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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
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
384
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (3rd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Chef
Ranking in Configuration Management
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (14th), Release Automation (8th)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Configuration Management
22nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (44th), Network Monitoring Software (25th), Server Monitoring (18th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (23rd), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (27th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.2%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 3.4%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.2%
Chef3.4%
WhatsUp Gold2.1%
Other90.3%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Senior Business Development Executive at Digitaltrack
Centralized device management has automated onboarding and improves remote security compliance
One thing I feel Microsoft Intune could improve is troubleshooting visibility. In many cases, when a policy or application deployment fails, the error messages are a bit generic. So, admins still spend time checking logs manually or testing on devices one by one. Compared to the simplicity of deployment, troubleshooting sometimes feels less mature. I also think reporting and real-time monitoring could be stronger. The dashboard gives useful information, but in large environments, many teams still depend on additional tools or scripts for deeper reporting and analytics. If I had to focus on one area first, I would probably choose troubleshooting and reporting. Deployment through Microsoft Intune is generally straightforward, but when something fails, identifying the exact root cause can still take more time than expected. Error messages are sometimes too generic, and admins often have to dig through logs, sync status, or multiple portals to understand what actually happened. I think user experience and policy management could also improve further. Microsoft Intune has become much better over the years, but sometimes the admin portal still feels fragmented because certain configurations open in different sections or redirect to older interfaces. For new admins, especially, it can take time to understand where everything is located. Another thing is policy conflict handling. In larger organizations, multiple device policies, compliance rules, and configuration profiles can overlap. When conflicts happen, the visibility is not always very clear, so admins spend time figuring out which policy actually won or caused the issue.
G Srivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"Microsoft Intune has helped us by improving our security posture, leading to fewer security problems, and helping us understand where we have issues."
"Comparing this to having an endpoint management solution, the efficiency gain may be up to 80%."
"Microsoft Intune is a core product, and it's very stable"
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive and we are happy with the level of service on offer."
"The best part of Intune is device control. If we need to block a user from opening something in their organization's system, we can do it from Intune. If we want to restrict the movement of an organization's data to prevent users from copying the data into Outlook, WhatsApp, or their personal Gmail, we can limit that via Intune. It secures all corporate data."
"The security features are most definitely valuable. If I have to give an example, the lockdown features that prevent employees from configuring anything or downloading company data are valuable. We get high-quality device protection, malware protection, and information protection at the same time."
"The navigation, the keys, and the settings are easy to find. It is easy to understand."
"The ability to manage devices with different sets of policies is most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"We have seen a lot of ROI, our customers really enjoy the tool, and we are able to save in development time and deployment time, making it easier to manage the environments."
"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."
"Using Chef for automating infrastructure and applications in my organization has helped us reduce manual tasks by more than forty percent, thereby saving significant revenue for the client."
"Chef has given us an easy time doing all that automation, security, and monitoring by automating the processes across all those servers so that we don't do manual work, going one place at a time to install updates."
"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."
"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."
"Chef benefited my organization by definitely reducing time because we were provisioning tens of thousands of servers."
"The new version has a lot of improved features."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the application monitors that allow for discreet roaming on network devices."
"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides. Additionally, WhatsUp Gold is a Windows-based solution which is a benefit."
"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."
"It handles the basics of monitoring."
"It is very good at monitoring the network and keeps us up to date on the status of internal devices."
"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."
"Our local support team provides excellent service."
 

Cons

"It needs certificate provisioning for S/MIME purposes."
"Microsoft Intune could be improved by making the UI more intuitive, enhancing reporting and analytics for better visibility, simplifying troubleshooting and error messaging, and improving performance and policy sync speed in larger environments."
"No option to do end-to-en macOS management. Slow implementation of policies."
"Microsoft Intune fails a lot when it comes to device compliance."
"My assessment of the user experience of Microsoft Intune is that it is sometimes good and sometimes poor, depending on Microsoft's infrastructure."
"It is difficult to say what I would improve in Microsoft Intune from my point of view because all the features that I do not have are included only in the higher P2 plan or in different packets such as the E5, E3, or E7."
"There are items that require improvements. One is the controls from iOS."
"It would really be helpful to have the option to manage server operating systems as well, like Windows Server, at least. That way, we could scrap the use of SCCM, which requires a lot of on-premises infrastructure."
"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."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"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."
"I think it can be costly considering the advantages and disadvantages of Chef."
"In terms of revenue, I have not observed much because it is holistically depending on the project."
"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."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."
"Setting up WhatsUp Gold is complicated and not easy because it requires managing SNMP and many complex settings in the devices it's monitoring, and fine-tuning it to fit our needs is also not very easy."
"Users want SMS available via Whatsapp Gold. They don't want to go through third party SMS servers. The solution should work to make this possible."
"The technical support does not bother to respond."
"My understanding is that there are better products out there that do a better job."
"Sometimes it's a little bit slow."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Intune has a user-based subscription model. You can go for a monthly or a yearly payment."
"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."
"Microsoft Intune has been incorporated into our Microsoft E5 licenses."
"This cost is approximately $30 USD per user per month."
"I have no comment on pricing of the solution."
"While I don't have access to high-level financial information, I believe we have achieved lower costs with this implementation."
"The licensing costs we leave up to the customer and these vary from one to another."
"Microsoft offers some licensing where it's included at no extra cost when customers are already using the licenses. In such a case, it's a really good value. If you have to buy the licensing for it, it's probably on par with other solutions. It isn't substantially more or less expensive. The great thing is that it is included in some of Microsoft's licensed packages. So, some customers don't have to spend additional money for it. Typically, most providers that support Intune do charge a management fee of some sort or some fee. Certainly, we're no exception."
"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"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."
"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 able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business195
Midsize Enterprise64
Large Enterprise190
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise20
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?
The licensing cost is zero for Chef if you are using the free version. They have developed other versions, such as Sa...
What needs improvement with Chef?
There are other automation tools, configuration management tools in the market, which offer many good functionalities...
What is your primary use case for Chef?
We used Chef, the automation tool, as an Infrastructure as Code tool for configuration deployment, such as deploying ...
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...
 

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: November 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.