small stuff, and it drives me crazy that I have to go to another console to do these things."
"The main shortcoming of BigFix was integration with vulnerability management. If you had a vulnerability in your software and BigFix on the endpoint, you needed integration with Qualys, Tenable, or another vulnerability management solution to fix that. It was like, "Okay, we can identify issues, and get that information back from the endpoint, but what are we doing about it?""
"BigFix is actually a little bit on the expensive side in Turkey because of the dollar's exchange rate in our currency."
"There is a slight delay in customer support, which is something that can be improved."
"The reports provided by the product are an area of concern where improvements are required. The visibility provided by the reports is not very attractive."
"We are looking for a complete solution for patch management with central management and the cloud which ManageEngine Endpoint Central does not provide."
"The product must provide more API integrations with different ERP tools."
"Their support channel could be better. They're an India-based company. They're based out of India. So, here in the States, support can be difficult when you're dealing with time zone requirements. A more global support channel would be a wise choice for them."
"Improvement of the chats on the web communication through the WAN would be helpful."
"Documentation could improve so we don't need to create the support requests first."
"There are no dynamic changes on web pages and it's lacking visually."
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BigFix is ranked 4th in Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) with 91 reviews while ManageEngine Endpoint Central is ranked 3rd in Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) with 60 reviews. BigFix is rated 8.6, while ManageEngine Endpoint Central 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 ManageEngine Endpoint Central writes "An in-depth and intuitive product with good cross-platform capabilities, but they should have a more global support channel". BigFix is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, Microsoft Windows Server Update Services, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Tanium, whereas ManageEngine Endpoint Central is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, VMware Workspace ONE, Jamf Pro, ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus and ManageEngine Mobile Device Manager Plus. See our BigFix vs. ManageEngine Endpoint Central report.
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We monitor all Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.