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Chef vs LaunchDarkly comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
334
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (2nd), Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Chef
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (12th), Release Automation (5th), Configuration Management (12th)
LaunchDarkly
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Feature Management (3rd), AI Software Development (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Chef3.4%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform11.9%
Microsoft Configuration Manager8.8%
Other75.9%
Configuration Management
Feature Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
LaunchDarkly19.1%
Harness21.8%
Optimizely18.9%
Other40.199999999999996%
Feature Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24
Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license
The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.
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.
reviewer2769948 - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Software Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees
Has increased developer confidence by enabling safe production releases using targeted feature toggles
I wish we were using more targeting in our feature toggles and I wish we were using more feature toggles as well as feature toggle dependencies. Making one feature toggle or one set of feature toggles dependent on another one would allow us to turn them all on or turn them all off at one time. For improvements in LaunchDarkly, managing team members and access to those team members was challenging. We could add team members through Terraform and do it programmatically, and then modify it through the user interface. However, once we started modifying things through the interface, we weren't able to go back to using any configuration programmatically for the team members. It made it challenging to orchestrate team member management. The other aspect I wasn't particularly fond of was when they started adding AI to the interface and deployment interface. It reminded me of old school wizards when installing software and simplified the interface too much, removing some of the engineering control I preferred.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"EAM is a godsend."
"The Autopilot feature is fantastic. It is a Microsoft product, so it deals best with Microsoft operating systems, but it can integrate with iOS, Mac OS, Linux, and Android."
"Its security is most valuable. It gives us a way to secure devices, not only those that are steady. We do have a few tablets and other devices, and it is a way for us to secure these devices and manage them. We know they're out there and what's their status. We can manage their life cycle and verify that they're updated properly."
"Third party integrations are very convenient to use with Microsoft Intune."
"It's cloud-based with no need for on-premise infrastructure, you can access it anywhere and start working on it, and you will have the record of data in your hand anytime if you need it quickly."
"There are no complaints about the stability. It works one hundred percent of the time."
"We were able to deploy about 65 computers in under two weeks to a completely remote user base without touching any of the machines."
"The thing I appreciate most about Microsoft Intune is that the management of the devices was very simplified."
"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"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."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"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."
"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."
"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 most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"If you're handy enough with DSL and you can present your own front-facing interface to your developers, then you can actually have a lot more granular control with Chef in operations over what developers can perform and what they can't."
"The ability to turn off a flag is crucial when a task is not complete, especially if there is an error in a commit."
"From the development side, it allows us to manage multiple things."
"It has really helped during the series of product lines and faster deployment and faster development."
"I like that it offers the ability to control the flags."
"I appreciate that we can release any feature in production and maintain control over it."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"The setup is easy."
"These features in my current project have helped my team because they allow us to specifically target users to start turning on functionality, we can monitor the behavior and make sure that it's behaving as expected when the feature toggle is turned on, and then we can increase the usage."
 

Cons

"The solution requires Mac support."
"Enhancements for managing MacOS more comprehensively would be beneficial."
"At the moment, we need more flexibility. We have some offices migrating to Windows 11 remotely. Sometimes, it is difficult to manage image installation because we have to collect some information before starting image deployment. Currently, Intune cannot collect the information needed for deploying new images."
"There are items that require improvements. One is the controls from iOS."
"There is room for improvement in integrating additional features such as Purview and SharePoint activities into Intune."
"There's a significant discrepancy in Intune pricing between tenants."
"Regarding mobile devices, Intune is good, but there are other services that I would say are ahead of Intune from an administration and reporting point of view."
"Microsoft Intune lacks the ability to provide seamless remote assistance or remote control."
"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"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."
"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"In terms of revenue, I have not observed much because it is holistically depending on the project."
"Managing team members and access to those team members was challenging. We could add team members through Terraform and do it programmatically, and then modify it through the user interface. However, once we started modifying things through the interface, we weren't able to go back to using any configuration programmatically for the team members."
"I have used LaunchDarkly for around two and a half years and I haven't faced any issues with it."
"I strongly believe they need to develop a strategy for handling situations where LaunchDarkly goes down."
"We need experience to use it, and the initial setup can be difficult. Also, sometimes it has breakdowns."
"The feature where one feature flag is dependent on another could be explored more for our usage."
"Fetching information about multiple flags in a single action would be beneficial."
"When the system has an excessive number of feature flags, managing them can become cumbersome."
"Right now, no improvements are needed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."
"Its licensing model is not complex, but it is very expensive compared to other solutions. They can bring more models and reduce the pricing. They should allow customers to select the features they want and price it accordingly."
"Its price is in the medium range. It is acceptable because you're paying for the features. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"It's affordable. In comparison to the competitors, the price depends on what features you need from Intune, but it's affordable. There are no hidden costs, but there are some features that go for a premium price. Those are the add-ons for which you have to pay extra."
"I rate Intune five out of 10 for pricing. It's expensive."
"There is a license required to use the solution. If you're core users in Office 365, for example, you have Outlook email and E3 license, this is only email. You have to buy an EMS license to have Microsoft Intune. It is expensive."
"Licensing depends on how you are providing support to your enterprise, whether it's device-based or user-based."
"Intune comes with the licensing that is common for large organizations. However, Microsoft has recently released many add-ons that are very expensive, especially for large organizations or corporations."
"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."
"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."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"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."
"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."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
7%
University
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business124
Midsize Enterprise53
Large Enterprise167
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

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?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we sidestepped it by using Cinc because none of the fun...
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 Terrafo...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LaunchDarkly?
At my current organization, I have no experience with licensing and setup cost. However, at my previous organization,...
What needs improvement with LaunchDarkly?
I wish we were using more targeting in our feature toggles and I wish we were using more feature toggles as well as f...
What is your primary use case for LaunchDarkly?
Currently, my main use case for LaunchDarkly is as a consumer. The application that I'm using uses LaunchDarkly as fe...
 

Comparisons

 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. LaunchDarkly and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
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