Sonatype Platform

Sonatype nexus platform is an excellent choice in comparison to the other products. As a platform it is a combination of various modules plus it comes with the support. So its a great choice for organizations which are not looking for open source. Nexus comes with LifeCycle and IQ servers. Lifecycle performs the vulnerability assessment on the builds/artifacts thus making sure the systems are not compromised.
Other products are good choice if one is looking for open-source as repository manager. They are not a platform.

Sonatype Platform is complete tool for Software Composition Analysis. Allows policy enforcement at full SDLC which helps organizations identify and manage open-source components and dependencies, along with policy for licenses and also has additional feature for firewall. But in addition to open-source security, Snyk has features specifically designed for container security, helping organizations identify vulnerabilities in containerized applications.

Sonatype seemed like a more complete platform.

Sonatype Platform's Nexus Lifecycle performs pretty great while talking about security vulnerabilities. It uses multiple vulnerability databases and provides really detailed reports. The tool is easy to use for endusers on different levels: within the IDE, CI pipeline and in maintenance level.
BlackDuck is a tool that is better from the licence management perspective, however it is harder to use and configure. I really like the way how BD calculates the risk, however this feature is also available in Sonatype Platform NexusIQ now.

Well both have their own procs and cons, As a user of Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle, I have found the overall experience highly satisfactory.

We chose Sonatype Platform due to its feature and support. Sonatype Platform slaes team and support team is very co-operative and quick in action. And importantly Sonatype Platform has all products which suits our CICD journey. Sonatype Platform is easy to implement and configure, and Sonatype Platform documentation is always an added advantage to our team.

JFrog is a very strong competitor for the Sonatype Platform and in some areas beats Sonatype's configuration, for example on the default options for retention, cleanup and backups. However, Sonatype Platform has easy integration at Enterprise scale, is transparant on it's roadmap, has good support and good account management. This makes Sonatype and JFrog comparable.

JFrog's architecture is significantly ahead of Sonatype's implementation. It would be a lot easier to globally manage a JFrog solution than a Sonatype solution. JFrog's UI is more user friendly and has more features. JFrog, however, is significantly behind Sonatype in the quality of the license and security vulnerability data. Also, based on the pricing models for the 2 companies, JFrog's cost was significantly higher than Sonatype's.

Out of other products we evaluated before choosing Sonatype, the later looked far more user friendly, easy to understand and work with. This was key for us, as the tool needs to be used by many engineers that don't have security as their main focus. Having a tool that is easy to understand and work with, makes the process of evaluating open source dependencies much easier and appealing for developers.

Some reasons for going with the Sonartype Nexus Platform was that it fulfilled our requirements and it was commonly used by other companies so it was fairly easy to find people who knew how to use the platform. The Sonartype Nexus Platform also had the possibility for us to improve by using the other tools in the platform even if the artifact repository was our main interest in the beginning.