Chef vs Perforce Puppet comparison

Progress Software and Perforce are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Progress Software is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.0, while Perforce is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.5. Progress Software holds a 1.7% mindshare in CM, compared to Perforce’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Progress Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Perforce users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

Perforce Puppet and Chef compete in configuration management and automation. Chef holds the upper hand due to its superior features, despite Perforce Puppet having more favorable pricing and support perceptions.

Features: Chef distinguishes itself with robust scripting flexibility and a rich ecosystem, allowing for precise configuration customization and automation. Its adaptability is ideal for environments requiring detailed control. It can handle automation for up to 100,000 servers efficiently and supports versatile deployment processes with its recipes. Perforce Puppet offers powerful automation with strong integration options, excelling in scalability and orchestration. It supports Linux, Windows, and UNIX, providing comprehensive automation for applications and infrastructure.

Room for Improvement: Chef's initial setup can be complex and may require a significant learning curve, potentially deterring less experienced users. It could improve rollback capabilities during deployment and enhance its GUI for better user interaction. Perforce Puppet, on the other hand, can benefit from enhancing out-of-the-box customization and expanding its repository with more third-party plugins. Its declarative nature sometimes limits flexibility in advanced automation scenarios, and it could improve the simplicity of its agent-based architecture.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Perforce Puppet is known for a straightforward deployment process, supported by comprehensive documentation, easing the onboarding experience. Chef, while offering extensive online resources and community support, presents a more intricate deployment process. This complexity requires higher learning investment but promotes self-sufficiency through community engagement.

Pricing and ROI: Perforce Puppet boasts lower setup costs, offering a quicker ROI due to competitive pricing and extensive support that accelerates deployment. Chef involves a higher initial investment, but its customizable features promise better long-term ROI through increased operational efficiency and reduced maintenance costs. This highlights Chef's potential for enhanced functionality, despite greater initial costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Chef vs. Perforce Puppet Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. Perforce Puppet

April 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

As of May 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.3%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 0.8%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi

Collaborations engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Everything has worked better since we started using it

Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.

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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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Erik Ableson

Owner at Infrageeks

A stable solution that is more suited for larger companies with mature CI/CD structures and image management processes

Puppet Enterprise is more suitable for clients working up much more structured deployment images they manage internally. Before choosing Puppet Enterprise, users should think seriously about what they're trying to accomplish and ensure they put the right pieces in place. Overall, I rate Puppet Enterprise an eight out of ten.

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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

"What I like most about Intune is its seamless enrollment process, particularly the Autopilot method."

"Microsoft Intune helps us avoid issuing everyone company-owned devices. We provide a stipend, allowing users to bring their own devices. This approach gives us leverage against other MSPs. It also enhances collaboration because clients already covered by specific licensing can optimize their usage of Microsoft Intune."

"Microsoft Intune is very stable due to its cloud-based infrastructure and its reliability in performance."

"The solution’s most valuable feature is its ease of use."

"The ability to deploy patches and automate software deployments to end-user devices is very useful."

"The biggest asset is the range of device management options available with Intune, whether it is a Windows device, a Linux device, a Mac device, or mobile devices."

"The tool's most valuable feature is Autopilot."

"Our configuration profiles used to be all over the place. For example, there's a lot of legacy stuff in Active Directory. Going through Intune has helped us enforce settings, which has improved device security and functionality. When you apply something through Intune, you know it works. You don't have to worry about a legacy setting from Active Directory that was uploaded by somebody seven years ago. With Intune, you can see that a device has a setting, and you can be confident that the device is configured how you want."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"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."

"I wanted to monitor a hybrid cloud environment, one using AWS and Azure. If I have to provision/orchestrate between multiple cloud platforms, I can use Chef as a one-stop solution, to broker between those cloud platforms and orchestrate around them, rather than going directly into each of the cloud-vendors' consoles."

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

"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."

"The product is useful for automating processes."

"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."

"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."

"Manual deployments came to a halt completely. Server provisioning became lightning fast. Chef-docker enabled us to have fewer sets of source code for different purposes. Configuration management was a breeze and all the servers were as good as immutable servers."

More Chef pros

"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."

"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."

"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."

"The versatility is great."

"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."

"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."

"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

More Perforce Puppet pros

Cons

"Intune should improve the management of non-Microsoft devices. It would be better to manage Mac, Android, and other non-Microsoft operating system devices within the same Intune interface."

"The interface is not as modern as some competitors in terms of single pane of glass visibility across the entire landscape. It has a very Azure vibe and may not be as graphically appealing as other products."

"Manually syncing devices to enforce policies is cumbersome."

"There is room for improvement in integrating additional features such as Purview and SharePoint activities into Intune."

"We would like to see the ability to use multiple personas on a device, similar to Samsung Knox, included in future updates."

"I, as such, do not have any specific inputs or needs. However, there is always room for improvement when it comes to scalability."

"The time we have to wait to deploy policies has room for improvement."

"Intune could add more Linux security features and more integration with on-prem devices. The application deployments can also be improved."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."

"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."

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

"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."

"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."

"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."

"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."

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

More Chef cons

"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."

"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."

"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."

"There's a lot of scope for enhancement on the DevSecOps side. They should definitely include features for compliance, for both the Linux and Windows side of the devices, as well as for network devices. Compliance is something they need to work on."

"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. However, once you know the code then you can move ahead without any problems."

"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Intune an eight out of ten for affordability. It's bundled with the 365 licensing, which is competitive overall."

"Intune comes with the licensing that is common for large organizations. However, Microsoft has recently released many add-ons that are very expensive, especially for large organizations or corporations."

"The price for Intune is fair."

"Microsoft Intune's costliness stems from licensing fees and the overhead associated with its management, user experience, and device remediation."

"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."

"The pricing is good because customers are not complaining about it."

"Microsoft Intune is reasonably priced for large organizations that already have Microsoft Enterprise licenses, but it is less affordable for smaller businesses."

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

More Microsoft Intune 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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"Pricing for Chef is high."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

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Comparison Review

it_user185772

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

19%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

17%

University

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

44%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 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...

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What do you like most about Puppet Enterprise?

Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Puppet Enterprise?

Puppet is not cheap. I would rate its affordability as seven or eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Puppet Enterprise?

Clients with less technical expertise may find Puppet complex to configure. Our team may struggle if technical team m...

See all answers

Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 13% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

BigFix vs Chef

Compared 34% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs Chef

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Chef

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Chef

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 8% of the time

More Chef Competitors

AWS Systems Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 40% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 34% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 26% of the time

More Perforce Puppet Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Chef

May 2025

Download Chef product report

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet

April 2025

Download Perforce Puppet product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

Puppet

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

Perforce Puppet provides robust features for configuration management, compatible with Linux, Windows, and UNIX. It simplifies infrastructure management with automation and role-based access control, though it requires mastering command-line operations due to limited GUI.

Perforce Puppet utilizes a hub-spoke architecture to enhance automation across production environments, excelling in provisioning and configuration management for on-prem servers. Its infrastructure as code approach eases deployment and maintenance, supported by community resources for stabilization. Support for diverse devices makes it adaptable for complex configurations, but pricing and integration gaps, especially with Infosec tools, pose challenges for some.

What are the key features of Perforce Puppet?

Remote Package Installation: Centralized server management for remote installations
File Management: Streamlined file operations from a single point
Infrastructure as Code: Simplifies infrastructure maintenance
Scalability: Grows with organizational demands
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures secure user management
Device State Control: Efficient device integration and configuration

What benefits should users expect?

Automation Efficiency: Reduces manual tasks with hub-spoke architecture
Versatility: Supports multiple operating systems
Community Support: Backed by a stable and organized community
Configuration Simplicity: Simplifies and streamlines setup processes

Puppet is implemented across industries for managing production servers, especially in regulated environments. Its security compliance checks ensure adherence to required standards, while public configurations assist in device network integration. Industries benefit from its ability to streamline Linux server automation and explore expansion into Windows systems to meet cross-platform requirements.

Perforce

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

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. Perforce Puppet

April 2025

Free Report: Chef vs. Perforce Puppet

Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Perforce Puppet and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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