We performed a comparison between Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis and Sonatype Lifecycle based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Software Composition Analysis (SCA) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The integration part is easy...It's a stable solution right now."
"It is very easy and user friendly. It never requires any kind of technical support. You can do everything on your own."
"The product is stable and scalable."
"The customer service and support were good."
"The tool's visual scan analysis shows me all the libraries' vulnerabilities and license types. It helps identify the most complex issues with licenses. It provides good visibility. SCA shows me all libraries that are vulnerable and the extent of their vulnerability."
"The most valuable feature of Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is the comprehensive security scan."
"One of the strong points of this solution is that it allows you to incorporate it into a CICB pipeline. It has the ability to do incremental scans. If you scan a very large application, it might take two hours to do the initial scan. The subsequent scans, as people are making changes to the app, scan the Delta and are very fast. That's a really nice implementation. The way they have incorporated the functionality of the incremental scans is something to be aware of. It is quite good. It has been very solid. We haven't really had any issues, and it does what it advertises to do very nicely."
"What's most valuable in Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is its ability to identify vulnerabilities in open-source components, especially if some critical issues exist."
"It's helped us free up staff time."
"What's really nice about that is it shows a graph of all the versions for that particular component, and it marks out the ones that have a vulnerability and the ones that don't have a vulnerability."
"Fortify integrates with various development environments and tools, such as IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) and CI/CD pipelines."
"With the plugin for our IDE that Sonatype provides, we can check whether a library has security, quality, or licensing issues very easily. Which is nice because Googling for this stuff can be a bit cumbersome. By checking it before code is even committed, we save ourselves from getting notifications."
"Its engine itself is most valuable in terms of the way it calculates and decides whether a security vulnerability exists or not. That's the most important thing. Its security is also pretty good, and its listing about the severities is also good."
"The value I get from IQ Server is that I get information on real business risks. Is something compliant, are we using the proper license?"
"The policy engine is really cool. It allows you to set different types of policy violations, things such as the age of the component and the quality: Is it something that's being maintained? Those are all really great in helping get ahead of problems before they arise. You might otherwise end up with a library that's end-of-life and is not going to get any more fixes."
"The most important features of the Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle are the vulnerability reports."
"API security is an area with shortcomings that needs improvement."
"The quality of technical support has decreased over time, and it is not as good as it used to be."
"Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis should improve dynamic analysis."
"It can have better licensing models."
"Some of the recommendations provided by the product are generic. Even if the recommendations provided by the product are of low level, the appropriate ones can help users deal with vulnerabilities."
"Personally, I currently use it as a standalone tool without integrating it with other systems, and it meets my needs adequately. As a suggestion, I request on considering to add a "what if" feature to the application. Currently, when the tool identifies issues and suggests updates, if I want to explore different scenarios, I need to prepare another file, turn it into a ZIP, and run the analysis again. It would be more convenient if there was a "what if" option in the GUI. This feature could simulate a run, allowing me to quickly check the impact of changing one or more files or versions without the need for a full rerun."
"I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten."
"In terms of areas for improvement, what could be improved in Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is pricing because customers always compare the pricing among secure DevOps solutions in the market. Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis has a lot of competitors yet its features aren't much different. Pricing is the first thing customers consider, and from a partner perspective, if you can offer affordable pricing to your customers, it's more likely you'll have a winning deal. The performance of Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis also needs improvement because sometimes, it's slow, and in particular, scanning could take several hours."
"The GUI is simple, so it's easy to use. It started as great to use, but for larger scale companies, it also comes with some limitations. This is why we tried to move to more of an API approach. So, the GUI could use some improvements potentially."
"One area of improvement, about which I have spoken to the Sonatype architect a while ago, is related to the installation. We still have an installation on Linux machines. The installation should move to EKS or Kubernetes so that we can do rollover updates, and we don't have to take the service down. My primary focus is to have at least triple line availability of my tools, which gives me a very small window to update my tools, including IQ. Not having them on Kubernetes means that every time we are performing an upgrade, there is downtime. It impacts the 0.1% allocated downtime that we are allowed to have, which becomes a challenge. So, if there is Kubernetes installation, it would be much easier. That's one thing that definitely needs to be improved."
"It would be helpful if it had a more detailed view of what has been quarantined, for people who don't have Lifecycle licenses. Other than that, it's pretty good."
"Another feature they could use is more languages. Sonatype has been mainly a Java shop because they look after Maven Central... But we've slowly been branching out to different languages. They don't cover all of them, and those that they do cover are not as in-depth as we would like them to be."
"We had some issues, and I think we might still have some issues, where the Sonatype Nexus Repository has integrations with IQ and SonarQube. We're getting some errors on the UI, so we've had Sonatype look into that a little bit."
"One thing that I would like to give feedback on is to scan the binary code. It's very difficult to find. It's under organization and policies where there are action buttons that are not very obvious. I think for people who are using it and are not integrated into it, it is not easy to find the button to load the binary and do the scan. This is if there is no existing, continuous integration process, which I believe most people have, but some users don't have this at the moment. This is the most important function of the Nexus IQ, so I expect it should be right on the dashboard where you can apply your binary and do a quick scan. Right now, it's hidden inside organization and policies. If you select the organization, then you can see in the top corner that there is a manual action which you can approve. There are multiple steps to reach that important function that we need. When we were initially looking at the dashboard, we looked for it and couldn't find it. So, we called our coworker who set up the server and they told us it's not on the dashboard."
"It's the right kind of tool and going in the right direction, but it really needs to be more code-driven and oriented to be scaled at the developer level."
"The user interface needs to be improved. It is slow for us. We use Nexus IQ mostly via APIs. We don't use the interface that much, but when we use it, certain areas are just unresponsive or very slow to load. So, performance-wise, the UI is not fast enough for us, but we don't use it that much anyway."
More Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis Pricing and Cost Advice →
Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is ranked 8th in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) with 12 reviews while Sonatype Lifecycle is ranked 5th in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) with 42 reviews. Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is rated 9.2, while Sonatype Lifecycle is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis writes "Comprehensive security scan, helpful support, and high availability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sonatype Lifecycle writes "Seamless to integrate and identify vulnerabilities and frees up staff time". Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is most compared with Black Duck, JFrog Xray, Semgrep Supply Chain and Fortify Static Code Analyzer, whereas Sonatype Lifecycle is most compared with SonarQube, Black Duck, Fortify Static Code Analyzer, GitLab and Checkmarx One. See our Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis vs. Sonatype Lifecycle 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.