Chef vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

Chef and WhatsUp Gold are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Chef is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.0, while WhatsUp Gold is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.0. Chef holds a 3.5% mindshare in CM, compared to WhatsUp Gold’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Chef users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of WhatsUp Gold users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Chef and WhatsUp Gold based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 902,270 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

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.9%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 3.5%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.7%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune	4.9%
Chef	3.5%
WhatsUp Gold	1.7%
Other	89.9%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

OluwashileAdeniyi

Senior Infrastructure Security Engineer at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees

Centralized endpoint security has improved and supports hybrid work and BYOD policies

Regarding what I dislike about Microsoft Intune and its downsides, I would say that more Mac controls are needed because we have limited Mac and Linux control. When comparing controls and policies between Windows, Mac, and Linux, Windows has almost everything you can think of, while Mac and Linux have limited types of control. You cannot implement certain things on Mac and Linux that you can on Windows. The limited controls are a major issue. Additionally, if Microsoft could find a way to embed servers into Microsoft Intune, that would be beneficial. Microsoft Intune is not really designed for servers or Windows servers. It is more tailored towards Windows 11 and Windows 10 operating systems. Windows servers are not fully supported. Enterprise organizations usually have both servers and endpoints, which are users' workstations. For servers, most people look for other solutions such as SCCM, which is Configuration Manager. However, SCCM is what Microsoft Intune is trying to replace. Both SCCM and Microsoft Intune belong to Microsoft. Microsoft is trying to transition organizations into Microsoft Intune, the native cloud solution. However, because this update is still in process, servers are not fully compatible with Microsoft Intune and cannot be managed by it. The current policy that has emerged from issues with clients is what they call co-management, which is relatively new, and I do not know if adoption is significant. Many legacy or older customers who have been using these products for decades still have SCCM. When it is time for them to manage their Windows devices, they use what is called cloud attach. Cloud attach is a term whereby your SCCM is connected to your Microsoft Intune. Most people do not know about it, but I have deployed it for several organizations. Cloud attach and co-management work together so that your device is in SCCM, but some policies are pushed from Microsoft Intune. It is like two different solutions working hand in hand. That is what they call co-management. Microsoft Intune does not bring all of your endpoint and security management tools into one place, which is the goal and how it should be. However, as I mentioned, servers are not included. If we talk about end users, Microsoft Intune does bring all your devices together. In a typical enterprise environment, you have end users with workstations, laptops, company-issued phones, and bring your own devices. You can create policies for all of these. However, for the backend, your servers do not have much coverage. Servers are not really covered by Microsoft Intune in that way.

Read full review

G Srivastava

Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Agent setup and complexity have limited automation benefits but have reduced manual patching work

There are other automation tools, configuration management tools in the market, which offer many good functionalities compared to Chef. For Chef, we need to install those agents, the Chef client, on all those nodes. That is another heinous task to perform on those nodes. Compared with other tools, they do not require any agent; they simply push configurations to all the clients. Chef needs to improve on this agent installation on all those nodes. I would say that the agent configuration is required, and we need to manage the workstation, the Chef server, and then the Chef client. These two or three things are very difficult. It is a time-taking task compared with other configuration management tools. They need to compete with other tools, such as Ansible or Terraform. They should work on their agent part. If they can remove the agent installation on the nodes and combine both the Chef server and workstation into one server, that will provide a significant benefit in cost for the clients. They should aim for an agentless architecture rather than an agent-based architecture, which will help other customers. That is a very difficult thing because I have stopped using Chef. If you have very good developers who are skilled in Ruby language and can write codes in the Chef recipe, then those developers should start using Chef.

Read full review

Erik Cheng

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can securely manage both company-owned devices and personal devices enrolled in our BYOD program."

"I like that it's very good and very simple. I found that we just needed to have a proper subscription for an Intune tenant, and from the subscription, if we have the right role assigned, like the global admin role or the owner role, we can use Microsoft cloud resources. With the help of that, we can do many things like setting up Microsoft Intune in the cloud to create our virtual machines. All these can be done, and the steps are very simple. I really liked it. I like features like Windows Auto-Enrollment. I like it very much because whenever you supply it to the end-user, it will be ready to use immediately. The end-user only needs to provide the user credentials, and then they are good to go. I also really like Cloud PC, which was recently launched on Azure."

"Given all of the factors and things to consider, including features and cost, I would say that Intune has a slight edge over competing products."

"Remote Wipe and Autopilot is one of the best features."

"There are no complaints about the stability. It works one hundred percent of the time."

"Using this product has completely stopped DLP, so people cannot take material off of corporate machines or corporate imagines, and that's a huge benefit."

"Microsoft Intune has improved endpoint visibility, simplified remote device management, and helped standardize security policies across both corporate and remote devices."

"The most important part is that they're fast in implementing and integrating with the Windows operating system, as well as how it integrates with other Office 365 products."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"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."

"All the Chef enthusiasts who come to us to learn and train improve their skillsets to get jobs."

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

"Manual deployments came to a halt completely. Server provisioning became lightning fast."

"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 is easy to manage on our production systems because there is an agent running on all the servers."

"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."

More Chef pros

"One thing good about WhatsUp Gold is that it is fairly stable."

"You have to invest a few days to become an expert in this solution, but after that, it's possible to do almost anything with it."

"The interface in the last few years it has been a lot greater, they are much more user-friendly. I like the interface."

"It is easy to access and discover devices, as well as monitor them automatically. The topology discover is also a useful feature."

"The new version has a lot of improved features."

"The product is reasonably priced."

"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."

"We've been using it for many years and we use it typically for early warning, as it notifies customers of problems prior to failure."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

"Manually syncing devices to enforce policies is cumbersome."

"I would like the ability to install the agent on devices from suppliers, which would enable us to implement a zero-trust strategy for guest devices."

"The interoperability or communication with a different platform can be better. It is a two-way street. It is not only about Microsoft. The other platforms also have to be willing to share some information, but that absolutely can be improved."

"There are a few security features that are not available in Microsoft Intune, when compared to other products."

"Technical support is not great. If you open up a case, it may remain there for a long time."

"At this time, I do not have any areas for improvement. I have heard about some downtime, but I am not in the local IT team."

"It just doesn't handle software updates well at all by itself. You need to be a scripting wizard to make those happen properly, or you use third-party tools."

"I cannot think of any particular features which I consider to be most valuable."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"I chose a rating of seven because Chef is a great tool, but sometimes resource consumption is quite large, and it requires server-side setup, which is not required but should be considered if you are using server-client plus server."

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

"One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible."

"The compatibility with the different platforms that we are using needs improvement."

"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."

"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."

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

More Chef cons

"Honestly, I do not particularly like WhatsUp Gold. I think we should get rid of it."

"Importing the maps and being able to customize them could be easier."

"I might like to see a better interface in the future. It's not necessarily easy to integrate the product with other vendors."

"The tool should focus on increasing its market share, as it is the only area of concern where improvements are needed."

"The product is old and not updated."

"Regional product team support is not very good."

"The price could be improved. When we first started using this product, the company was new. The prices were very low then, in comparison with HP OpenView or IBM, but now the policy is too high, relative to the number of devices we have."

"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."

More WhatsUp Gold cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As a partner, we always look for how we can generate more revenue from a consulting point of view, but I do not see any complaints from the customer side regarding pricing, so they are satisfied with it."

"If you're subscribing to Premium or E3, there are no additional costs for Intune, it's included."

"Cost is not my department, but the product is included in the E5 license that we already pay for every user, so no additional cost is incurred."

"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."

"This cost is approximately $30 USD per user per month."

"The E5 license is expensive."

"I recently got to know that the AD P1 license is compulsory to use Intune Autopilot, which was surprising for me. Earlier, this was not the case. It is the wrong thing to do. We now need to purchase AD P1 licenses for us and for our customers. I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing."

"For Microsoft 365 E5 clients, cost is not an issue as this product is one of the benefits."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."

"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."

"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."

"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

"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 tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."

"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."

"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."

More WhatsUp Gold pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	190
Midsize Enterprise	65
Large Enterprise	185

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Chef?

I do not have anything in mind at this time for how Chef could be improved.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Chef?

My main use case for Chef is configuration management to set up systems, provision software, and keep configurations ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 10% of the time

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 10% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

Jenkins vs Chef

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Chef

Compared 6% of the time

HashiCorp Terraform vs Chef

Compared 3% of the time

More Chef Competitors

LibreNMS vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

SCOM vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

NinjaOne vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

ScienceLogic vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

More WhatsUp Gold Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

June 2026

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Chef

June 2026

Download Chef product report

Buyer's Guide

WhatsUp Gold

May 2026

Download WhatsUp Gold product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service designed for device management, security, and compliance. It supports automation and facilitates endpoint management for Windows, iOS, and Android devices, ensuring data protection and efficient policy enforcement.

Microsoft Intune offers seamless integration with tools like Windows Autopilot to automate device setup and deployment. Integrated with Azure Active Directory, it enhances policy management while providing robust reporting and analytics tools for compliance tracking. Despite its intuitive interface aimed at simplifying navigation and device security management, there are challenges such as compatibility issues with Linux and Mac, limited policy support for Android, and demands for better third-party integration. It's widely used for both corporate-owned devices and BYOD scenarios in dynamic IT environments.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Windows Autopilot: Automates device setup for rapid deployment.
Azure Active Directory Integration: Enhances user policy management.
Reporting and Analytics: Improves compliance visibility.
Mobile Application Management: Ensures app security without compromising personal data.
Cloud-Based Management: Allows management from any location.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Time Efficiency: Automation reduces time in policy enforcement and configuration updates.
Enhanced Security: Ensures data protection across corporate-owned and BYOD devices.
Improved Compliance: Advanced reporting tools enhance compliance visibility.
Flexible Management: Cloud-based nature supports management from any location.

In industries such as finance and healthcare, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure data protection and compliance with regulatory standards. Manufacturing sectors utilize Intune for managing a distributed workforce across global locations, while educational institutions employ it to secure and manage devices in learning environments supporting both students and faculty.

Microsoft

Chef is a powerful automation tool designed for efficient infrastructure management across varied environments. With its environment-as-code model, Chef provides predictability and reliability in deployments, enhancing security compliance and reducing manual intervention.

Chef focuses on automating deployments and configurations, ensuring server consistency, managing scalable environments, and orchestrating service deployments. Its versatile recipe-writing and Ruby-based flexibility cater to large-scale operational needs. Chef’s integration with services like AWS and Azure enhances its versatility, while its idempotent deployments assure reliability. Despite its prowess, Chef requires improvements in feature offerings, especially regarding container orchestration and cloud technologies.

What are Chef's Key Features?

Automation: Streamlines infrastructure management across diverse environments.
Environment-as-Code: Offers predictability and efficiency in management.
Idempotency: Ensures reliable deployments by maintaining the same outcome no matter how often applied.
Cloud Integration: Seamlessly integrates with AWS and Azure.
Security Compliance: Enhances security measures across infrastructures.
Ruby-Based Flexibility: Provides versatile recipe-writing and flexible configurations.
Scalability: Suitable for large-scale operational needs.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Consistency: Automated deployments reduce errors and manual efforts.
Efficiency: Decrease in manual intervention enhances team productivity.
Reliability: Idempotent deployments ensure consistent outcomes.
Scalability: Supports expanding infrastructures effectively.
Security: Maintains compliance with enhanced security features.

Chef is implemented across industries to automate application deployments, manage CI/CD pipelines, provision infrastructure, and maintain compliance. Its recipes and cookbooks streamline workflows in application deployment, system updates, and orchestration of services, reducing errors and manual intervention in a variety of sectors.

Progress Software

WhatsUp Gold stands out with its comprehensive network monitoring, dynamic mapping, and real-time alerts, offering essential tools for managing extensive IT infrastructures.

WhatsUp Gold provides robust capabilities in network visibility through dynamic mapping and NetFlow analysis. The platform's interactive topology aids in pinpointing issues effectively. Auto-discovery ensures complete network device tracking. While offering an intuitive interface and integration with Cisco ServiceNow, users find server performance monitoring useful for incident handling. However, improvements are anticipated in application monitoring and Active Directory integration. The pricing model and customization options leave room for enhancement. Despite these, users benefit from its integrated dashboards for immediate device health checks and network updates, making it beneficial for large-scale infrastructure management.

What features does WhatsUp Gold offer?

Network Monitoring: Provides continuous oversight of network components
Dynamic Mapping: Offers visual representation of network topology
NetFlow Analysis: Delivers insights into bandwidth utilization
Threshold Alerts: Notifies users upon reaching set performance thresholds
Auto-Discovery: Detects devices automatically for complete network coverage

What benefits should users expect from reviews?

Comprehensive Visibility: Enhanced understanding of network elements
Real-Time Monitoring: Immediate insights into network and device status
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive solution suitable for expansive networks
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies the management of complex networks

Organizations in sectors like telecommunications, education, and healthcare utilize WhatsUp Gold for their network monitoring needs. Telecom companies track switches and routers, educational institutions manage bandwidth usage, and healthcare facilities monitor device availability to ensure seamless operations.

Progress Software

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

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold

June 2026

Free Report: Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold

Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold report.

See our list of best Configuration Management vendors.

We monitor all Configuration Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.