Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Chef vs Digital.ai Agility comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

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

Chef
Ranking in Release Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (12th), Configuration Management (12th)
Digital.ai Agility
Ranking in Release Automation
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (16th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (11th), Value Stream Management Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 1.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Digital.ai Agility is 1.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Chef1.8%
Digital.ai Agility1.7%
Other96.5%
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom
Automation has transformed daily infrastructure work and now frees teams to focus on new challenges
One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible. There should be a focus on how to make it understandable, not just to infrastructure people, but also to those working in monitoring. How can we ensure that it is part of their daily input? That is something that still has a small missing link. We are almost there, but it can help us achieve outcomes in the future in terms of objectives, not just workflows and visibility. How can we make real-time interactive dashboards more available? Look at what kind of tools can be integrated with them, not just working with the ones like Chef Kitchen and Habitat, but trying to make it even more flexible than what we have right now. On support, I think there should be more focus on how we can achieve AI automations in answering questions for beginners and addressing deep concerns without general manual management.
PM
Lead Consultant at Innovation Roots
Collaboration and setup efficiency stand out, though integration and local support need improvement
The solution is excellent for collaboration. From the agility point of view, they have very good sprint functionality, allowing you to set up sprints effectively. For Scrum teams, it is particularly good and easy to set up. With respect to sprints and getting metrics out, such as velocity and related measurements, the functionality is robust. The Scrum boards are particularly effective. Based on my colleague's exploration and setup, I observed how easily the team was able to use it. The integration with that tool was particularly helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."
"Chef offers valuable features in infrastructure as code, where it uses cookbooks and recipes written in Ruby language for detailed and flexible configuration of systems and applications."
"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
"All the use cases—configurations, deployment, compliance, and other common situations—demonstrate how helpful Chef is, and we found it very beneficial, which is why both my past organization and my current organization are using it."
"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."
"This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"It allows my clients to have one central tool to manage their agile projects."
"Agility is highly flexible. It can do much more than what our client is doing with it. They use it in a defined way. Some at that company have a much broader knowledge of agile and SAFe, but they're given applications and a mandated way to work. We had to work within their parameters and provide an accurate transition so the data would be mapped and pushed through."
"For visualization capabilities, the automation capabilities make it possible to support the different personas. The features and capabilities are excellent and come with excellent support."
"With some of the other tools, you have to buy 20 different plugins to get to the same capability that comes with the basic Agility capability."
"The solution is excellent for collaboration; from the agility point of view, they have very good sprint functionality, allowing you to set up sprints effectively."
"It can generate reports showing a burndown chart, burnup chart, and the planned vs actual velocity."
 

Cons

"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"It is an old technology."
"I would like them to add database specific items, configuration items, and migration tools. Not necessarily on the builder side or the actual setup of the system, but more of a migration package for your different database sets, such as MongoDB, your extenders, etc. I want to see how that would function with a transition out to AWS for Aurora services and any of the RDBMS packages."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"Other things would be the need to use Cinc if you want to use the open-source version because Progress Software's policy on copyright is confusing for new users and it puts a barrier in the way to adoption because many small, medium enterprises, startups, and non-profits who might want to use Chef would find the whole Cinc versus Chef situation confusing and the fact that there is not an easy path to install Chef and then go to a paid version without having to change from Cinc to Chef or Chef to Cinc."
"There is room for improvement in getting the analytics portion of the solution more integrated with the rest of it."
"Improve how to create and track releases. Currently, I have to create child projects."
"In my work as a contractor, it's always frustrating when a client has multiple software applications that don't talk to each other and they all perform the same function. That presents a huge challenge between their IT groups."
"The machine learning features are a new capability but could be improved. This is being worked by Digital.ai currently. Multicolor simulation, specifically, could be improved."
"The user interface can be improved by adding Save, Edit, Add, Cancel, and Return buttons to the popup windows that are displayed when you click on a child item."
"It was not supporting some plugins. We wanted to migrate data that we were already using."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Comparing the pricing to other products, I think this solution is in the middle."
"You get what you pay for. Don't let your development teams dictate what the portfolio management team should use as the main tool."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Release Automation solutions are best for your needs.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Insurance Company
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise19
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 functionality that is exclusive to the paid version was actually in use in the orga...
What needs improvement with Chef?
I would add that Ruby is a domain-specific language in the Chef dialect, which is a learning curve, but so is Terraform and so is Ansible. The only feedback would be if they could come up with an i...
What is your primary use case for Chef?
My main use case for Chef is configuration and deployments. We receive blank servers and use Chef to build predefined application or appliance servers. A quick specific example of how I use Chef to...
What needs improvement with Digital.ai Agility?
It was not supporting some plugins. We wanted to migrate data that we were already using. The migration of data and getting it up and running from the legacy system took some time to get accustomed...
What is your primary use case for Digital.ai Agility?
We were explaining how to set up the project itself, which describes the main use cases for Digital.ai Agility. This includes how to set up the workflow and how to manage and build a Kanban. I want...
What advice do you have for others considering Digital.ai Agility?
Digital.ai Agility has a bigger reach because it has many good integration points. It can be a one-stop solution for different needs, eliminating the need to use multiple pieces of software. Howeve...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VersionOne Lifecycle, VersionOne, CollabNet VersionOne, Digital.ai Continuum
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Siemens Health Services (HS), Cerner Corporation, Aaron's, Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta, Kelley Blue Book, AOL, Axway, Tideworks, bwin Interactive Entertainment, AG, Intergraph, Eos Group, PeopleCube, Liquid Machines
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Digital.ai Agility and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.