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BigFix vs Perforce Puppet comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
377
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
BigFix
Ranking in Configuration Management
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (24th), Patch Management (7th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (10th), Autonomous Endpoint Management (5th)
Perforce Puppet
Ranking in Configuration Management
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.6%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigFix is 4.5%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 4.2%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.6%
BigFix4.5%
Perforce Puppet4.2%
Other86.7%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Senior Business Development Executive at Digitaltrack
Centralized device management has automated onboarding and improves remote security compliance
One thing I feel Microsoft Intune could improve is troubleshooting visibility. In many cases, when a policy or application deployment fails, the error messages are a bit generic. So, admins still spend time checking logs manually or testing on devices one by one. Compared to the simplicity of deployment, troubleshooting sometimes feels less mature. I also think reporting and real-time monitoring could be stronger. The dashboard gives useful information, but in large environments, many teams still depend on additional tools or scripts for deeper reporting and analytics. If I had to focus on one area first, I would probably choose troubleshooting and reporting. Deployment through Microsoft Intune is generally straightforward, but when something fails, identifying the exact root cause can still take more time than expected. Error messages are sometimes too generic, and admins often have to dig through logs, sync status, or multiple portals to understand what actually happened. I think user experience and policy management could also improve further. Microsoft Intune has become much better over the years, but sometimes the admin portal still feels fragmented because certain configurations open in different sections or redirect to older interfaces. For new admins, especially, it can take time to understand where everything is located. Another thing is policy conflict handling. In larger organizations, multiple device policies, compliance rules, and configuration profiles can overlap. When conflicts happen, the visibility is not always very clear, so admins spend time figuring out which policy actually won or caused the issue.
InderjeetSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
End-to-end automation has simplified patching and software deployment across thousands of servers
There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement. When an action is initiated through the patch policy, it appears on the console but arrives in chunks. When targeting hundreds of servers from the patch policy, the actions come in chunks such as ten out of six, ten out of nine, or ten out of fifteen. This fragmented approach creates a significant challenge for the patching team to monitor the action status. I would recommend that the development team provide a single action or one to two actions instead of multiple actions requiring individual monitoring. A broad status update could be provided to the client indicating the overall progress of the patch policy implementation rather than requiring monitoring of every individual action. This would reduce the bandwidth required by the team to track multiple actions on the console.
reviewer2284542 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automated configuration management ensures consistent server setups
The strength of Puppet is in automated configuration management. We can configure a server once and set rules with Puppet so that future server configurations are automatic and consistent with company requests. Puppet is declarative, meaning it finds the best state for itself and corrects any deviations in the configuration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have seen approximately a sixty to seventy percent improvement in efficiency and time savings since using Microsoft Intune."
"Intune device restriction policies enable me to enforce limitations on the device, like blocking the mobile camera or restricting the employees from using and inserting USB devices, including thumb drives and flash drives."
"Mobile device management is most valuable."
"It allows our clients to have the confidence to centrally manage policies for security, and it helps them in securing the organization from a technology aspect."
"Most people prefer to use Intune if they want to implement conditional access policies to restrict customer Exchange Online or Exchange user formats emails until their devices comply."
"The policies on the solution are very good, the process of enrolling devices is a useful aspect for us, the features that allow us to control the devices are helpful, the initial setup is not hard at all, technical support, in general, has been quite helpful, we've found the configuration capabilities to be quite good, and so far, the solution is fast and has an intuitive interface."
"The biggest thing for us is enforcing logins only from devices that are managed by Intune."
"Intune provides full endpoint visibility and IT control across device platforms. You can individualize it for your company with the Intune Company Portal app."
"Once you get over the learning curve, it is pretty easy to use."
"We've been able to fully automate our TWS installs, to the point where a user requests it and we don't do anything."
"Prior to BigFix we used Altiris, which was distributed. We had to manage multiple servers, and duplicate the tasks that we did on each server. BigFix tremendously reduced the amount of work that we had to do on each server in a centralized manner. We could minimize the work that we had to do, and we had a lot more control over the tasks and what machines they ran on."
"Between the user groups, the community, the AVP support, the direct access via technical route and the PMR support, half the time I don't even need to do a formal PMR because the solutions from the community resolve whatever issues we're having. It's the best community and support based system I've ever used."
"The solution is unbelievably scalable."
"We are able to go from patching thousands of machines by twenty to thirty people to one person."
"From a security standpoint, it allows us to make sure that we're not leaving ourselves vulnerable to exploits and things like that. That's the biggest advantage that we see to the product from a security standpoint."
"Pre-packaged support for many third-party applications such as Adobe, Google, Mozilla, Sun (Java), WinZip, and others."
"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."
"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."
"Before we began using Puppet, everything was manual; once we moved to Puppet, it opened up a completely new world of automated management, which was amazing."
"The organization of the overall product in terms of usage is very good."
"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."
"Return on the IaaS project was breaking even in the same year with deployment of 500 VM servers with a 3-tier app stack, and annual ROI from savings thereafter was to the tune of 60-80%."
"Puppet Enterprise provides an autonomous delivery solution and agent-server architecture that was really helpful on our case for Internet base device management."
"The valuable features I found are installing packages remotely and pushing files from a centralized server, and we can also create users and monitor services remotely."
 

Cons

"In terms of the admin experience, it is straightforward, but the Windows enrollment experience could be improved. Sometimes, for enrollment, we have to reset devices and re-enroll them. Just configuring Windows, Azure, or Active Directory doesn't enroll the devices. We need easy enrollment for Windows."
"I've dealt with Microsoft way too many times, and needless to say, I'm not too fond of Microsoft support most of the time."
"The major problem with this product is that there can be delays in the deployment of new policies."
"No option to do end-to-en macOS management. Slow implementation of policies."
"Technical support is not that great."
"Could benefit from user having more control over devices."
"Policy and app deployment should be faster, as it currently takes between minutes to hours to apply, with an average of one hour."
"Microsoft Intune has potential for improvement; I would like to see a lot more customization in the reporting tools."
"Be careful. It's a super powerful tool. It can be unforgiving, i.e., if you do some of the things wrong, it can be a nightmare."
"The look and feel of the system are old-fashioned."
"License management isn't quite as easy as it should be to deal with the licensing. You need to take the server down to import the new licenses which I find to be annoying."
"The new EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) feature, Detect, is new and still needs a few updates."
"I remember doing restarts a few times. So, making sure that it is rock solid from an executable perspective is important."
"Improvements can be made when it comes to in-place and OS upgrades."
"The console interface is not friendly, and requires training before using it in production."
"The relevant language takes a little getting used to since it's not used anywhere else in the industry. It's just in the BigFix environment."
"It's a bit of a pain point to make sure that everything works once we've upgraded it because Puppet has been evolving pretty fast."
"Clients with less technical expertise may find Puppet complex to configure. Our team may struggle if technical team members leave the organization, leaving others uncertain about using the tool."
"The solution has really complex code, you have to understand the Ruby language. However, once you know the code then you can move ahead without any problems."
"It needs GUI based automation. There is way too much command line work involved."
"Regarding the cost, I find it expensive, always."
"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."
"Puppet has a steep learning curve so you need to spend some time before you can use Puppet daily."
"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have the business premium licenses for the solution."
"Its licensing model is not complex, but it is very expensive compared to other solutions. They can bring more models and reduce the pricing. They should allow customers to select the features they want and price it accordingly."
"Microsoft Intune has been incorporated into our Microsoft E5 licenses."
"We don't pay for Intune because it is bundled with the premium subscription to Office 365. It includes Intune and Defender. I don't have to buy two extra products to manage my enterprise."
"Intune is included in the Microsoft 365 licensing package that we have."
"The price for Intune is fair."
"Microsoft Intune is available for individual purchase at a low per-device cost."
"The price is reasonable, but they should lower it a bit to make it more competitive. It's cheaper than AirWatch and other products, but I still feel like Microsoft can make a base version or with Exchange online or a la carte only Intune version which will be useful. A customer who doesn't want to go full-fledged E3 or E5 can take out or consume an Intune solution only for their purpose, and we want to target that customer."
"The cost is slightly high."
"I would stay with the Managed Virtual Server license model, which is a 1-to-1 license per OS whether it is virtual or physical."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing one out of ten."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"The price is reasonable, but our customers find it expensive."
"Its price is very reasonable."
"The price of BigFix could be lower. However, I am always seeking a lower price."
"Compliance, inventory, and licensing are really pricey. They should lower the price. It discourages users from getting onboard."
"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."
"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."
"The main thing that we noticed when we switched from the enterprise version to the community version was the difference in cost — the infrastructure is pretty expensive."
"Depending on the size of the organization there is a point when the price of Puppet Enterprise should be lower. However, they provide really good functionality, features, and capabilities."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business192
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise186
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise68
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
I rate the price for BigFix as medium, neither low nor high.
What needs improvement with BigFix?
There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement. When an action is initia...
What is your primary use case for BigFix?
My current use case involves being one of the products and one of the clients implementing this tool.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Puppet Enterprise?
Regarding the cost, I find it expensive, always. I don't know how much the license would cost per year or per user ap...
What needs improvement with Puppet Enterprise?
I don't know what could be improved in Perforce Puppet to make this tool better for the next release. I can't think o...
What is your primary use case for Puppet Enterprise?
My main use case for Perforce Puppet is for configuration management.
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
Puppet
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation
Los Alamos National Laboratory, GitHub, IP Commerce, Cedexis, Spiceworks, Server Density, Swisstopo, Chockstone, Constant Contact, NICS, Citrix
Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. Perforce Puppet and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.