Chef vs Digital.ai Release comparison

Progress Software and Digital.ai are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Progress Software is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.0, while Digital.ai is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.0. Progress Software holds a 0.5% mindshare in BA, compared to Digital.ai’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Progress Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Digital.ai users who would recommend it.

Chef

Read 19 Chef reviews

282 Views
172 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Digital.ai Release

Read 4 Digital.ai Release reviews

494 Views
258 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Chef

Digital.ai Release

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Chef and Digital.ai Release are products in the competitive DevOps automation market. Digital.ai Release has the upper hand due to its extensive feature set and perceived value, despite a higher price point.

Features: Chef is known for its robust automation capabilities, strong integration with cloud platforms, and effective infrastructure management. Digital.ai Release provides comprehensive release management, supports complex deployment pipelines, and offers advanced analytics for insightful decision-making.

Room for Improvement: Chef could improve deployment processes, customer interface usability, and enhance rollback features. Digital.ai Release could benefit from reducing initial setup complexity, refining user training materials, and integrating more seamlessly with other DevOps tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Chef offers flexibility with its open-source nature, aiding in customization and integration, along with reliable customer support. Digital.ai Release provides a more structured deployment model with streamlined onboarding and excellent customer service, simplifying adoption.

Pricing and ROI: Chef offers a cost-effective pricing model appealing to enterprises seeking lower initial investment and swift ROI. Digital.ai Release, with higher setup costs, ensures greater long-term ROI through its rich features and efficiency in the release process.

To learn more, read our detailed Chef vs. Digital.ai Release Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. Digital.ai Release

April 2025

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Helped 849,963 peers since 2012

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 Build Automation

20th

Ranking in Release Automation

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (18th)

Digital.ai Release

Ranking in Build Automation

17th

Ranking in Release Automation

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

DevSecOps (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Digital.ai Release is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Aaron P

DevOps Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation

In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.

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Navanath Gajare

DevOps Tech Lead at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Effectively automates deployments and applies one template across applications

Our company uses the solution to handle deployments for new releases. Whenever there is a new release, the solution creates a new provision template for deployment. We also orchestrate and manage all users. We integrate with other tools like GitHub, Jenkins, or Digital.ai Deploy to manage…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."

"This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time."

"Stable and scalable configuration management and automation tool. Installing it is easy. Its most valuable feature is its compliance, e.g. it's very good."

"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."

"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."

"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."

"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."

"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."

More Chef pros

"The time is also reduced because the manual work has tremendously decreased. We just have to click one button, and it will create everything for us."

"The orchestration, building the release, and then just executing it and managing that pipeline — the orchestration capabilities are great for that."

"The solution can apply one template across multiple applications."

"The most valuable feature of Digital.ai Release is its ability to communicate with various deployment systems, such as XLD and batch deployments, as well as integrate with tools, such as Flyway and Bamboo. We use Bamboo as our build orchestrator, and Digital.ai Release also integrates with Jira, another Atlassian solution. These capabilities make it a powerful tool for managing workflow, test automation, and other processes."

Cons

"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."

"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."

"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."

"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."

"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."

"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."

"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."

"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."

More Chef cons

"The backfill could be improved, we could automate that. Right now it's subjective — it's up to the lead developer's memory to remember to backfill."

"Currently, we put artifact details manually. What we could improve, in our case, is the deployment instruction base. Developers input all the information, including which artifact and where it needs to be deployed. What Digital.ai could do is automatically go to the deployment instruction page, take those artifact details, and implement them."

"Digital.ai Release could improve by having a better plugin that works with Guardian that we use for mainframe migrations. If there could be an interface or plugin for Guardian that would be beneficial."

"The solution is a little bit expensive."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."

"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."

"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."

"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."

"Pricing for Chef is high."

"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

"The solution's license includes all features."

"Overall, the price is just too high; especially considering we're in the middle of a pandemic."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

17%

University

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

47%

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Chef?

Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?

Chef is priced based on the number of nodes.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Chef?

Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images.

See all answers

What do you like most about Digital.ai Release ?

The time is also reduced because the manual work has tremendously decreased. We just have to click one button, and it will create everything for us.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Digital.ai Release ?

There are many areas of improvement. Currently, we put artifact details manually. What we could improve, in our case, is the deployment instruction base. Developers input all the information, inclu...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Digital.ai Release ?

It helps with creating documentation, release processes, deploying to lower environments, scheduling meetings, and sending emails to stakeholders. The goal is to reduce manual work and save time.

See all answers

Comparisons

BigFix vs Chef

Compared 33% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs Chef

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Chef

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Chef

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 9% of the time

More Chef Competitors

Jenkins vs Digital.ai Release

Compared 59% of the time

GitLab vs Digital.ai Release

Compared 41% of the time

More Digital.ai Release Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Chef

April 2025

Download Chef product report

Buyer's Guide

Digital.ai Release

April 2025

Download Digital.ai Release product report

Also Known As

No data available

XL Release, XebiaLabs XL Release

Overview

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

Automate, orchestrate, and gain visibility into your release pipelines at scale using Digital.ai Release, a release management tool that is designed for enterprises. Control and track releases, standardize processes, and bake compliance and security into your software release pipelines.

Digital.ai

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

3M, GE, John Deere, Deutsche Telekom, Cable & Wireless, Xerox, and Société Générale, Liberty Mutual, EA, Rabobank

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. Digital.ai Release

April 2025

Free Report: Chef vs. Digital.ai Release

Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Digital.ai Release and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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