Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Chef vs Digital.ai Agility comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

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

Chef
Ranking in Release Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (12th), Configuration Management (12th)
Digital.ai Agility
Ranking in Release Automation
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (16th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (11th), Value Stream Management Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 1.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Digital.ai Agility is 1.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Chef1.5%
Digital.ai Agility1.8%
Other96.7%
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom
Automation has transformed daily infrastructure work and now frees teams to focus on new challenges
One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible. There should be a focus on how to make it understandable, not just to infrastructure people, but also to those working in monitoring. How can we ensure that it is part of their daily input? That is something that still has a small missing link. We are almost there, but it can help us achieve outcomes in the future in terms of objectives, not just workflows and visibility. How can we make real-time interactive dashboards more available? Look at what kind of tools can be integrated with them, not just working with the ones like Chef Kitchen and Habitat, but trying to make it even more flexible than what we have right now. On support, I think there should be more focus on how we can achieve AI automations in answering questions for beginners and addressing deep concerns without general manual management.
PM
Lead Consultant at Innovation Roots
Collaboration and setup efficiency stand out, though integration and local support need improvement
The solution is excellent for collaboration. From the agility point of view, they have very good sprint functionality, allowing you to set up sprints effectively. For Scrum teams, it is particularly good and easy to set up. With respect to sprints and getting metrics out, such as velocity and related measurements, the functionality is robust. The Scrum boards are particularly effective. Based on my colleague's exploration and setup, I observed how easily the team was able to use it. The integration with that tool was particularly helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You set it and forget it. You don't have to worry about the reliability or the deviations from any of the other configurations."
"Using Chef for automating infrastructure and applications in my organization has helped us reduce manual tasks by more than forty percent, thereby saving significant revenue for the client."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"One thing that we've been able to do is a tiered permission model, allowing developers and their managers to perform their own operations in lower environments. This means a manager can go in and make changes to a whole environment, whereas a developer with less access may only be able to change individual components or be able to upgrade the version for software that they have control over."
"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"Chef can be scaled as needed. The Chef server itself can scale but it depends on the available resources. You can upgrade specific resources to meet the demand. Similarly, with clients, you can add as many clients as you need. Again, this depends on the server resources. If the server has enough resources, it can handle the number of servers required to manage the infrastructure. Chef can be scaled to meet the needs of the infrastructure being managed."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"With some of the other tools, you have to buy 20 different plugins to get to the same capability that comes with the basic Agility capability."
"It can generate reports showing a burndown chart, burnup chart, and the planned vs actual velocity."
"It allows my clients to have one central tool to manage their agile projects."
"For visualization capabilities, the automation capabilities make it possible to support the different personas. The features and capabilities are excellent and come with excellent support."
"The solution is excellent for collaboration; from the agility point of view, they have very good sprint functionality, allowing you to set up sprints effectively."
"Agility is highly flexible. It can do much more than what our client is doing with it. They use it in a defined way. Some at that company have a much broader knowledge of agile and SAFe, but they're given applications and a mandated way to work. We had to work within their parameters and provide an accurate transition so the data would be mapped and pushed through."
 

Cons

"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."
"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."
"Other things would be the need to use Cinc if you want to use the open-source version because Progress Software's policy on copyright is confusing for new users and it puts a barrier in the way to adoption because many small, medium enterprises, startups, and non-profits who might want to use Chef would find the whole Cinc versus Chef situation confusing and the fact that there is not an easy path to install Chef and then go to a paid version without having to change from Cinc to Chef or Chef to Cinc."
"In terms of revenue, I have not observed much because it is holistically depending on the project."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"Another area needing attention is better error messages, as we have found that Chef errors can sometimes be vague or too low-level to understand."
"The user interface can be improved by adding Save, Edit, Add, Cancel, and Return buttons to the popup windows that are displayed when you click on a child item."
"Improve how to create and track releases. Currently, I have to create child projects."
"In my work as a contractor, it's always frustrating when a client has multiple software applications that don't talk to each other and they all perform the same function. That presents a huge challenge between their IT groups."
"It was not supporting some plugins. We wanted to migrate data that we were already using."
"The machine learning features are a new capability but could be improved. This is being worked by Digital.ai currently. Multicolor simulation, specifically, could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in getting the analytics portion of the solution more integrated with the rest of it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."
"Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"You get what you pay for. Don't let your development teams dictate what the portfolio management team should use as the main tool."
"Comparing the pricing to other products, I think this solution is in the middle."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Release Automation solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Insurance Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Transportation Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise19
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we sidestepped it by using Cinc because none of the functionality that is exclusive to the paid version was actually in use in the orga...
What needs improvement with Chef?
I would add that Ruby is a domain-specific language in the Chef dialect, which is a learning curve, but so is Terraform and so is Ansible. The only feedback would be if they could come up with an i...
What is your primary use case for Chef?
My main use case for Chef is configuration and deployments. We receive blank servers and use Chef to build predefined application or appliance servers. A quick specific example of how I use Chef to...
What needs improvement with Digital.ai Agility?
It was not supporting some plugins. We wanted to migrate data that we were already using. The migration of data and getting it up and running from the legacy system took some time to get accustomed...
What is your primary use case for Digital.ai Agility?
We were explaining how to set up the project itself, which describes the main use cases for Digital.ai Agility. This includes how to set up the workflow and how to manage and build a Kanban. I want...
What advice do you have for others considering Digital.ai Agility?
Digital.ai Agility has a bigger reach because it has many good integration points. It can be a one-stop solution for different needs, eliminating the need to use multiple pieces of software. Howeve...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VersionOne Lifecycle, VersionOne, CollabNet VersionOne, Digital.ai Continuum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Siemens Health Services (HS), Cerner Corporation, Aaron's, Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta, Kelley Blue Book, AOL, Axway, Tideworks, bwin Interactive Entertainment, AG, Intergraph, Eos Group, PeopleCube, Liquid Machines
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Digital.ai Agility and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.