Automox is an endpoint management solution used to keep desktops, laptops, and servers updated and ready for users anywhere in the world. Using automation, IT can fix critical vulnerabilities and boost user productivity.
$1
per month per endpoint
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Terraform from HashiCorp is a cloud infrastructure automation tool that enables users to create, change, and improve production infrastructure, and it allows infrastructure to be expressed as code. It codifies APIs into declarative configuration files that can be shared amongst team members, treated as code, edited, reviewed, and versioned. It is available Open Source, and via Cloud and Self-Hosted editions.
$0
Pricing
Automox
HashiCorp Terraform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Open Source
$0
Team & Governance
$20/user
per user/per month
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Automox
HashiCorp Terraform
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Automox can patch macOS, Windows, and Linux endpoints with PatchOS, an offering at $1 per endpoint/ month with an annual commitment.
The Automate Essentials or Automate Enterprise packages are for scaling IT automation, endpoint configuration, and software updates.
Modules are available with Automox Assist, a one-on-one remote endpoint control and assistance for helpdesk technicians.
Smaller organisations such as ourselves, who have outgrown their MSP but still need to retain control of their system and have visibility of the estate. The tool enables us to have real-time visibility and deploy or remediate as needed. We have also purchased Rapid7, which integrates natively into the product, making it a more powerful tool moving forward.
Anything that needs to be repeated en masse. Terraform is great at taking a template and have it be repeated across your estate. You can dynamically change the assets they're generating depending on certain variables. Which means though templated assets will all be similar, they're allowed to have unique properties about them. For example flattening JSON into tabular data and ensuring the flattening code is unique to the file's schema.
Server patching orchestration. There is no way to patch and reboot systems in order of importance, such as database servers before application servers.
Worklets for patching .net core and similar.
Worklets for removing unwanted Java installs or other unwanted software.
Integration with Tenable Vulnerability Management.
AI script development should be included at no additional cost; GPT or Gemini can be used instead for free and pasted into Automox. Why charge when others are free?
Official worklets are slow to be added or updated.
The language itself is a bit unusual and this makes it hard for new users to get onboarded into the codebase. While it's improving with later releases, basic concepts like "map an array of options into a set of configurations" or "apply this logic if a variable is specified" are possible but unnecessarily cumbersome.
The 'Terraform Plan' operation could be substantially more sophisticated. There are many situations where a Terraform file could never work but successfully passes the 'plan' phase only to fail during the 'apply' phase.
Environment migrations could be smoother. Renaming/refactoring files is a challenge because of the need to use 'Terraform mv' commands, etc.
This is a software that just works. Once configured its a set and forget kind of tool that keeps things up to date and alerts me if something is wrong. I was able to work through an expansion project to deploy an additional 500 devices in almost no time and create a robust self-patching environment.
It truly functions like a single pane of glass. While our use case is for EC2 instances in AWS, it can manage endpoints across all clouds, or even deployed hardware (laptops). We do manage instances in multiple AWS accounts and there is no set up required between orgs. This accomplishes our needs for real time tracking, and historical reporting for all of our in scope resources.
I love Terraform and I think it has done some great things for people that are working to automate their provisioning processes and also for those that are in the process of moving to the cloud or managing cloud resources. There are some quirks to HCL that take a little bit of getting used to and give picking up Terraform a little bit of a learning curve, thus the rating
Terraform's performance is quite amazing when it comes to deployment of resources in AWS. Of course, the deployment times depend on various parameters like the number of resources to deploy and different regions to deploy. Terraform cannot control that. The only minor drawback probably shows up when a terraform job is terminated mid way. Then in many cases, time-consuming manual cleanup is required.
1. Simplicity and Ease of Use 2. Cross-Platform Support 3. Powerful Automation with Worklets 4. Real-Time Visibility and Control 5. Fast and Reliable Cloud-Based Updates 6. Strong Security Focus
I have yet to have an opportunity to reach out directly to HashiCorp for support on Terraform. However, I have spent a great deal of time considering their documentation as I use the tool. This opinion is based solely on that. I find the Terraform documentation to have great breadth but lacking in depth in many areas. I appreciate that all of the tool's resources have an entry in the docs but often the examples are lacking. Often, the examples provided are very basic and prompt additional exploration. Also, the links in the documentation often link back to the same page where one might expect to be linked to a different source with additional information.
Implementing Automox successfully starts with a clear strategy for organizing and grouping devices based on operating systems, environments, or business criticality. This ensures that patching and configuration policies can be applied with precision. A phased rollout approach is essential—beginning with a pilot group allows teams to test patching schedules, reboot behaviors, and custom Worklets before scaling across the organization. Leveraging Worklets from the start can significantly boost automation by enforcing security baselines and performing routine system tasks. Integration with existing SOC tools, such as SIEMs, enhances visibility and response time by correlating patch compliance with threat intelligence. Additionally, aligning patching schedules with operational downtimes minimizes disruptions, and consistent monitoring and reporting helps maintain compliance and prepare for audits. Overall, Automox offers a streamlined and effective solution, but its true value is unlocked through thoughtful planning, testing, and integration with existing IT and security workflows.
All of these other products are overly complicated with user interfaces that are not very friendly.. too technical, even for IT pros. They are also expensive for smaller companies or those with limited IT budgets. I've found that these other solutions are really geared for larger enterprises more than small to midsized companies, which is fine... but then they tend to market themselves as good for everyone, when they are really not.
Terraform is the solid leader in the space. It allows you to do more then just provisioning within a pre-existing servers. It is more extensible and has more providers available than it competitors. It is also open source and more adopted by the community then some of the other solutions that are available in the market place.
Patches are now fully up to date and we have no longer been dinged for it from our pen testing partners.
Reduced man hours spent on maintaining an update server and the hours spent looking at each machine to ensure it patched all software both windows and third party.
Allows for us to provide a vendor with a means to connect to our systems without the use of a VPN.
we are able to deploy our infrastructure in a couple of ours in an automated and repeatable way, before this could take weeks if the work was done manually and was a lot of error prone.
having the state file, you can see a diff of what things have changed manually out side of Terraform which is a huge plus
if state file gets corrupted, it is very hard to debug or restore it without an impact or spending hours ..
writing big scale code can be very challenging and hard to be efficient so it's usable by the whole team
