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Chef vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
356
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 (13th), Release Automation (6th)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Configuration Management
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (30th), Network Monitoring Software (23rd), Server Monitoring (15th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (22nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 5.4%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 3.5%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.4%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune5.4%
Chef3.5%
WhatsUp Gold1.4%
Other89.7%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Varun Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
collaboration support engineer at a retailer with 11-50 employees
Centralized device management has transformed security and streamlined remote provisioning
One area where Microsoft Intune can improve is the user interface. Sometimes the portal feels a bit complex and not very intuitive, especially for new users, and it can take time to find specific settings. Another point is troubleshooting. While logs are available, the diagnostic policies and sync issues can still be time-consuming and not very straightforward. I also feel that reporting could be more detailed and customizable. The built-in reports are helpful, but for deeper insights, I often need to rely on additional tools. Overall, it is a strong solution, but improving usability and troubleshooting experience would make it even better. While Microsoft Intune works very well within the Microsoft ecosystem, the integration of some third-party tools could be smoother and require less customization. Support is another area that could improve, as sometimes response times can be slow, and resolving complex issues may take longer than expected. In terms of features, I think more advanced automation and built-in remediation options would be helpful since common issues can be fixed automatically without manual intervention.
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.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It helps us manage user certificates."
"Microsoft Intune is a must and should be needed for this time, for this hybrid model period, and I highly recommend this product for employees, education institutions, or device management."
"The product is very useful in terms of Windows Information Protection."
"I like how Intune brings everything into one place. For example, you can set up conditional access to applications and devices inside Intune. I also like the segregation inside the Intune devices. You can segregate them by Windows, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Android. You can sort it by platform, so you don't need to go into the devices section."
"The best features in Microsoft Intune that I appreciate most are its centralized features."
"The most reliable feature is the integration with Microsoft XDR, which grants administrators and solution architects like me the ability to bring value to a business."
"This is a great solution for anyone wanting a modern endpoint device management solution."
"Cloud control made simple, device secured with ease, and workflow runs smoothly."
"Chef benefited my organization by definitely reducing time because we were provisioning tens of thousands of servers."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice; we have deployed it across six to seven organizations."
"Part of the reason why we have stuck with it is that it managed to effectively scale with us and stay stable at the same time."
"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 streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."
"The features are good in Chef, especially its compliance feature; it's very good and it's what I found most valuable in the tool."
"My clients are happy, which is the most important thing."
"It is easy to manage on our production systems because there is an agent running on all the servers."
"One thing good about WhatsUp Gold is that it is fairly stable."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
"It is stable."
"Their tech support is very good."
"Auto scanning is most valuable. It looks for rogue devices on your network."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of resources."
"It's a good product, and if one has the expertise to use it, it will be a good investment and it will help IT to save and plan for the future."
"The visual map and email alerts are very useful to have in real time so we always know the state of our network."
 

Cons

"It would help if administrators could pinpoint the exact location of a stolen device to help law enforcement retrieve it and apprehend the suspect."
"I have experienced downtime, bugs, and glitches. I rate it a seven because when we have bugs or instability in Microsoft Intune, we need to wait for the backend from Microsoft Intune to resolve issues and we can't deliver solutions to clients because we need to wait for action plans and related processes."
"It's the granularity: 'Is your firewall on? Is BitLocker on?' It's not amazing granularity. But I've looked into other products, like Duo, and they're all similar."
"I, as such, do not have any specific inputs or needs. However, there is always room for improvement when it comes to scalability."
"Intune doesn't provide much control over Windows servers. It's something we struggle with."
"The reporting and cost have room for improvement."
"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."
"For autopilot, there should be more granularity on the settings that they offer at this stage."
"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."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features 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."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"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."
"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management."
"The tool should focus on increasing its market share, as it is the only area of concern where improvements are needed."
"Users want SMS available via Whatsapp Gold. They don't want to go through third party SMS servers."
"The new release cadence needs to be improved. It takes a while for them to add new features and functionality. There should be a quicker turnaround with new versions."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"There is a very big gap in the support."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."
"This product should add other options for monitoring. It does not currently meet the broader needs of the banking industry in the version we have deployed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With our standard E5 agreement with Microsoft, there have been no pricing concerns. Introductory professional services, like a fast-track service, were included with our E5 membership, and there have been no additional costs."
"This cost is approximately $30 USD per user per month."
"Intune's pricing is reasonable considering its benefits and the high costs it helps avoid."
"The solution is cost-efficient."
"It's reasonable. They're not giving it away, but it's reasonable."
"The price could be better."
"While Microsoft Intune boasts a wide range of features, its user-friendliness and bundled licensing cost are key considerations for me."
"There is a license needed for this solution and it is either included in one of the enterprise license agreements. Microsoft licensing is a mathematical institute, it could be quite complex. We tend to ask specialized organizations to research what the most profitable way it would be for us to use licenses in the organizations."
"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"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."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"This is a well priced solution."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business153
Midsize Enterprise59
Large Enterprise181
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

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 WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information fir...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complic...
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.