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Read 41 Snyk reviews
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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on May 22, 2022

We performed a comparison between Black Duck and Snyk based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: While some Black Duck reviewers report the initial setup to be straightforward, others feel that the setup can be complex. Snyk users say the initial setup is straightforward and easy.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their ease-of-use, stability, and scalability. Black Duck reviewers like its vulnerability scanning abilities but say its analytics need to improve. Snyk users say it integrates well, has a good interface, and significantly reduces vulnerabilities. A couple of Snyk users mention that they would like improved reporting visibility.
  • Pricing: Most Black Duck users feel it is an expensive product, whereas most Snyk users say it is reasonably priced.

  • ROI: Black Duck reviewers do not mention ROI. Snyk users report a significant ROI.
  • Service and Support: Some Black Duck users are satisfied with the support they receive, while others write that the support’s response time is slow. Snyk users report being very satisfied with the level of support they receive.

Comparison Results: Snyk is the clear winner in this comparison. It is easy to deploy, secure, and powerful. In addition, it has excellent customer support and an impressive ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Black Duck vs. Snyk Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The knowledge base and the management system are the most valuable features of Black Duck Hub. It has a very helpful management environment. They offer an editor where we can check the discovered license, which is retrieved from their knowledge base. They have a huge knowledge base build over the years. It gives you some possibilities, such as this license with possibility A could cause a vulnerability issue or a potential breach.""We accidentally use third-party library APIs, which may not be secure. Our technical team may not have the end time or expertise to figure it out. Black Duck helps us with that and saves us time.""It highlights what the developers have done, and it shows the impact from an intellectual property point of view.""Policy management is a valuable feature.""The installation is very easy.""The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the seamless integration to scan our Docker binary files, it provides us all open vulnerabilities, and it ensures a reference point from where it finds the vulnerability is up to date. For example, if there is any new vulnerability found, they are immediately available in the Black Duck. There is no delay in finding the vulnerabilities, they are called out in our code immediately.""The stability is okay.""The product enables other applications to be secure."

More Black Duck Pros →

"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""There are many valuable features. For example, the way the scanning feature works. The integration is cool because I can integrate it and I don't need to wait until the CACD, I can plug it in to our local ID, and there I can do the scanning. That is the part I like best.""The advantage of Snyk is that Snyk automatically creates a pull request for all the findings that match or are classified according to the policy that we create. So, once we review the PR within Snyk and we approve the PR, Snyk auto-fixes the issue, which is quite interesting and which isn't there in any other product out there. So, Snyk is a step ahead in this particular area.""The code scans on the source code itself were valuable.""It has an accurate database of vulnerabilities with a low amount of false positives.""It's very easy for developers to use. Onboarding was an easy process for all of the developers within the company. After a quick, half-an-hour to an hour session, they were fully using it on their own. It's very straightforward. Usability is definitely a 10 out of 10.""What is valuable about Snyk is its simplicity.""A main feature of Snyk is that when you go with SCA, you do get properly done security composition, also from the licensing and open-source parameters perspective. A lot of companies often use open-source libraries or frameworks in their code, which is a big security concern. Snyk deals with all the things and provides you with a proper report about whether any open-source code or framework that you are using is vulnerable. In that way, Snyk is very good as compared to other tools."

More Snyk Pros →

Cons
"It needs to be more user-friendly for developers and in general, to ensure compliance.""It can be cumbersome to use or invalidate open source software because there is a hold time to check requirements or common regulations to ensure compliance.""The documentation is quite scattered.""The scanner client is limited by the size of software it can handle.""Due to the fact that, with our software developer life cycle, we don't need to scan our source code every day or every week. For that reason, we find the cost is too high. We might only actually use it five to ten times a year, which makes it expensive.""They are giving a lot of APIs and Python scripts for certain functionalities, but instead of using APIs and Python scripts, they should provide these functionalities through the UI. Users should be able to customize and add more fields through the UI. Users should be able to add more fields and generate reports. Currently, they are not giving flexibility in the UI. They're providing a script that simply generates an Excel file or CSV file. There is no flexibility.""We have been having some issues with the latest releases where we are not able to scan our applications with the help of Black Duck.""The solution's pricing model and documentation areas of concern where improvement is needed."

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"We tried to integrate it into our software development environment but it went really badly. It took a lot of time and prevented the developers from using the IDE. Eventually, we didn't use it in the development area... I would like to see better integrations to help the developers get along better with the tool. And the plugin for the IDE is not so good. This is something we would like to have...""The documentation sometimes is not relevant. It does not cover the latest updates, scanning, and configurations. The documentation for some things is wrong and does not cover some configuration scannings for the multiple project settings.""The tool should provide more flexibility and guidance to help us fix the top vulnerabilities before we go into production.""The feature for automatic fixing of security breaches could be improved.""There are some new features that we would like to see added, e.g., more visibility into library usage for the code. Something along the lines where it's doing the identification of where vulnerabilities are used, etc. This would cause them to stand out in the market as a much different platform.""We were using Microsoft Docker images. It was reporting some vulnerabilities, but we were not able to figure out the fix for them. It was reporting some vulnerabilities in the Docker images given by Microsoft, which were out of our control. That was the only limitation. Otherwise, it was good.""Snyk's API and UI features could work better in terms of speed.""It would be helpful if we get a recommendation while doing the scan about the necessary things we need to implement after identifying the vulnerabilities."

More Snyk Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."
  • "The price is quite high because the behavior of the software during the scan is similar to competing products."
  • "The price is low. It's not an expensive solution."
  • "Black Duck is more suitable if you require a lot of licensing compliance. For smaller organizations, WhiteSource is better because its pricing policies are not really suitable for huge organizations."
  • "It is expensive."
  • "I rate the product's price one on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
  • "The pricing is a little high."
  • More Black Duck Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It's inexpensive and easy to license. It comes in standard package sizing, which is straightforward. This information is publicly found on their website."
  • "We do have some missing licenses issues, especially with non-SPDX compliant one, but we expect this to be fixed soon"
  • "You can get a good deal with Snyk for pricing. It's a little expensive, but it is worth it."
  • "Their licensing model is fairly robust and scalable for our needs. I believe we have reached a reasonable agreement on the licensing to enable hundreds of developers to participate in this product offering. The solution is very tailored towards developers and its licensing model works well for us."
  • "The price is good. Snyk had a good price compared to the competition, who had higher pricing than them. Also, their licensing and billing are clear."
  • "It's good value. That's the primary thing. It's not cheap-cheap, but it's good value."
  • "With Snyk, you get what you pay for. It is not a cheap solution, but you get a comprehensiveness and level of coverage that is very good. The dollars in the security budget only go so far. If I can maximize my value and be able to have some funds left over for other initiatives, I want to do that. That is what drives me to continue to say, "What's out there in the market? Snyk's expensive, but it's good. Is there something as good, but more affordable?" Ultimately, I find we could go cheaper, but we would lose the completeness of vision or scope. I am not willing to do that because Snyk does provide a pretty important benefit for us."
  • "Snyk is a premium-priced product, so it's kind of expensive. The big con that I find frustrating is when a company charges extra for single sign-on (SSO) into their SaaS app. Snyk is one of the few that I'm willing to pay that add-on charge, but generally I disqualify products that charge an extra fee to do integrated authentication to our identity provider, like Okta or some other SSO. That is a big negative. We had to pay extra for that. That little annoyance aside, it is expensive. You get a lot out of it, but you're paying for that premium."
  • More Snyk Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license… more »
    Top Answer:The UI is the solution's most valuable feature since it allows for easy pipeline integration.
    Top Answer:I rate the product's price one on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price.
    Top Answer:Snyk does a great job identifying and reducing vulnerabilities. This solution is fully automated and monitors 24/7 to find any issues reported on the internet. It will store dependencies that you are… more »
    Top Answer:The solution's Open Source feature gives us notifications and suggestions regarding how to address vulnerabilities.
    Top Answer:The solution's integration with JFrog Artifactory could be improved.
    Ranking
    Views
    15,246
    Comparisons
    10,629
    Reviews
    7
    Average Words per Review
    373
    Rating
    8.1
    Views
    12,640
    Comparisons
    8,769
    Reviews
    17
    Average Words per Review
    562
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    SonarQube logo
    Compared 18% of the time.
    Veracode logo
    Compared 6% of the time.
    GitHub Advanced Security logo
    Compared 5% of the time.
    Checkmarx logo
    Compared 5% of the time.
    Also Known As
    Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
    Learn More
    Overview

    Black Duck is a comprehensive solution for managing security, license compliance, and code quality risks that come from the use of open source in applications and containers. Named a leader in software composition analysis (SCA) by Forrester, Black Duck gives you unmatched visibility into third-party code, enabling you to control it across your software supply chain and throughout the application life cycle.

    Snyk is a user-friendly security solution that enables users to safely develop and use open source code. Users can create automatic scans that allow them to keep a close eye on their code and prevent bad actors from exploiting vulnerabilities. This enables users to find and remove vulnerabilities soon after they appear.

    Benefits of Snyk

    Some of the benefits of using Snyk include:

    • Conserves resources: Snyk easily integrates with other security solutions and uses their security features to ensure that the work that users are doing is completely secure. These integrations allow them to protect themselves without pulling resources from their continued integration or continued delivery workflows. Resources can be conserved for areas of the greatest need.
    • Highly flexible: Snyk enables users to customize the system’s security automation features to meet their needs. Users can guarantee that the automation performs the functions that are most essential for their current project. Additionally, users are able to maintain platform governance consistency across their system.
    • Keeps users ahead of emerging threats. Snyk employs a database of threats that help it detect and keep track of potential issues. This database is constantly being updated to reflect the changes that take place in the realm of cybersecurity. It also uses machine learning. Users are prepared to deal with new issues as they arise.
    • Automatically scans projects for threats. Snyk’s command-line interface enables users to schedule the solution to run automatic scans of their projects. Time and manpower can be conserved for the areas of greatest need without sacrificing security.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Snyk is a security platform for developers that stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to integrate with other security solutions and important insights that it can enable users to discover. Snyk enables users to combine its already existing security features with those of other solutions to create far more robust and flexible layers of security than what it can supply on its own. It gives users the ability to dig into the security issues that they may experience. Users are given a clear view of the root causes of these problems. This equips them to address the problem and prevent similar issues in the future.

    Cameron G., a security software engineer at a tech company, writes, “The most valuable features are their GitLab and JIRA integrations.The GitLab integration lets us pull projects in pretty easily, so that it's pretty minimal for developers to get it set up. Using the JIRA integration, it's also pretty easy to get the information that is generated, as a result of that GitLab integration, back to our teams in a non-intrusive way and in a workflow that we are already using. Snyk is something of a bridge that we use; we get our projects into it and then get the information out of it. Those two integrations are crucial for us to be able to do that pretty simply.”

    Sean M., the chief information security officer of a technology vendor, writes, "From the software composition analysis perspective, it first makes sure that we understand what is happening from a third-party perspective for the particular product that we use. This is very difficult when you are building software and incorporating dependencies from other libraries, because those dependencies have dependencies and that chain of dependencies can go pretty deep. There could be a vulnerability in something that is seven layers deep, and it would be very difficult to understand that is even affecting us. Therefore, Snyk provides fantastic visibility to know, "Yes, we have a problem. Here is where it ultimately comes from." It may not be with what we're incorporating, but something much deeper than that."

    Sample Customers
    Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, Noser Engineering AG, ClickFox, Dynatrace, CopperLeaf
    StartApp, Segment, Skyscanner, DigitalOcean, Comic Relief
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company60%
    Computer Software Company20%
    Financial Services Firm20%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Manufacturing Company15%
    Healthcare Company4%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company39%
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Individual & Family Service6%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Insurance Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Large Enterprise69%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise75%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise34%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Black Duck vs. Snyk
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck vs. Snyk and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Black Duck is ranked 1st in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) with 16 reviews while Snyk is ranked 2nd in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) with 41 reviews. Black Duck is rated 7.8, while Snyk is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Black Duck writes "Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Snyk writes "Performs software composition analysis (SCA) similar to other expensive tools". Black Duck is most compared with Fortify Static Code Analyzer, JFrog Xray, Mend.io, FOSSA and Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis, whereas Snyk is most compared with SonarQube, Fortify Static Code Analyzer, Veracode, GitHub Advanced Security and Checkmarx. See our Black Duck vs. Snyk report.

    See our list of best Software Composition Analysis (SCA) vendors.

    We monitor all Software Composition Analysis (SCA) 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.