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Chef vs Perforce Puppet comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 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
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
343
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Chef
Ranking in Configuration Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (12th), Release Automation (5th)
Perforce Puppet
Ranking in Configuration Management
16th
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 April 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 6.1%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 3.4%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 3.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune6.1%
Chef3.4%
Perforce Puppet3.7%
Other86.8%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Modern endpoint management has transformed onboarding and strengthened remote security controls
The features of Microsoft Intune are straightforward, including Windows Autopilot, zero-touch deployment, centralized device management, and conditional access security controls. Using zero-touch deployment and Windows Autopilot in Microsoft Intune has significantly improved my workflow and organization. New laptops are shipped directly to users with no IT handling needed, and there is no manual imaging or configuration required. These features have a real impact. They save hours of manual setup per device, reduce dependency on the IT team for basic provisioning, and ensure every system is configured consistently and securely. Microsoft Intune has positively impacted my organization by improving device management. Devices are managed from a single cloud console. It has reduced manual work for provisioning and configuration. It has faster onboarding using Autopilot. It has enhanced security posture through enforced compliance policies, encryption, antivirus, and password rules. Conditional access ensures only trusted devices can access resources. I have better support for remote users, as devices can be managed from anywhere with no dependency on office network or VPN for basic management. It has easy troubleshooting and policy updates.
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.
MS
Unix Consultant at ExxonMobil
Have managed configurations efficiently with an adaptable tool
I am using Perforce Puppet in the IT industry. I have experience with configuration management tools, specifically Perforce Puppet. I am a user of Perforce Puppet. I have used modular architecture to customize and integrate with my current IT environment. It is flexible and able to address my specific needs. I have worked with event-driven automation, and it helps to identify potential issues when someone manually changes any configuration on the server. Perforce Puppet reinforces the intended configuration that we have set earlier. I recommend Perforce Puppet as it's a good tool for all kinds of business and easy to use. It takes less than three months to learn how to use Perforce Puppet. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Perforce Puppet an eight.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I can see that the patch management process is much improved with the bundled patch management option available in Microsoft Intune compared to the KPI deployment required by the other deployment solutions."
"I would rate Microsoft Intune a nine out of ten."
"Microsoft Intune brings all our endpoint and security management tools into one place, acting as a comprehensive solution where we can manage numerous devices and configuration profiles, and block specific URLs, among many other capabilities."
"Autopilot is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune."
"From a solution perspective, I always recommend that you go for it."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive and we are happy with the level of service on offer."
"Microsoft Intune is a very effective solution from my understanding, and I definitely would recommend it."
"Application deployment and keeping the devices secure no matter where they are, by having this cloud solution — that has been great."
"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."
"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."
"It has been very easy to tie it into our build and deploy automation for production release work, etc. All the Chef pieces more or less run themselves."
"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."
"It has decreased a lot of man-hours that we were previously spending doing stuff which we now manage with Chef, decreased the time to fix production issues, and reduced the number of production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice; we have deployed it across six to seven organizations."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."
"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."
"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes, freeing our engineers to spend their time on creative, visionary work instead of repetitive tasks."
"Good tools to automate your servers, the time and effort to learn writing manifest is quiet high but it's worth on the long run"
"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."
"The agent-based feature helps me by being stable."
"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution can have some compliance problems in general and the end-point user can bypass easily the company policies in Intune."
"The feature that allows us to import the business application from the configuration manager to Intune is not very good at this time."
"I would like to see Intune improve its handling of hybrid domain joins. We continue to experience issues with machines losing their hybrid domain join status."
"There should be more support for macOS. Even though macOS is supported by Intune and Microsoft is working very hard to get more features into Intune to manage macOS, that's one thing they can give a lot more attention to."
"The biggest improvement could be in the implementation, the ease of the implementation of it."
"An issue we have run into with Microsoft Endpoint Manager is that we cannot patch third-party products like Adobe and Chrome with it."
"It would be beneficial to have a more straightforward understanding of Intune's capabilities, presented in a simplified manner."
"There's a significant discrepancy in Intune pricing between tenants."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"Chef has a very steep learning curve, especially for beginners."
"There appears to be no effort to fix the command line utility functionality, which is definitely broken, provides a false positive for a result when you perform the operation, and doesn't work."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"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."
"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."
"Well at the beginning it was kind of complex. Because you had a lack of knowledge."
"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."
"The solution has really complex code, you have to understand the Ruby language and customized Domain Scripting Language (DSL)."
"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."
"It needs GUI based automation. There is way too much command line work involved."
"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."
"The compliance side needs work. Puppet doesn't have much in terms of dealing with compliance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With one user base license, we can use Intune for up to five devices. However, with Soti MobiControl, each license is tied to a single device, meaning one license is dedicated to one device only."
"The price could be better."
"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."
"Microsoft Intune costs about $7 per user per month, which is somewhat on the pricier end. That said, it's a reliable product, so it's fair."
"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."
"Licensing depends on how you are providing support to your enterprise, whether it's device-based or user-based."
"Based on the features that it gives, it is cost-efficient. It is not necessarily on the expensive side of the scale. It provides a hefty number of features that any organization would want. It is in a good price range."
"If you ask the accountant or the finance department, they'll tell you that it is way too expensive, but when I look at the cost and compare it with the value you actually get, it's more than fair."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."
"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."
"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."
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Comparison Review

it_user185772 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Architect with 5,001-10,000 employees
Oct 27, 2015
Docker v. CFEngine v. Puppet Data Center Automation v. Chef v. Ansible
Originally posted at http://technologyconversations.com/2015/08/26/configuration-management-in-the-docker-world/ Anyone managing more than a few servers can confirm that doing such a task manually is a waste of time and risky. Configuration management (CM) exists for a long time and there is no…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business129
Midsize Enterprise55
Large Enterprise170
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

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 Chef?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we sidestepped it by using Cinc because none of the fun...
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...
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...
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
No data available
Puppet
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
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 Chef vs. Perforce Puppet and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
889,855 professionals have used our research since 2012.