KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs Perforce Puppet comparison

The compared Quest Software and Perforce solutions aren't in the same category. Quest Software is ranked #12 in RMM , with an average rating of 10.0, and holds a 1.0% mindshare in the category. Perforce is ranked #15 in CM , with an average rating of 7.7, and holds a 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Perforce users who would recommend it.

KACE Systems Management App...

Read 39 KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) reviews

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95% willing to recommend

Perforce Puppet

Read 14 Perforce Puppet reviews

941 Views
790 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

KACE Systems Management App...

Perforce Puppet

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Perforce Puppet and Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance compete in the systems management category. Quest KACE SMA seems to have an upper hand with its comprehensive management feature set that users find highly effective, whereas Perforce Puppet excels in automation capabilities.

Features: Perforce Puppet offers advanced automation tools, configuration management, and deployment efficiency. Users appreciate its scalability, role-based access control, and device state management. Quest KACE SMA provides efficient patch management, software deployment, and comprehensive inventory capabilities, delivering a broad systems management approach.

Room for Improvement: Perforce Puppet could enhance its user interface to make complex tasks more straightforward and improve documentation for new users. It may also need to expand its integration capabilities to support more third-party applications. Quest KACE SMA could benefit from improving its reporting capabilities and providing better customization options for its dashboard. Its installation process can also be made more intuitive for new users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Perforce Puppet features a streamlined deployment process with specialized technical support for automation and integration. Quest KACE SMA offers a straightforward deployment model with a user-friendly support system that caters to diverse management needs. The contrast lies in Puppet's focused support versus Quest KACE's wider deployment ease and support comprehensiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Perforce Puppet involves a competitive setup cost, offering beneficial ROI for businesses focusing on automation and configuration management. Quest KACE SMA requires a higher initial investment but justifies it with a favorable ROI due to its extensive capabilities and ease of management. Puppet is cost-effective for automation-specific needs, while Quest KACE aligns with enterprises seeking an integrated management solution.

To learn more, read our detailed KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Perforce Puppet Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Perforce Puppet

January 2025

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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

KACE Systems Management App...

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Client Desktop Management (3rd), Endpoint Compliance (8th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (12th), Patch Management (10th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (9th)

Perforce Puppet

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (15th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is designed for Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) and holds a mindshare of 1.0%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
Perforce Puppet, on the other hand, focuses on Configuration Management, holds 1.7% mindshare, down 2.0% since last year.

Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)	1.0%
Kaseya VSA	18.2%
NinjaOne	13.7%
Other	67.1%

Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)

Configuration Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Perforce Puppet	1.7%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform	16.1%
Microsoft Configuration Manager	11.5%
Other	70.7%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

Scott Tweed

Windows Engineer at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Low maintenance, reliable, and easy to create packages

I like how when you click on the device, it shows you everything that has changed as well as the software versioning. I am really enjoying the inventory aspect of it. The deployment process for both deploying and creating a package is straightforward. I believe the inventory in KACE is superior to SCCM's. I know with SCCM I could do things like remote console into machines via the agent's remote console, but that is not a feature that is provided in KACE. I know that at least in the Systems Management Appliance, I can't get to it. I'm not sure how distribution works, with distribution points. I'm not sure if KACE has that feature. You could use an SCCM to set up distribution points at remote sites so that they don't have to download patches or software from across the country. If you have a DP or something similar, they could pull it down.

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Erik Ableson

Owner at Infrageeks

A stable solution that is more suited for larger companies with mature CI/CD structures and image management processes

Puppet Enterprise is more suitable for clients working up much more structured deployment images they manage internally. Before choosing Puppet Enterprise, users should think seriously about what they're trying to accomplish and ensure they put the right pieces in place. Overall, I rate Puppet Enterprise an eight out of ten.

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

"The ability to build scripts right on the deployment center itself, as well as building groups that take those scripts/task chains has been absolutely invaluable and one of the most important parts of my whole environment."

"The Systems Deployment Appliance is magical when it comes to automating deployment... Not only can we have multiple images, specific to end-users' uses, but we have a plethora of post-installation tasks to install or configure the system, tasks that can be re-used for each system. You just have one basic base image, and then you use the post-install tasks to customize everything else. It is amazing."

"Using this solution saves us lots of time, especially when it comes to performing updates."

"We're able to deploy software and push out fixes to endpoints faster than ever."

"This solution makes it easy to control assets and upgrade all types of software."

"The scripting part increases IT productivity because of the specialized software in our environments for students' courses. You need to use software which is not programmed by developers. A lot of software for building houses or other things is developed by normal guys, who do not have much skill in programming. When you need to install this type of software, it is very difficult. You have to install registry keys, etc. For that, it is very good to use the scripting part of this solution. So, you can automate this part as well."

"With KACE, we were able to have a simplification of the software deployment management with more granularity and flexibility."

"The most valuable feature of KACE is the mass package deployment. There are a lot of endpoint management solutions in the market. The way KACE responds is with the installation management feature, which is done in a very intelligent way, as well as scripting. It's wow. It's really wow. On top of that, there is a mass undeployment feature as well."

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) pros

"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."

"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."

"The agent-based feature helps me by being stable."

"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."

"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."

"The versatility is great."

More Perforce Puppet pros

Cons

"The labeling process should be more streamlined. It should be easier to do. It gets confusing at times."

"The GUI needs some work. I love all that it can do, however, it can be just be so cluttered at times."

"When we have to do a rebuild on these machines, although it is rare, I would like to be able to do more than 10 at a time. With the current limit, it slows me down because I have to set up 10, then the next 10, and so forth."

"KACE implemented the possibility of reducing the network speed of the KACE agent. You can set it so that it takes whatever network speed you want or you can set it to 5 Mb, to save network speed. You set it for all the computers, but it would be preferable to separate between VPN connections in our home office and the local area. It would be great to be able to set separate speeds for different VLANs."

"I've had some issues with patch catalogue."

"I would like them to implement VBScript language in KACE Systems Management. Currently, we can only use PowerShell."

"There isn't a lot they need to improve with the solution itself at this point. It is pretty close to providing a single pane of glass for everything that we need for endpoint management specifically on all devices. There is very little that it doesn't provide for us, and for those, we have to go to other methods. There are some of the patching solutions that it doesn't take care of for us. So, we have to do those manually on the devices, and that's really the biggest thing. It doesn't do patching really well for non-Microsoft applications. The major application updates, particularly Windows updates, don't function nearly as well, but, for the vast majority of things, it does just fine. If they could improve in this aspect, that'd be great, but I don't know if they're going to be able to do that."

"The KACE Go Mobile App crashes a lot, and it always has. I would love to see that get fixed because it's very convenient when it does work properly, but most of the time it does not."

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) cons

"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."

"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."

"There's a lot of scope for enhancement on the DevSecOps side. They should definitely include features for compliance, for both the Linux and Windows side of the devices, as well as for network devices. Compliance is something they need to work on."

"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."

"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."

"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."

"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Their pricing is per end-point device. There is an initial cost for the license for the server, which is pretty low, and then there is a per end-point device license, which is also fairly low. So, the pricing is still reasonable."

"The pricing and licensing are good. It's worth it."

"The cost of KACE has been relatively low compared to other systems. Even if those systems have the same cost, they do not do as much of the third-party patching that KACE natively does."

"We need it, so we have to pay the price. It is what it is. If you need a gallon of milk, then you have to pay the price for it. You don't want to buy the cheap stuff. You want to buy the stuff that is organic and good for your body, which doesn't have all this other junk in it. You want it clean for your body. Quest has done that for our deployment and management systems."

"It was a very attractive price. This is a huge feature of this product. If you would "credit score" this product versus others out there on the market, this one has a very attractive price."

"The product is reasonably priced."

"Licensing is done on a per device basis, so it's dependent on how many agents you've got installed."

"Licensing is very straightforward. They don't overcomplicate it. This is not a Cisco product where you have to have 30 different licenses just to open the box. It's pretty much set-and-forget. You pay an annual license... The cost is in the mid to upper range, but the ROI exceeds the outside cost, especially once you've had the system for a while."

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) pricing and cost advice

"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."

"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."

"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

University

12%

Government

10%

Non Profit

Financial Services Firm

Government

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is that, hands down, it beat all of the others in simplicity and pricing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?

I wish Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) would have a top-down approach since we use orgs; currently, we have to go into each org to deploy applications when we need them all across the...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Quest KACE Systems Management?

My main use case for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is to deploy applications and maintain security, and we use it day-to-day to handle those tasks. With Quest KACE Systems Managemen...

See all answers

What do you like most about Puppet Enterprise?

Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution.

See all answers

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 approximately.

See all answers

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 of anything for now, except maybe the price, which I consider high at 50%.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Compared 31% of the time

Microsoft Intune vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Compared 23% of the time

BigFix vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Compared 7% of the time

NinjaOne vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Compared 6% of the time

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) Competitors

AWS Systems Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 24% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 18% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Intune vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 10% of the time

More Perforce Puppet Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

September 2025

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) report

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Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet

August 2025

Download Perforce Puppet product report

Also Known As

Dell KACE Systems Management

Puppet

Overview

KACE Systems Management Appliance offers integration capabilities, efficient image deployment, and comprehensive asset management. It supports centralized management across diverse devices and locations, simplifying IT processes and enhancing security.

KACE Systems Management Appliance provides single-pane visibility for endpoint management, mass software deployment, automated patch management, robust scripting, and detailed inventory tracking. It streamlines IT management and improves cyber-security compliance through remote software updates and centralized IT request handling. Despite struggles with scalability and the need for interface improvements, it enables efficient device imaging, script automation, and network management through detailed reporting. Organizations find it effective for software deployment, asset management, and endpoint monitoring, serving thousands of IoT devices and desktops.

What are the key features of KACE Systems Management Appliance?

Integration capabilities: Seamlessly connects with existing IT systems.
Efficient image deployment: Facilitates quick and effective distribution of system images.
Comprehensive asset management: Provides detailed tracking and management of IT assets.
User-friendly helpdesk: Simplifies handling IT requests and issues.
Automated patch management: Ensures devices are up-to-date with security patches.
Robust scripting: Allows for automation of complex IT tasks.
Detailed inventory tracking: Maintains accurate records of all IT assets.

What benefits should users expect from KACE Systems Management Appliance?

Simplified IT processes: Centralized management enhances operational efficiency.
Improved security: Streamlines cyber-security compliance through automated updates.
Flexibility in customizations: Adapts to specific IT environment needs.
Increased productivity: Efficient ticketing and reporting ease organizational operations.
Remote software updates: Ensures all devices are current, reducing security risks.

In healthcare, KACE Systems Management Appliance is used for maintaining device compliance and security standards. Educational institutions benefit from its capabilities to manage large numbers of endpoints across campuses. In finance, it aids in strict compliance requirements through automated patch management and detailed reporting. Retail sectors leverage its asset management features to streamline operations across numerous locations.

Quest Software

Perforce Puppet provides robust features for configuration management, compatible with Linux, Windows, and UNIX. It simplifies infrastructure management with automation and role-based access control, though it requires mastering command-line operations due to limited GUI.

Perforce Puppet utilizes a hub-spoke architecture to enhance automation across production environments, excelling in provisioning and configuration management for on-prem servers. Its infrastructure as code approach eases deployment and maintenance, supported by community resources for stabilization. Support for diverse devices makes it adaptable for complex configurations, but pricing and integration gaps, especially with Infosec tools, pose challenges for some.

What are the key features of Perforce Puppet?

Remote Package Installation: Centralized server management for remote installations
File Management: Streamlined file operations from a single point
Infrastructure as Code: Simplifies infrastructure maintenance
Scalability: Grows with organizational demands
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures secure user management
Device State Control: Efficient device integration and configuration

What benefits should users expect?

Automation Efficiency: Reduces manual tasks with hub-spoke architecture
Versatility: Supports multiple operating systems
Community Support: Backed by a stable and organized community
Configuration Simplicity: Simplifies and streamlines setup processes

Puppet is implemented across industries for managing production servers, especially in regulated environments. Its security compliance checks ensure adherence to required standards, while public configurations assist in device network integration. Industries benefit from its ability to streamline Linux server automation and explore expansion into Windows systems to meet cross-platform requirements.

Perforce

Sample Customers

Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King

Los Alamos National Laboratory, GitHub, IP Commerce, Cedexis, Spiceworks, Server Density, Swisstopo, Chockstone, Constant Contact, NICS, Citrix

Buyer's Guide

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Perforce Puppet

January 2025

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