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AWS Config vs AWS Systems Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
271
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
AWS Config
Ranking in Configuration Management
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Systems Manager
Ranking in Configuration Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.3%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Config is 2.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Systems Manager is 10.7%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi - PeerSpot reviewer
Everything has worked better since we started using it
Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.
Dineshkumar Thulasiraman - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for vulnerability scanning and data encryption
AWS Config's dashboard improved our company's security as it helps with the vulnerability scanning of resources. AWS Config integrates with the existing security infrastructure of our company, and it is an easy process that is not at all complicated. AWS Config is a security product. The tool protects its users' resources and data from unauthorized access, security breaches, and threats. The product helps with data encryption. You can have your data on AWS KMS, which helps with data encryption. For areas like SSL/TLS encryption, the tool offers data protection between AWS services and endpoints. As I need to learn the components of the product, I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.
Ambe Frankline - PeerSpot reviewer
Tracks every action on AWS accounts in a centralized way
Setting up AWS Systems Manager to monitor and control other services is easy. You need to link the services you want to observe and track. The time it takes to deploy depends on factors like connectivity, latency, and the complexity of the services. For example, setting up a simple application is faster than setting up a more complicated three-tier or multi-tier system. Using the solution for batch updates varies depending on the number of servers involved and the commands needed. Personally, when I do small projects at home, deploying a few servers doesn't take long. But at work, where we handle larger deployments with hundreds of servers, it's faster due to better connectivity and resources.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is absolutely a positive investment."
"Based on my experience, I find Intune very flexible for managing Windows devices. We can use scripting, and we can make use of the self-service portal or the company portal to publish some of the applications for Windows."
"Everything has worked better since we started using Intune."
"The feature I like the most is that we can perform remote tasks. If we want to retire or wipe out personal data or corporate data from a device, we can use Microsoft Intune remotely, and with the click of a button, data is removed automatically. Nothing needs to be done from the end-user side."
"Overall, my user experience with Microsoft Intune has been great."
"Intune's most valuable features are its device management capabilities, particularly its centralized integration with other Microsoft stack components."
"One of our clients migrated the model workplace based on Intune, achieving a 78 percent cost reduction, which is quite a lot."
"If I assess Intune's user experience, I would say it is perfect and simple."
"The initial setup is super easy, it takes like two minutes. Literally a one-click deployment."
"The solution is scalable and provides over 100 rules."
"The scalability is a ten out of ten."
"The tool protects its users' resources and data from unauthorized access, security breaches, and threats."
"AWS Config's dashboard improved our company's security as it helps with the vulnerability scanning of resources."
"Installing the instances and performing upgrades is smooth and clean."
"The store organizes parameters hierarchically, making it easier to configure and control versions. It also ensures scalability and high availability, automatically scaling to handle increasing workloads and providing reliable access to configuration data across multiple AWS availability zones."
"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts"
"When we do the automation in the cloud, we use the SSM agent. This helps us to test our automation and documents, and monitor the cloud."
"AWS provides Auto Scaling groups."
"Systems Manager has a feature where it analyzes the logs and gives us a performance overview in the form of a graph. We know when it's taking up more resources and when there are spikes, so we can predict the usability."
"With AWS Systems Manager, our company can patch our systems directly from it, so we don't need to patch our systems manually."
"AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts."
"The solution is user-friendly"
 

Cons

"The user interface should be more user-friendly, as it can sometimes be challenging to navigate. Microsoft often relocates features, making it difficult to consistently find what I need."
"There's quite a lot of development that they can do within their Intune dashboard. I think there are too many lines hyperlinked to move you around. Others, in contrast, give you a simple dashboard and an intuitive administrative walkthrough."
"It doesn't economize when you scale up. We have over 14,000 employees, and we have between 7,500 and 8,000 city-owned or personal devices being used to conduct city business. Its price can be improved. It is not a cheap solution."
"The synchronization of devices takes a significant amount of time, between 15 minutes and two hours. Microsoft should work on reducing this sync time to improve efficiency."
"What would make this product better is adding more security policies and features in the next upgrade."
"It needs certificate provisioning for S/MIME purposes."
"Intune has all the features enabled for Windows devices but needs to be improved on iOS and Apple devices."
"I know that their AI pieces are at the infancy stage, but allowing users to do more tagging for information would be an interesting thing because Intune also directly integrates with Azure. Because a lot of the devices are hosted with that, you also get a lot of tagging of user data and other things like that."
"The solution is missing a configuration that can assist us when writing our programming languages."
"There is room for improvement in built-in tools, they are not up to the mark."
"The reboot process for AWS instances could be improved. Microsoft Azure does not have this problem, so AWS could consider making their instances more robust. You would not need to reboot your instances frequently to replace the hardware and stuff. They can look for a better approach or mechanism to improve in the future. The concern is that you need to plan for the outage when you reboot an instance. You need to have a maintenance window where you can properly reboot the instance without affecting your application. When Amazon announces that you need to reboot an instance and are not ready, this becomes a problem."
"Improvements are needed as per customer requirements."
"We formerly used third-party products to analyze the log, give us information, and find bottlenecks. Systems Manager could provide more tools that conduct this analysis, so we don't have to do it ourselves."
"The fact that AWS Systems Manager takes time to complete the patching process, makes it an area where improvements are required."
"It could be agentless if there's room for improvement in the AWS Systems Manager. Currently, you have to install agents, although, for most of the latest EC2 images, the agents come preinstalled. If it could be at the level of Ansible, which is agentless, that would be fantastic. When you compare the solution to Ansible, one of the most widely accepted tools, the agentless feature stands out. So, if the AWS Systems Manager could become agentless, that would be a significant improvement."
"Lacks sufficient integrations."
"Additional features can be added as per customer requirements."
"Ensuring broader OS coverage in patch management could be beneficial for the product."
"One area that could be enhanced is dynamic configuration management. Additionally, improving integration with other AWS services like Lambda and CloudFormation would be beneficial."
"I'd like to see more automation for monitoring and managing things like AWS CloudWatch and AWS Config. It would be a significant improvement if it could automatically handle these tasks and address issues as they arise."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of the product price and licensing costs, my company finds the product to be reasonably priced."
"Microsoft licenses are costly."
"The pricing is competitive, but it is not cheap."
"Generally, we get favorable discounts, so it's not too bad. Obviously, we're looking at decreasing those wherever we can to bring value back to the public purse because it's all charity based. It's all publicly funded."
"We work with the subscription rather than a server license. I think it's economical this way because we don't have to have a server license for that, and I think that works in our favor."
"Microsoft Intune is pretty reasonable. We have difficulty with Azure, which is probably why we have not put many assets in Azure. Everything we put there is very expensive."
"The price of Microsoft Intune is reasonable."
"I rate Intune an eight out of ten for affordability. It's bundled with the 365 licensing, which is competitive overall."
"It is a very expensive tool. AWS pricing for Config is not fixed and depends on your organization's size and complexity."
"The solution charges us per hour. There's no license."
"Most of the features are free. I'm not entirely certain, but I believe the pricing is generally very low. Some services that are part of Ops Manager might have associated costs."
"An AWS cloud engineer can bring down the costs."
"The platform provides excellent value for the capabilities it offers when compared to third-party tools for similar tasks."
"As we were doing a government project so the government got the project at a very nominal cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Healthcare Company
7%
Photography Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What do you like most about AWS Config?
The initial setup is super easy, it takes like two minutes. Literally a one-click deployment.
What needs improvement with AWS Config?
Improvements are needed as per customer requirements.
What is your primary use case for AWS Config?
I use the solution in my company to check the vulnerabilities for all the resources, including tools like S3, EC2 Ins...
What do you like most about AWS Systems Manager?
With AWS Systems Manager, our company can patch our systems directly from it, so we don't need to patch our systems m...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Systems Manager?
Every AWS service comes with some associated costs. While using AWS Systems Manager, we continually monitor to optimi...
What needs improvement with AWS Systems Manager?
There isn't anything specific I remember at the moment.
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
No data available
Amazon Elastic Container Registry
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Flatiron, Prezi, iZettle, British Gas, Burt, Autodesk, FanDuel
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Config vs. AWS Systems Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.