Chef vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

Chef and WhatsUp Gold are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Chef is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.0, while WhatsUp Gold is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.0. Chef holds a 3.5% mindshare in CM, compared to WhatsUp Gold’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Chef users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of WhatsUp Gold users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Chef and WhatsUp Gold based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold

June 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 June 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.9%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 3.5%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.7%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune	4.9%
Chef	3.5%
WhatsUp Gold	1.7%
Other	89.9%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

OluwashileAdeniyi

Senior Infrastructure Security Engineer at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees

Centralized endpoint security has improved and supports hybrid work and BYOD policies

Regarding what I dislike about Microsoft Intune and its downsides, I would say that more Mac controls are needed because we have limited Mac and Linux control. When comparing controls and policies between Windows, Mac, and Linux, Windows has almost everything you can think of, while Mac and Linux have limited types of control. You cannot implement certain things on Mac and Linux that you can on Windows. The limited controls are a major issue. Additionally, if Microsoft could find a way to embed servers into Microsoft Intune, that would be beneficial. Microsoft Intune is not really designed for servers or Windows servers. It is more tailored towards Windows 11 and Windows 10 operating systems. Windows servers are not fully supported. Enterprise organizations usually have both servers and endpoints, which are users' workstations. For servers, most people look for other solutions such as SCCM, which is Configuration Manager. However, SCCM is what Microsoft Intune is trying to replace. Both SCCM and Microsoft Intune belong to Microsoft. Microsoft is trying to transition organizations into Microsoft Intune, the native cloud solution. However, because this update is still in process, servers are not fully compatible with Microsoft Intune and cannot be managed by it. The current policy that has emerged from issues with clients is what they call co-management, which is relatively new, and I do not know if adoption is significant. Many legacy or older customers who have been using these products for decades still have SCCM. When it is time for them to manage their Windows devices, they use what is called cloud attach. Cloud attach is a term whereby your SCCM is connected to your Microsoft Intune. Most people do not know about it, but I have deployed it for several organizations. Cloud attach and co-management work together so that your device is in SCCM, but some policies are pushed from Microsoft Intune. It is like two different solutions working hand in hand. That is what they call co-management. Microsoft Intune does not bring all of your endpoint and security management tools into one place, which is the goal and how it should be. However, as I mentioned, servers are not included. If we talk about end users, Microsoft Intune does bring all your devices together. In a typical enterprise environment, you have end users with workstations, laptops, company-issued phones, and bring your own devices. You can create policies for all of these. However, for the backend, your servers do not have much coverage. Servers are not really covered by Microsoft Intune in that way.

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G Srivastava

Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Agent setup and complexity have limited automation benefits but have reduced manual patching work

There are other automation tools, configuration management tools in the market, which offer many good functionalities compared to Chef. For Chef, we need to install those agents, the Chef client, on all those nodes. That is another heinous task to perform on those nodes. Compared with other tools, they do not require any agent; they simply push configurations to all the clients. Chef needs to improve on this agent installation on all those nodes. I would say that the agent configuration is required, and we need to manage the workstation, the Chef server, and then the Chef client. These two or three things are very difficult. It is a time-taking task compared with other configuration management tools. They need to compete with other tools, such as Ansible or Terraform. They should work on their agent part. If they can remove the agent installation on the nodes and combine both the Chef server and workstation into one server, that will provide a significant benefit in cost for the clients. They should aim for an agentless architecture rather than an agent-based architecture, which will help other customers. That is a very difficult thing because I have stopped using Chef. If you have very good developers who are skilled in Ruby language and can write codes in the Chef recipe, then those developers should start using Chef.

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Erik Cheng

Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet

Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains

The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

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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

"This solution saves us a lot of time once it's implemented."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune for me is its fully cloud-based nature, allowing me to work from anywhere, whether I am using my mobile phone, Windows, or macOS devices, so I can access it from any place at my convenience."

"The best feature is that we don't need to worry about downtime. We don't need to worry about the network connections of our office or the virtual private network. Everything is being done through the internet. Using Intune Autopilot, we can configure and deploy everything to the devices."

"The ability to block and erase remote devices is valuable to us, especially when those devices are lost."

"The solution appears to be stable and scalable."

"It is very easy to use. It has a very easy interface."

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

"Microsoft Tech Support is good, providing solid support."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"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."

"It has been very easy to tie it into our build and deploy automation for production release work, etc. All the Chef pieces more or less run themselves."

"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."

"Chef benefited my organization by definitely reducing time because we were provisioning tens of thousands of servers."

"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."

"I wanted to monitor a hybrid cloud environment, one using AWS and Azure. If I have to provision/orchestrate between multiple cloud platforms, I can use Chef as a one-stop solution, to broker between those cloud platforms and orchestrate around them, rather than going directly into each of the cloud-vendors' consoles."

"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."

More Chef pros

"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."

"This product has aided us in procurement and is overall a well-priced solution."

"The installation and configuration process are easy."

"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."

"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of resources."

"One thing good about WhatsUp Gold is that it is fairly stable."

"Our local support team provides excellent service."

"The interface in the last few years it has been a lot greater, they are much more user-friendly. I like the interface."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

"They need to add more group policies. Intune currently does not have many group policies that you can deploy. Its reporting, which is very limited at the moment, also needs improvement. It will be great if they can add report customization. Its stability needs to be improved. Sometimes, when you register a device in Intune, it doesn't show up instantly on the engine portal on the admin side. They need to provide better support for complicated issues. They also have a long turnaround time."

"Integration with Mac devices requires some improvement."

"Integrating certain group policies can be challenging and may necessitate using on-premises systems to integrate them with Microsoft Intune."

"What would make this product better is adding more security policies and features in the next upgrade."

"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."

"The main differences between Intune and other products are, like I mentioned, in terms of the Mac. If the customers are majorly moving and adopting Mac laptops while they are using the Intune, they are leaving for other platforms, like Workspace ONE and vMOX."

"I'd suggest adding more features for macOS in Intune. There should be more functionality for managing macOS. There should be a better capability for pushing things down on macOS. Currently, Intune is not capable of managing macOS at the same level as Windows."

"The documentation about the custom image setup could be better. Although Microsoft provides the steps to configure Intune or set up or deploy Intune, it doesn't have much information related to custom images. If you ask, "how can we deploy the custom image?" There is no information. The steps they mention ask you to connect to your on-premises environment or create your own image on the cloud itself once there is connectivity. But I needed to go to multiple websites to get all this information. I had to figure out how to upload the custom image if you want to use the on-premise custom image for Cloud PC. If you have the proper subscription, you must have the right access, like global admin or owner. Then you can add your custom image to that. There are no steps mentioned over there. Microsoft Intune doesn't have Chrome browser support. I would like to have that support because they will want it if we pitch the product to clients."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."

"However, if you are on-premise, it may not be the best solution."

"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."

"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."

"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 appears to be no effort to fix the command line utility functionality, which is definitely broken, provides a false positive for a result when you perform the operation, and doesn't work."

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

"I chose a rating of seven because Chef is a great tool, but sometimes resource consumption is quite large, and it requires server-side setup, which is not required but should be considered if you are using server-client plus server."

More Chef cons

"This product should add other options for monitoring. It does not currently meet the broader needs of the banking industry in the version we have deployed."

"Importing the maps and being able to customize them could be easier."

"I might like to see a better interface in the future. It's not necessarily easy to integrate the product with other vendors."

"Honestly, I do not particularly like WhatsUp Gold. I think we should get rid of it."

"The new release cadence needs to be improved. It takes a while for them to add new features and functionality. There should be a quicker turnaround with new versions."

"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."

"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."

"The product is old and not updated."

More WhatsUp Gold cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Generally, we get favorable discounts, so it's not too bad. Obviously, we're looking at decreasing those wherever we can to bring value back to the public purse because it's all charity based. It's all publicly funded."

"I am satisfied with the pricing."

"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."

"It comes with the E5 plan. We bought the E5 plan from Microsoft."

"The pricing is inherently reasonable, as Microsoft leverages market insights to maintain the total cost of ownership at around ninety to ninety-five percent of what would be incurred in an on-premise scenario."

"Microsoft licenses are costly."

"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."

"Microsoft Intune is not cost-effective as a standalone product."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"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 able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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

"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."

"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."

"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."

"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."

"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."

"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."

"This is a well priced solution."

More WhatsUp Gold pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	192
Midsize Enterprise	62
Large Enterprise	185

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

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 do not have anything in mind at this time for how Chef could be improved.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Chef?

My main use case for Chef is configuration management to set up systems, provision software, and keep configurations ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?

Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information fir...

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What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?

It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complic...

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What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?

My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well...

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Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 10% of the time

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 10% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

Jenkins vs Chef

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Chef

Compared 6% of the time

HashiCorp Terraform vs Chef

Compared 3% of the time

More Chef Competitors

LibreNMS vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

SCOM vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

NinjaOne vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

ScienceLogic vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

More WhatsUp Gold Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

June 2026

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Chef

June 2026

Download Chef product report

Buyer's Guide

WhatsUp Gold

May 2026

Download WhatsUp Gold product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

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 a powerful automation tool designed for efficient infrastructure management across varied environments. With its environment-as-code model, Chef provides predictability and reliability in deployments, enhancing security compliance and reducing manual intervention.

Chef focuses on automating deployments and configurations, ensuring server consistency, managing scalable environments, and orchestrating service deployments. Its versatile recipe-writing and Ruby-based flexibility cater to large-scale operational needs. Chef’s integration with services like AWS and Azure enhances its versatility, while its idempotent deployments assure reliability. Despite its prowess, Chef requires improvements in feature offerings, especially regarding container orchestration and cloud technologies.

What are Chef's Key Features?

Automation: Streamlines infrastructure management across diverse environments.
Environment-as-Code: Offers predictability and efficiency in management.
Idempotency: Ensures reliable deployments by maintaining the same outcome no matter how often applied.
Cloud Integration: Seamlessly integrates with AWS and Azure.
Security Compliance: Enhances security measures across infrastructures.
Ruby-Based Flexibility: Provides versatile recipe-writing and flexible configurations.
Scalability: Suitable for large-scale operational needs.

What Benefits Should Users Consider?

Consistency: Automated deployments reduce errors and manual efforts.
Efficiency: Decrease in manual intervention enhances team productivity.
Reliability: Idempotent deployments ensure consistent outcomes.
Scalability: Supports expanding infrastructures effectively.
Security: Maintains compliance with enhanced security features.

Chef is implemented across industries to automate application deployments, manage CI/CD pipelines, provision infrastructure, and maintain compliance. Its recipes and cookbooks streamline workflows in application deployment, system updates, and orchestration of services, reducing errors and manual intervention in a variety of sectors.

Progress Software

WhatsUp Gold stands out with its comprehensive network monitoring, dynamic mapping, and real-time alerts, offering essential tools for managing extensive IT infrastructures.

WhatsUp Gold provides robust capabilities in network visibility through dynamic mapping and NetFlow analysis. The platform's interactive topology aids in pinpointing issues effectively. Auto-discovery ensures complete network device tracking. While offering an intuitive interface and integration with Cisco ServiceNow, users find server performance monitoring useful for incident handling. However, improvements are anticipated in application monitoring and Active Directory integration. The pricing model and customization options leave room for enhancement. Despite these, users benefit from its integrated dashboards for immediate device health checks and network updates, making it beneficial for large-scale infrastructure management.

What features does WhatsUp Gold offer?

Network Monitoring: Provides continuous oversight of network components
Dynamic Mapping: Offers visual representation of network topology
NetFlow Analysis: Delivers insights into bandwidth utilization
Threshold Alerts: Notifies users upon reaching set performance thresholds
Auto-Discovery: Detects devices automatically for complete network coverage

What benefits should users expect from reviews?

Comprehensive Visibility: Enhanced understanding of network elements
Real-Time Monitoring: Immediate insights into network and device status
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive solution suitable for expansive networks
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies the management of complex networks

Organizations in sectors like telecommunications, education, and healthcare utilize WhatsUp Gold for their network monitoring needs. Telecom companies track switches and routers, educational institutions manage bandwidth usage, and healthcare facilities monitor device availability to ensure seamless operations.

Progress Software

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

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

Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold

June 2026

Free Report: Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold

Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

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