Chef vs LaunchDarkly comparison

The compared Progress Software and LaunchDarkly solutions aren't in the same category. Progress Software is ranked #12 in CM , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 2.8% mindshare in the category. LaunchDarkly is ranked #3 in FM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 18.3% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Progress Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of LaunchDarkly users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Chef and LaunchDarkly compete in the software development and deployment category. Chef tends to have the upper hand due to its cost-effective solutions and robust support, whereas LaunchDarkly excels in delivering advanced features.

Features: Chef offers automation, infrastructure management, and cloud integration with extensive configuration capabilities. LaunchDarkly provides feature flagging, real-time updates, and experimentation options for seamless deployment without service interruption.

Room for Improvement: Chef's complexity in initial setup could be simplified, especially for less experienced users. Enhancing the rollback process would also be beneficial. LaunchDarkly might improve by offering more flexible pricing and enhancing its integration capabilities with third-party tools. Improvements in offline support could further enhance user experience for both products.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Chef’s script-based deployment requires experienced personnel and offers comprehensive support. LaunchDarkly’s cloud-focused deployment is easier and faster, with streamlined service and proactive online resources, facilitating efficient management for teams.

Pricing and ROI: Chef provides a competitive, transparent pricing model appealing to budget-conscious businesses. Its strong support network contributes to ROI through reduced downtime. LaunchDarkly’s advanced features justify its potential higher setup costs, offering substantial ROI gains by improving delivery speed and feature management efficiencies.

To learn more, read our detailed Chef vs. LaunchDarkly Report (Updated: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. LaunchDarkly

November 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

Configuration Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Chef	2.8%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform	13.5%
Microsoft Configuration Manager	10.4%
Other	73.3%

Configuration Management

Feature Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
LaunchDarkly	18.3%
Harness	25.6%
CloudBees	13.8%
Other	42.3%

Feature Management

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble

Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24

Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license

The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.

Read full review

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

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.

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reviewer2769948

Staff Software Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees

Has increased developer confidence by enabling safe production releases using targeted feature toggles

I wish we were using more targeting in our feature toggles and I wish we were using more feature toggles as well as feature toggle dependencies. Making one feature toggle or one set of feature toggles dependent on another one would allow us to turn them all on or turn them all off at one time. For improvements in LaunchDarkly, managing team members and access to those team members was challenging. We could add team members through Terraform and do it programmatically, and then modify it through the user interface. However, once we started modifying things through the interface, we weren't able to go back to using any configuration programmatically for the team members. It made it challenging to orchestrate team member management. The other aspect I wasn't particularly fond of was when they started adding AI to the interface and deployment interface. It reminded me of old school wizards when installing software and simplified the interface too much, removing some of the engineering control I preferred.

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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

"I haven't used other mobile device management solutions, but compared to SCCM, we eliminate a lot of on-premises infrastructure and maintenance by using Intune."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is probably mobile device management. Small businesses are coming under greater scrutiny and requirements for compliance as time goes on. We don't have to worry about a VPN because we can manage these devices, control company data, and lock users out. If needed, we can remotely wipe devices and deadman-switch them."

"We can implement a MAM policy in this Intune and protect the device through mobile application development without touching it. The interface is easy to use and understand."

"The core management feature in Intune is invaluable to us, especially considering the challenges we often face with System Center when pushing external updates."

"It's cloud-based with no need for on-premise infrastructure, you can access it anywhere and start working on it, and you will have the record of data in your hand anytime if you need it quickly."

"Stable solution at a good price."

"What I like the most about Microsoft Intune is its ability to manage mobile devices. Through integration with System Center, it can also manage desktops and laptops."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"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."

"Chef benefited my organization by definitely reducing time because we were provisioning tens of thousands of servers."

"The product is useful for automating processes."

"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."

"You set it and forget it. You don't have to worry about the reliability or the deviations from any of the other configurations."

"If you're handy enough with DSL and you can present your own front-facing interface to your developers, then you can actually have a lot more granular control with Chef in operations over what developers can perform and what they can't."

"Chef offers valuable features in infrastructure as code, where it uses cookbooks and recipes written in Ruby language for detailed and flexible configuration of systems and applications."

"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."

More Chef pros

"These features in my current project have helped my team because they allow us to specifically target users to start turning on functionality, we can monitor the behavior and make sure that it's behaving as expected when the feature toggle is turned on, and then we can increase the usage."

"I like that it offers the ability to control the flags."

"The ability to turn off a flag is crucial when a task is not complete, especially if there is an error in a commit."

"From the development side, it allows us to manage multiple things."

"It has really helped during the series of product lines and faster deployment and faster development."

"The setup is easy."

"I appreciate that we can release any feature in production and maintain control over it."

"The initial setup is very easy."

Cons

"Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft Intune is absolutely useless for protecting my environment."

"There is no catalog for mobile access management (MAM) security."

"It should be easier to define policies and comply with those policies."

"Microsoft Intune could improve in reporting data for endpoints and fleets. Enhanced capabilities to run queries and gather specific device data to identify trends or issues would be beneficial. The feature parity for MacOS and handling devices from an MDM perspective is not comprehensive. Consolidation of these functionalities within Intune would simplify processes and finances."

"Applying security recommendations can be difficult in Microsoft Intune. Sometimes, they give you recommendations, but you need a different server to manage the pieces, or you have to go to each device individually. However, it has been improving. Before, there were certain policies you could not implement directly in Intune, but now I see progress. I would like to see more improvement in policy management, similar to how we used group policies on-premises."

"The mobile management is good for iPhone and iPad, but the Apple Mac management needs improvement. That is probably because Microsoft does not have low-level access to Apple Mac hardware. If you are doing basic things, it is okay, but if you want to image Apple Macs and do things like that, then Jamf is much better."

"Intune could be improved by organizing different solutions, like Defender and Sentinel, into a single package. This would allow us to focus on security while Microsoft manages other areas. Having a unified solution would drive better management of various sectors. Although the Intune user experience is good, we should continue enhancing it."

"Intune lags all of its competitors in terms of report generation."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."

"The learning curve is steep due to Chef's Ruby-based DSL and the complex components of cookbooks and recipes, which can be challenging for new users, especially those without programming backgrounds."

"In terms of revenue, I have not observed much because it is holistically depending on the project."

"I would like them to add database specific items, configuration items, and migration tools. Not necessarily on the builder side or the actual setup of the system, but more of a migration package for your different database sets, such as MongoDB, your extenders, etc. I want to see how that would function with a transition out to AWS for Aurora services and any of the RDBMS packages."

"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."

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

"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."

"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."

More Chef cons

"We need experience to use it, and the initial setup can be difficult. Also, sometimes it has breakdowns."

"I strongly believe they need to develop a strategy for handling situations where LaunchDarkly goes down."

"The feature where one feature flag is dependent on another could be explored more for our usage."

"Managing team members and access to those team members was challenging. We could add team members through Terraform and do it programmatically, and then modify it through the user interface. However, once we started modifying things through the interface, we weren't able to go back to using any configuration programmatically for the team members."

"Fetching information about multiple flags in a single action would be beneficial."

"Right now, no improvements are needed."

"When the system has an excessive number of feature flags, managing them can become cumbersome."

"I have used LaunchDarkly for around two and a half years and I haven't faced any issues with it."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"The overall pricing of Microsoft Intune is good for companies that have big IT budgets, 3,000 or more users and devices."

"Consider the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite rather than choosing specific sub-components, e.g. only Microsoft Intune."

"It comes with the E5 plan. We bought the E5 plan from Microsoft."

"Its pricing seems reasonable."

"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."

"Existing E5 license holders for M365, Intune, and Azure, receive a free license."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

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

"Pricing for Chef is high."

"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."

"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."

"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."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

University

17%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	121
Midsize Enterprise	47
Large Enterprise	154

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	19

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

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 ...

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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...

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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 ...

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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 fun...

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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 Terrafo...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LaunchDarkly?

At my current organization, I have no experience with licensing and setup cost. However, at my previous organization,...

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What needs improvement with LaunchDarkly?

I wish we were using more targeting in our feature toggles and I wish we were using more feature toggles as well as f...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LaunchDarkly?

Currently, my main use case for LaunchDarkly is as a consumer. The application that I'm using uses LaunchDarkly as fe...

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Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 10% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

BigFix vs Chef

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

GitHub Actions vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

Bamboo vs Chef

Compared 5% of the time

More Chef Competitors

Harness vs LaunchDarkly

Compared 74% of the time

More LaunchDarkly Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

January 2026

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Chef

January 2026

Download Chef product report

Buyer's Guide

LaunchDarkly

January 2026

Download LaunchDarkly product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Intune provides centralized management of mobile devices and applications, ensuring security, compliance, and productivity through integration with Microsoft services like Microsoft 365 and Azure Active Directory.

Organizations use Intune for managing mobile devices and applications, enhancing security and compliance across platforms. With features like single sign-on, conditional access, and zero-touch deployment via Autopilot, it facilitates efficient operations. Intune's scalability, easy enrollment, and capabilities such as remote wipe support diverse device management, offering robust data protection and efficient operation. Despite its features, improvement areas include reporting, compatibility with non-Microsoft devices, and better support for macOS and Linux devices.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Seamless Integration: Works with Microsoft 365, Azure Active Directory, and System Center for streamlined management.
Conditional Access: Enhances security with policies that restrict access based on conditions.
Autopilot: Provides zero-touch deployment for setting up new devices efficiently.
Mobile Device Management: Enables control over both personal and corporate devices.
Application Deployment: Facilitates app delivery across a range of devices.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Centralized Management: Reduces complexity by managing devices and applications in one place.
Security Enhancement: Protects data with features like remote wipe and compliance monitoring.
Improved Productivity: Enhances efficiency with seamless integration and automation features.
Device Scalability: Supports diverse device management for growing business needs.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and education, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure secure and compliant device management. Companies leverage its capabilities to deploy security policies and manage both corporate-owned and BYOD environments, facilitating a unified approach to data protection and compliance.

Microsoft

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

LaunchDarkly is acclaimed for its feature flag management, enabling safer, high-velocity code deployment and precise control over rollouts. Organizations use it to test, deploy, and manage features across user segments, performing canary releases and quick rollbacks without new code deployment. Users praise its robust flag system, real-time updates, detailed targeting, comprehensive analytics, and strong integration capabilities, significantly enhancing development efficiency and productivity.

LaunchDarkly

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. LaunchDarkly

November 2025

Free Report: Chef vs. LaunchDarkly

Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. LaunchDarkly and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.

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