Chef vs Perforce Puppet comparison

Progress Software and Perforce are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Progress Software is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.2, while Perforce is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0. Progress Software holds a 3.4% mindshare in CM, compared to Perforce’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Progress Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Perforce users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

Perforce Puppet and Chef are competing in infrastructure automation. Chef appears to have the upper hand in flexibility and comprehensive features, while Perforce Puppet excels in support and cost structure.

Features: Perforce Puppet offers strong configuration management, an extensive integration ecosystem, and robust automation workflows. Chef provides a comprehensive feature set focusing on flexibility, scalability, and adaptability for dynamic environments, often surpassing Perforce Puppet in these areas.

Room for Improvement: Perforce Puppet could enhance adaptability for dynamic environments, offer more comprehensive feature sets, and increase configurability. Chef may improve on simplifying the deployment process, addressing rollback issues in deployment, and offering cost-effective solutions for budget-conscious organizations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Perforce Puppet is noted for a straightforward deployment backed by reliable support, easing operational challenges. Chef's highly customizable deployment model appeals to organizations with specific configurations, though it can be more involved, offering flexibility that many find beneficial.

Pricing and ROI: Perforce Puppet presents a budget-friendly pricing model and quicker ROI due to lower initial costs. Chef requires higher upfront investment, justified by its high ROI potential through scalable solutions, positioning it as a premium option.

To learn more, read our detailed Chef vs. Perforce Puppet Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. Perforce Puppet

March 2026

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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

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 6.9%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 3.4%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 3.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune	6.9%
Chef	3.4%
Perforce Puppet	3.8%
Other	85.9%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble

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.

Read full review

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

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.

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reviewer2284542

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There has been a noticeable increase in productivity for both my organization and clients."

"I would rate the stability of Microsoft Intune nine out of ten."

"Great for software update needs, operating system version updates, and security policy enforcement."

"The best features of Microsoft Intune include helping to know if computers are configured correctly and if users have access to apps or the platform."

"Our configuration profiles used to be all over the place. For example, there's a lot of legacy stuff in Active Directory. Going through Intune has helped us enforce settings, which has improved device security and functionality. When you apply something through Intune, you know it works. You don't have to worry about a legacy setting from Active Directory that was uploaded by somebody seven years ago. With Intune, you can see that a device has a setting, and you can be confident that the device is configured how you want."

"Implementing Microsoft Intune has provided a more streamlined and consistent method for device management across our multiple domains, effectively consolidating our administrative efforts."

"Easy to use."

"Intune provides full endpoint visibility and IT control across device platforms. You can individualize it for your company with the Intune Company Portal app."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."

"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Chef has impacted my organization positively by ensuring that consistent deployments across production and test environments help more effective testing and faster deployments mean that more work can be done in one release cycle."

"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."

"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."

More Chef pros

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

"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."

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

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

"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

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

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

More Perforce Puppet pros

Cons

"More integration with monitoring tools is needed."

"The solution does require maintenance, and it is complex to maintain, especially regarding updates, patching, and releases."

"There are challenges with Intune, specifically in reporting. Many third-party companies offer single-pane-of-glass reporting that shows you what your update environment looks like, how your patch is doing, application status, etc., but Intune's reporting is not intuitive."

"The synchronization could be improved."

"Data leak prevention can be integrated into it. Currently, it does not have data leak prevention."

"Microsoft needs to strategize its licensing structure. When using Microsoft Intune, we bought a small scale of controls, only controlling part of the devices, though Microsoft Intune can do much more. The Intune Suite offers more features, allowing extensive integration with either internal or cloud environments without requiring third-party licensing. However, each feature has a separate license, making logistics and cost management difficult if not strategically bundled together."

"For migrations, sometimes we experience some issues with OS deployment and the user experience side."

"Microsoft Intune lags market leaders, such as Apperian, in its MAM capabilities."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."

"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."

"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."

"It is an old technology."

"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."

"The learning curve is steep due to Chef's Ruby-based DSL and the complex components of cookbooks and recipes, which can be challenging for new users, especially those without programming backgrounds."

"In terms of revenue, I have not observed much because it is holistically depending on the project."

"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."

More Chef cons

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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'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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Intune is included in the E5 license at no additional cost."

"The price of Intune is often included as part of a bundle with other Microsoft licenses, which makes it somewhat cheaper."

"While I don't have access to high-level financial information, I believe we have achieved lower costs with this implementation."

"Microsoft offers some licensing where it's included at no extra cost when customers are already using the licenses. In such a case, it's a really good value. If you have to buy the licensing for it, it's probably on par with other solutions. It isn't substantially more or less expensive. The great thing is that it is included in some of Microsoft's licensed packages. So, some customers don't have to spend additional money for it. Typically, most providers that support Intune do charge a management fee of some sort or some fee. Certainly, we're no exception."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis."

"We have the business premium licenses for the solution."

"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"

"This cost is approximately $30 USD per user per month."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."

"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."

"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

"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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Comparison Review

it_user185772

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Outsourcing Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	124
Midsize Enterprise	53
Large Enterprise	167

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	19

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

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 ...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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What is your primary use case for Puppet Enterprise?

My main use case for Perforce Puppet is for configuration management.

See all answers

Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 10% of the time

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

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BigFix vs Chef

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

Jenkins vs Chef

Compared 6% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs Chef

Compared 5% of the time

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Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 11% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 8% of the time

BMC TrueSight Server Automation vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 6% of the time

More Perforce Puppet Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

March 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Chef

March 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet

March 2026

Download Perforce Puppet product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

Puppet

Overview

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service designed for device management, security, and compliance. It supports automation and facilitates endpoint management for Windows, iOS, and Android devices, ensuring data protection and efficient policy enforcement.

Microsoft Intune offers seamless integration with tools like Windows Autopilot to automate device setup and deployment. Integrated with Azure Active Directory, it enhances policy management while providing robust reporting and analytics tools for compliance tracking. Despite its intuitive interface aimed at simplifying navigation and device security management, there are challenges such as compatibility issues with Linux and Mac, limited policy support for Android, and demands for better third-party integration. It's widely used for both corporate-owned devices and BYOD scenarios in dynamic IT environments.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Windows Autopilot: Automates device setup for rapid deployment.
Azure Active Directory Integration: Enhances user policy management.
Reporting and Analytics: Improves compliance visibility.
Mobile Application Management: Ensures app security without compromising personal data.
Cloud-Based Management: Allows management from any location.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Time Efficiency: Automation reduces time in policy enforcement and configuration updates.
Enhanced Security: Ensures data protection across corporate-owned and BYOD devices.
Improved Compliance: Advanced reporting tools enhance compliance visibility.
Flexible Management: Cloud-based nature supports management from any location.

In industries such as finance and healthcare, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure data protection and compliance with regulatory standards. Manufacturing sectors utilize Intune for managing a distributed workforce across global locations, while educational institutions employ it to secure and manage devices in learning environments supporting both students and faculty.

Microsoft

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

Perforce Puppet offers automated configuration management and diverse platform support through agent-based functionality, enhancing systems with real-time reporting and efficient process automation.

Perforce Puppet provides comprehensive management for both infrastructure and applications, primarily on-prem servers, enabling automation of server updates, security compliance, and IT operations. It supports Linux and is expanding to Windows, facilitating continuous checks and compliance monitoring. With robust Internet-based features, scalability, role-based access control, and exemplary community support, it streamlines processes like remote package installation, file distribution, and user creation. Using Puppet Forge modules enhances its capabilities despite its steep learning curve and reliance on Ruby and DSL. While GUI limitations necessitate command line proficiency, its integration features and high cost can be a deterrent, prompting some to consider alternatives or the community version.

What are the key features of Perforce Puppet?

Agent-Based Functionality: Provides real-time system management and reporting.
Automated Configuration Management: Streamlines server and network processes with a declarative approach.
Scalability: Adapts to changing infrastructure needs efficiently.
Puppet Forge Modules: Extends capabilities for enhanced performance.
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures secure and organized access control.

What benefits do users gain from Perforce Puppet?

Versatility in Platform Management: Supports diverse environments for seamless integration.
Efficiency in Automation: Reduces manual server configuration tasks.
Community Support: Access to a strong network of developers and users.
Enhanced Security Compliance: Facilitates continuous monitoring and compliance checks.

Perforce Puppet is widely adopted in industries requiring rigorous configuration management and provisioning for on-prem servers. Enterprises automate IT operations and security compliance, applying it initially to Linux servers and progressing to Windows. It aids in public configurations for nodes, enabling efficient network, package, and software integrations while automating configuration and patch management processes.

Perforce

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

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

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. Perforce Puppet

March 2026

Free Report: Chef vs. Perforce Puppet

Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Perforce Puppet and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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