# ActiveState Reviews **Vendor:** ActiveState **Category:** [Container Security Tools](https://www.g2.com/categories/container-security-tools) **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 35 ## About ActiveState ActiveState provides the world's largest library of secure open source: 79 million (Java, Javascript, Python, R, Go, etc.) vetted components across all major language ecosystems, including transitive dependencies and OS-level libraries—built from source to ensure every component is verified, vulnerability-free, and continuously updated. Software teams improve security posture while accelerating development velocity. We deliver five critical outcomes. Counter Supply Chain Risks at Their Source Significantly reduce the possibility of inheriting malicious code from pre-built binaries. Replace risky, unvetted public components with secure, verifiable packages built directly from source. Gain provenance over your artifacts, ensuring bad actors and malware never reach your environment. - Protection from compromised package ecosystems and build systems - Mitigate high-profile malware attacks such as the npm Shai-Hulud attack and other future threats Continuous Remediation for Your Open Source Inventory Shift from reactive patching to proactive immunity. Maintain a hardened security posture with safe-by-default open source and continuous remediation across your inventory. ActiveState artifacts reduce your attack surface and evolve to help close vulnerabilities before they become incidents. - Up to 99% reduction in CVEs compared to community open source artifacts - Achieve up to 90% reduction in MTTR for future vulnerabilities Apply Frictionless Security Policies Embed governance directly into developer workflows without impeding engineering or adding costly CI/CD bloat. ActiveState solutions slot seamlessly into existing tools and AI coding assistants, transforming security policy from a blocker into an enabler that reduces open source approval workflows from weeks and days to just hours and minutes. - Reduce open source approval workflows from weeks and days to hours and minutes Audit Ready Compliance, Always Achieve continuous compliance with instant, granular visibility into components, licenses, and dependencies across your organization. ActiveState delivers comprehensive SBOMs and metadata by default, ensuring you can meet complex standards and minimizing the scramble of audit preparation. - Full visibility into your open source usage, including transitive and OS level dependencies Reclaim Developer Velocity and Focus Minimize high-value engineering hours on dependency conflicts, environment setup, research and remediation. ActiveState components and artifacts are fully managed to ensure they are always up to date and safe to use so your team can focus entirely on shipping revenue-generating features. - Free up 4-8 developer hours per CVE - 68% reduction in scanner noise from false positives ## ActiveState Reviews ### 1. Great for open-source compliance in enterprise, onboarding needs improvement **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2026 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** It helps a lot in managing open-source license compliance and is particularly useful in the enterprise environment, where control and traceability of licenses are important. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** The onboarding was not very simple; however, after a few attempts, we managed to understand how it works. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** ActiveState Platform makes development and production environments consistent, secure, and reproducible, simplifying the management of dependencies and open source within teams. ### 2. Very easy to use and very helpful **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Saurav S. | software engineer ( Django ), Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Setting up a runtime correctly for a project where you have some patches along the way to make the project work is very painful. i have wasted a lot of time in that. activeState solves this problem and saves a lot of time. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** so far i liked every aspect of activeState and didn't have anything that i disliked. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Setting up a runtime correctly for a project where you have some patches along the way to make the project work is very painful. i have wasted a lot of time in that. activeState solves this problem and saves a lot of time. ### 3. Too complicated Git Competitor **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Civil Engineering | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** The only reason I use the platform is because it offer the TcL download. And I have to note that the process to do so is quite painful (much more described below). Aside from that, the GUI of the website is quite OK. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** When I open the website, I don't know what kind of website is this? Is this a Git competitor, Docker competitor, or GitHub action competitor? Even after I open the about page etc, it mostly filled with corporate fluff that does not help the end user to determine their need. It too much focuses on building, it should focus more like Git on code. when you open git, you see the code upfront, but when you open ActiveState, you only see build. Which is not really intuitive. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Retrieving Tcl, aside of that I do not have any problem that I would find beneficial running on active state vs on GitHub or github action. Heck, even simple dockerfile is better than this... ### 4. Super easy to use platform, makes building code way less of a hassle **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexander H. | Senior DevOps Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Easy to use fast active community to help if I encounter problems **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** I haven't really hit many issues, I did have some initial trouble getting Perl built correctly, but the community members were able to help get me unstuck **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps to provide a quick, and cost-efficient means to compile code for multiple platforms, without the need for numerous physical build hosts, or even a dedicated infrastructure as they handle the messy bits for us. ### 5. I love it! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hussain A. | Graduate Student, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** I like how I can find all programs I need at one spot. It just makes life way much easier. To add more to that, there are different categories for all kinds of people. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** I don't really have a dislike. Well, maybe one thing to mention would be to add more websites and programs for people who work in areas outside of computer and business managment. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** I think a lot of the things ActiveState Platform is solving would be statistical analysis programs. Since being in academia, I need to analyse a lot of data and ActiveState Platform helps me find the right programs. ### 6. excellent work tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** FRANCISCO M. | computer systems engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** the great advantages it offers to develop my projects in terms of security in addition to the great community ready-to-use software supply chain security solution that covers the entire process of importing, creating and consuming open source **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** I don't like the customer service time, sometimes it's a bit slow but the community is enough help but I would like them to be faster in that aspect even with the free version. I have no complaints about the rest **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** security issues in a Python tone, turnkey software supply chain security solution that encompasses the entire process of importing, building, and consuming open source ### 7. will help me reach my potentai with the technology i need today to succeed in my business **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Davi C. | owner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 21, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** works well with firefox and and the that i've had communication with has been very professional. i've recommended to others what have their businesses **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** so far i haven't had any issuses. hopefully it will continue to be this way **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** the platfor is easy to use for installing python, perl and tci software on my devices. it is help to help configure, troubleshoot and restore applications. ### 8. Awesome Service **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leonardo A. | Senior Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Build progress monotoring and Easy installation **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** Nothing to say, but, what about integration with more runtimes? Like golang... **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** In my company we had a big problem with project dependencies, ActiveState help us with large dependencies build image ### 9. Easier than docker **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nick H. | Project Manager, Estimator, & SDE, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** No need to containerize everything. Keeping all dependencies where they need to has never been easier. I've used it several times and I recommend it frequently. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** It's not common knowledge in the tech-realm. Users may not know how to handle active-state whereas building a docker container is common knowledge. It's simply a matter of time. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easily installing dependencies and removing the frustrations surrounding the installation of an app. ### 10. Good platform to get stable build for almost all versions **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Sometimes they support very old outdated versions also. Thats great help if you dont have options. They give you great suggestions for minimal jump you have to make to fix your current problem. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** As good things comes with price tag. Pricing is bit on higher side for support they provide. If they can come up with community support or something like that will help developers. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** ActiveState provides ready to use open source and comercial builds for perl python etc. It is benefiting me for perl builds. Now I can just pick any version and build it and test my use cases on it very conveniently. ### 11. It was good. The interface was very user friendly. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** It provides plenty of languages to choose from and a lot of frameworks to practice. It is also a good platform to share your work with your colleagues and collaborate. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** Signing up requires some work. If I want to sign up from a personal account, I have a lot of restrictions. I understand that ActiveState has to take care of security breaches, but they should have a trial-based platform for personal use. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** For me, dockers are very useful. I create programs for different operating systems but using the dockers facility of ActiveState comes in handy while dealing with these problems. ### 12. Komodo IDE docs in ActiveState Platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** As a software developer, I have greatly benefited from the use of the Komodo IDE (integrated development environment), and have never had any difficulties finding the documentation in the ActiveState Platform. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** I haven't created any new projects on the Platform yet, so I don't have any specific complaints at this time. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Finding needed documentation for the Komodo IDE. ### 13. Good service **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** It is possible to learn a lot of things and improve about a lot of skills. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** The only thing is the fact that is a bit tricky to get the knowledge about it **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** ActiveState helps me to make a python UI interface in order to launch rest requests to a web service ### 14. Useful for professionals and researchers to study python, perl etc **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sruthy K. | Hardware Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** It's an open source platform to use for python, perl etc. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** I think you need some improvements in ux area. If you can include more languages in same platform that will also helpful **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was used to do my projects. It is an open source. And it's free to use ### 15. Activestate review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shivankar P. | Research Intern, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Integrates with existing development workflow in the best possible way. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** Little expensive. Prices could have been more nominal so that developers not in any company can also use it. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helping me in building my scripts in Perl for my portfolio project ### 16. Verry pleased **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jure R. | Sofwere engeneeir, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** simplicity, that is one of my main interest **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** nothing, everything is perfect I don't know how else to say it **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** the ability to roll back at any time to a previous configuration, it helped me when working with python ### 17. Expert **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** MOHD DILSHAD AHMAD ANSARI C. | Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** User Friendly and simple to coding and handling **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** bug resolving is taking more time and difficult to detect **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Update packages are taking more time and the internet also ### 18. Good platform for beginners and advanced users **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Possibility to use free plan for learning programming languages. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** Limited availability of repositories for specific version in free plan **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Excellent platform for developing and learning perl on windows ### 19. Overall positive experience but may need some improvement in the UX area **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gaurish P. | L, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 16, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** The freedom and flexibility it provides to create and publish customized projects which only have the things that are needed, and use it in the automation framework. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** Navigating around the platform can get a bit confusing sometimes, which could have to do with the placement of UI elements and options and labeling. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** As mentioned earlier, all our customized Python needs are taken care of, with excellent support provided on top for fixing any issues. ### 20. consistent cross platform delivery **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** D M. | Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** allows consistent runtime on various different platforms **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** poor integration with vendor provided libraries **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** simplifying deployment across operating systems ### 21. Low Development Time and Increase Productivity **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shankar S. | Export Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 12, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** This platform offers easy way to virtualize and manage Python & Perl runtime environments. Moreover, we can get value for money and time as this platform is a service and not just runtime environment. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** Many applications are built-in PHP environments. I haven't seen a runtime environment in PHP, so this limitation is quite evident on this platform, and it should be added to improve the dependency of this platform. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is pretty helpful for configuring, troubleshooting, restoring, and securing the attacks from the open-source supply chain. This platform is as easy to use as installing Python, Perl, or Tcl software. ### 22. Using can be easy **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Sporting Goods | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Platform is very easy to use. It does remove the restrictions of having things running on different platforms. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** Can be difficult for some users to start using. Once setup issues are resolved. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Resolves the issues relating to open source code. Keeps me from having to process this directly. ### 23. Great platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Building Materials | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** It easy to use platform. the features are well catered **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** navigation of the SaaS platform, sometimes it was hard to locate and was a bit slow, it could have been our connection **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** my secure coding and vul scanning issues are now via ActiveState ### 24. The platform is easy to use and collaborative. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Program Development | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** The most helpful feature of ActiveState is the ability to collaborate with co-workers on projects easily. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** Occasionally, I could use more documentation to help me identify features quickly. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** The solution provides a better platform to allow collaboration within the team. ### 25. Great platform for acquiring software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** It was very easy to get the software that I needed **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** I did not like the number of emails that I received after registering on the platform **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** They provide me with the needed instructions to acquire my software ### 26. Really useful tool packaging python projects **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Environmental Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Security features and easy packaging good dependency management **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** Nothing in particular the tool respond well to what I need **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Dependency management it solves a lot of problems to version upgrade and to ensure there is no security breach ### 27. Unclear build and use instructions **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** I never got the platform to build correctly **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** I tried several build configurations, but they failed to build a usable load. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was interested in fast consistent python development environment for all developers ### 28. Couldn't figure out how to get it working **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Seems like a good platform for reproducible runs **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** I was trying to download Perl and couldn't figure it out **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** It should solve "works on my machine" but fails elsewhere, saving time ### 29. Very helpful **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Choice of language options and ease of collaboration **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** The pricing could be more competitive but only a little **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is helping us work on projects as a team ### 30. Very good and trustworthy platform with added advantage of custamization. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Harshad K. | Technical Lead, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 17, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Best way to customize the package and building. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** I don't see any down points for using the platform. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Get the customized python package on Windows and Linux platforms. It is very easy customize and quickly building the package is a very straightforward feature. ### 31. Good Services **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** easy to use, websites is well-structured and accessibility-based **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** too much emails, too much app with different purposes **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** project work in intelligent systems ### 32. ActiveState Platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 29, 2021 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Security vulnerability fixes that are provided on top of the deliverables **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** packaging of deliverables has scope to improve **Recommendations to others considering ActiveState:** recommend for Python 2 enterprise support and vulnerability fixes around Python **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** python2 support with security vulnerability fixes ### 33. Best in class for securing your software supply chain. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John C. | Training Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2021 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** As someone who has been in tech for a long time the thing that matters to me is ease of use and simplicity and that is big here. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** My only real complaint is that because this is such a great piece of software that you need to review carefully if you need this much security for the cost. **Recommendations to others considering ActiveState:** make sure you need it because it's good but expensive. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** At Siemens we constantly use code for our refrigeration items for its' systems, this ensures as we update our systems that the code doesn't get stolen. ### 34. Very helpful team and well organized **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Program Development | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2021 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** Small videos that help you guide thru active state platform **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** nothing to dislike, everything was helpful **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** Running few commands about installing but it was fixed thanks to the support ### 35. Active State **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Package/Freight Delivery | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 05, 2022 **What do you like best about ActiveState?** The team is accessible, professional, and committed to a quality product. **What do you dislike about ActiveState?** There is nothing that I dislike at this time, **Recommendations to others considering ActiveState:** N/A. **What problems is ActiveState solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is maintaining the viability of service application that has reached end-of-life. ## ActiveState Discussions - [What is the difference between Python and ActivePython?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-difference-between-python-and-activepython) - 1 comment - [View ActiveState pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/activestate/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-23+09%3A53%3A58+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=b6ad8644-ada3-4397-8af6-7ca930f2a1db&secure%5Btoken%5D=f37ff536d5369692cea00accad47f99a972873cc1a19d566df58fa6e939c238b&format=llm_user) ## ActiveState Features **Administration** - Risk Scoring - Secrets Management - Security Auditing - Configuration Management **Risk management - Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)** - Vulnerability Management - Risk Assessment and Prioritization - Compliance Management - Policy Enforcement **Cloud Visibility** - Data Discovery - Cloud Registry - Cloud Gap Analytics **Monitoring** - Continuous Image Assurance - Behavior Monitoring - Observability **Integration and efficiency - Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)** - Integration with Development Tools - Automation and Efficiency **Security** - Data Security - Data loss Prevention - Security Auditing **Protection** - Dynamic Image Scanning - Runtime Protection - Workload Protection - Network Segmentation **Reporting and Analytics - Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)** - Trend Analysis - Risk Scoring - Customizable Dashboards **Identity** - SSO - Governance - User Analytics **Agentic AI - Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning ## Top ActiveState Alternatives - [Wiz](https://www.g2.com/products/wiz-wiz/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (785 reviews) - [FortiCNAPP](https://www.g2.com/products/forticnapp/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (383 reviews) - [Microsoft Defender for Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-defender-for-cloud/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (281 reviews)