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ManageEngine OS Deployer vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 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
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
378
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
ManageEngine OS Deployer
Ranking in Configuration Management
25th
Average Rating
6.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ManageEngine OS Deployer is 1.6%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 10.1%, down from 16.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.7%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform10.1%
ManageEngine OS Deployer1.6%
Other83.6%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

OluwashileAdeniyi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
it_user363621 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a engineering company with 51-200 employees
It adds necessary drivers for hardware on desktop and notebooks. I'd like to see more detailed explanations and support for how to use it through PXE.
It's helped us to install OS's onto desktops and notebooks It adds a simple solution for adding specific, necessary drivers for hardware on desktops and notebooks when they arrive. I'd like to see more detailed explanations and support for how to use it through PXE. I've never gotten this…
Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Dev Ops Engineer at 11 East Capital
Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes
The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The performance of Microsoft Intune is good."
"Microsoft integrated BitLocker and Active Directory into Intune, simplifying management."
"The initial setup is not overly complex or difficult."
"Microsoft Intune has had a very positive impact on our organization, especially in terms of security and efficiency."
"Microsoft Intune is cost-effective and easy to use, so I can recommend it."
"The most valuable includes managing everything from a single console."
"Microsoft Intune simplifies device management by replacing the traditional method of installing OS, joining a domain, and configuring everything manually."
"The aspects I find most valuable are the managing the data and applications. I can also restrict the users to install any applications. I can also wipe the data if the phone was missplaced or stolen. These are the basics for me."
"Before OS Deployer, I used Microsoft WDS, which requires more manual labor than OS Deployer."
"The work that previously took two months now takes 10 to 15 minutes."
"Having the Dashboard from an admin point of view, and seeing how all the projects and all the jobs lay out, is helpful."
"There is a return on investment as a technical person; it has saved time and effort in maintaining the deployment environment, so on the technical side, it's saved lots of time and effort on the configuration."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is very helpful due to passwordless integration and the ability to interact with multiple servers at once, which is especially advantageous when dealing with thousands of servers."
"The reason I like Ansible is, first, the coding of it is very straightforward, it's very human-readable."
"This solution allows us to stitch a lot of different parts of the workflow together."
"Ansible automation has benefited our organization."
"The ease of being able to use the modules and collections to define what our business processes are is valuable. We are able to give non-technical people the ability to look at a process and say, "We need a step here. Someone do something and put it right here.""
 

Cons

"The solution could improve its flexibility."
"It's only good for a Microsoft environment."
"The technical support by Microsoft is not so good. We have to manage many things by ourselves and do not receive responses in a timely manner."
"From my level of analysis, the feature I would prefer to see added to Microsoft Intune is extensive support. Anything that helps to diagnose the problem and solve it would be useful."
"Installing software in Microsoft Intune can be challenging if it is not already prepackaged."
"The technical support could be improved."
"I heard some pain points. The main thing is the learning curve. It took time to implement. It was not the best product starting out of the gate."
"There is room for improvement in the remediation and detection modules, which are currently about eighty percent fully functional."
"I'd like to see more detailed explanations and support for how to use it through PXE."
"Some of the modules in Ansible could be a bit more mature. There is still a little room for further development. Some performance aspects could be improved, perhaps in the form of parallelism within Ansible."
"The tool should allow us to create infrastructure. It has everything when it comes to management, but it lacks the provisioning aspect."
"One problem that I'm facing right now is the mismatch between the new version of Python and Ansible. Sometimes it's Python 2, and sometimes it's Python 3. When things get a bit dicey, I wish that Ansible would solve this issue by itself. I don't want to have to specify if it is Python 3 or version 2."
"The technical support is not adequate. The Ansible sales and technical support services need significant improvement."
"There are challenges in using the graphical interface, particularly in open-source versions."
"They should think of this product as an end-to-end solution and begin to develop it that way."
"The solution must be made easier to configure."
"Improvements should be made in terms of execution speed, which is, I believe, the most lacking feature. Aside from that, re-triggering a failed task is another useful feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you're subscribing to Premium or E3, there are no additional costs for Intune, it's included."
"If you're ever going to buy an Office 365 environment, then pricing is reasonable given all that it does, but if you're not, then you might find the pricing expensive."
"The price of Intune is included with the license for Office 365, so we don't have to pay anything extra for it."
"The price of Intune is often included as part of a bundle with other Microsoft licenses, which makes it somewhat cheaper."
"Microsoft Intune's costliness stems from licensing fees and the overhead associated with its management, user experience, and device remediation."
"They have categorized the licenses according to the size of the business. So, if it's a smaller organization, we can choose the license accordingly. If it's a big organization, then we can choose accordingly. Everything is clearly mentioned, and we can decide. It's suitable for all kinds of infrastructure, and that's very goo"
"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."
"It is reasonable for the features it has."
Information not available
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
"It is a little pricey but it is affordable. It is not that bad."
"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."
"We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business193
Midsize Enterprise61
Large Enterprise186
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

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What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There ...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
No data available
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
EMC, Costco Wholesale Australia, Canyon Bicycles, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Eleventh Judicial Circuit, WashingtonFirst Bank, SunEdison, Stafford Development Company, City of Redondo Beach, Columbia Medical Associates, Pratt Institute, Novati Technologies, Toyota Boshoku America, Flight Centre UK, RapidAdvance
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, HashiCorp, Red Hat and others in Configuration Management. Updated: June 2026.
904,973 professionals have used our research since 2012.