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Perforce Puppet vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 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
377
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Perforce Puppet
Ranking in Configuration Management
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
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 August 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.6%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 4.2%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 9.8%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.6%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform9.8%
Perforce Puppet4.2%
Other81.4%
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.
reviewer2284542 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automated configuration management ensures consistent server setups
The strength of Puppet is in automated configuration management. We can configure a server once and set rules with Puppet so that future server configurations are automatic and consistent with company requests. Puppet is declarative, meaning it finds the best state for itself and corrects any deviations in the configuration.
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

"When managing a large number of devices in an organization, it becomes easy to handle them on one platform using Microsoft Intune."
"Endpoint Manager has been around the longest, it's survived, it's matured and it's the top dog in general."
"At the moment, Autopilot is the most valuable feature."
"When a user receives the machine, sets it up, and turns it on, it connects to the domain and begins installing software, becoming ready within approximately half an hour, which represents a significant time savings for IT departments."
"Third party integrations are very convenient to use with Microsoft Intune."
"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."
"My favorite feature of Microsoft Intune is the dashboard; the dashboard is very simple and user-friendly, and any person, even without prior knowledge, can understand it easily by seeing the interface dashboard."
"We can securely manage both company-owned devices and personal devices enrolled in our BYOD program."
"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."
"The organization of the overall product in terms of usage is very good."
"The valuable features I found are installing packages remotely and pushing files from a centralized server, and we can also create users and monitor services remotely."
"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes, freeing our engineers to spend their time on creative, visionary work instead of repetitive tasks."
"Good tools to automate your servers, the time and effort to learn writing manifest is quiet high but it's worth on the long run"
"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."
"Puppet Enterprise provides an autonomous delivery solution and agent-server architecture that was really helpful on our case for Internet base device management."
"Before we began using Puppet, everything was manual; once we moved to Puppet, it opened up a completely new world of automated management, which was amazing."
"The reason I like Ansible is, first, the coding of it is very straightforward, it's very human-readable."
"It allows control over thousands of servers, whether virtual or physical."
"It is one of the best products to use, easy to understand and easy to manage, and you can use it if you have a cloud, physical server, or VMware because it is very good and offers operational efficiency."
"I like Ansible's ease of use. If you have Linux skills, you can create a reusable template for the dependencies and other configurations. I can store the templates in a repository and share them with my customers or other developers. It's a popular solution, so there is a large user base that can share templates."
"It was easy to read and learn. It is a YAML-based syntax, which makes it easily understand and pick up."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is valuable due to the simplicity of the YAML language."
"We can manage all the configuration consistency between all our servers."
"The playbooks and the code the solution uses are quite useful."
 

Cons

"The security aspect could be more effective. We are using other applications to manage network devices and groups, so if Microsoft Intune could improve in this area, especially on a network level, it would be a real advantage."
"The pricing can be expensive if you are not combining it with other products."
"My experience with them was very bad. They don't know about their own product."
"Sometimes, updating a client policy is very difficult. This needs to be improved."
"I would like to see easier pushdowns. Currently, we have to package our own software and then push it. Intune can make that way easier and integrate applications, such as Zoom and Adobe Acrobat, that are used by a lot of enterprise or corporate organizations."
"There is room for improvement in the remediation and detection modules, which are currently about eighty percent fully functional."
"Microsoft Intune can be improved by making it even more seamless for users to download their certificates."
"Customer support is decent overall, but not perfect. Most issues get resolved but sometimes response time can be a bit slow or require multiple follow-ups."
"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."
"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."
"It needs GUI based automation. There is way too much command line work involved."
"Regarding the cost, I find it expensive, always."
"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."
"Puppet has a steep learning curve so you need to spend some time before you can use Puppet daily."
"Well at the beginning it was kind of complex. Because you had a lack of knowledge."
"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 have been some differences between the operating systems that we have noticed. It could be down to cryptographic policies, but we have noticed some speed issues. They should work on the speed of deployment on different operating systems."
"There were a few scalability issues. I had no problems as long as the number of servers was less than 500."
"The governance features could be improved."
"The solution is slightly expensive, and its pricing could be improved."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is not the best at server provisioning. Terraform is better."
"The solution should add a nice self-service portal."
"When compared to Terraform, the execution speed of Ansible is very slow due to the way it executes things."
"We are very satisfied with what we have. From a management point of view, whatever makes it easier for my team to help customers write their own playbooks would be something very beneficial. Everything is going as a service. Creating playbooks can become much more consumer-oriented so that customers do not need to contact us to write their own playbooks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Most of our clients come to us with licensing already in place. On average, it costs $6 per device per month to add Intune to an Office 365 subscription, but I am not sure."
"Microsoft's licensing is more flexible and adaptive than its competitors."
"Its price is fair. It's a normal price. It isn't too expensive or too cheap."
"The product is relatively pricey, but considering its benefits, I'd say it's fair. The benefits outweigh the expensive licensing fees, especially for large organizations, but medium-sized and smaller businesses may be unable to afford it."
"Microsoft Intune is pretty reasonable. We have difficulty with Azure, which is probably why we have not put many assets in Azure. Everything we put there is very expensive."
"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."
"Microsoft Intune is expensive."
"There are licenses required for this solution. We enable licenses on the devices we need to manage."
"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."
"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."
"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."
"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."
"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
"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."
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Comparison Review

it_user185772 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business192
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise186
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise52
 

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 Puppet Enterprise?
Regarding the cost, I find it expensive, always. I don't know how much the license would cost per year or per user ap...
What needs improvement with Puppet Enterprise?
I don't know what could be improved in Perforce Puppet to make this tool better for the next release. I can't think o...
What is your primary use case for Puppet Enterprise?
My main use case for Perforce Puppet is for configuration management.
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
Puppet
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Los Alamos National Laboratory, GitHub, IP Commerce, Cedexis, Spiceworks, Server Density, Swisstopo, Chockstone, Constant Contact, NICS, Citrix
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Perforce Puppet vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.