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ManageEngine OS Deployer vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

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
Ranking in Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
377
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
ManageEngine OS Deployer
Ranking in Configuration Management
25th
Average Rating
6.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.4%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ManageEngine OS Deployer is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 9.5%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.4%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform9.5%
ManageEngine OS Deployer1.5%
Other84.6%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Senior Business Development Executive at Digitaltrack
Centralized device management has automated onboarding and improves remote security compliance
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. So, admins still spend time checking logs manually or testing on devices one by one. Compared to the simplicity of deployment, troubleshooting sometimes feels less mature. I also think reporting and real-time monitoring could be stronger. The dashboard gives useful information, but in large environments, many teams still depend on additional tools or scripts for deeper reporting and analytics. If I had to focus on one area first, I would probably choose troubleshooting and reporting. Deployment through Microsoft Intune is generally straightforward, but when something fails, identifying the exact root cause can still take more time than expected. Error messages are sometimes too generic, and admins often have to dig through logs, sync status, or multiple portals to understand what actually happened. I think user experience and policy management could also improve further. Microsoft Intune has become much better over the years, but sometimes the admin portal still feels fragmented because certain configurations open in different sections or redirect to older interfaces. For new admins, especially, it can take time to understand where everything is located. Another thing is policy conflict handling. In larger organizations, multiple device policies, compliance rules, and configuration profiles can overlap. When conflicts happen, the visibility is not always very clear, so admins spend time figuring out which policy actually won or caused the issue.
it_user363621 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a engineering company with 51-200 employees
It adds necessary drivers for hardware on desktop and notebooks. I'd like to see more detailed explanations and support for how to use it through PXE.
It's helped us to install OS's onto desktops and notebooks It adds a simple solution for adding specific, necessary drivers for hardware on desktops and notebooks when they arrive. I'd like to see more detailed explanations and support for how to use it through PXE. I've never gotten this…
Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Dev Ops Engineer at 11 East Capital
Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes
The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If I assess Intune's user experience, I would say it is perfect and simple."
"What I have found most useful in Microsoft Intune is creating an environment where customers or clients need someone to work immediately with an out-of-box experience."
"I would say that Microsoft Intune is absolutely the right choice for any organization that is already invested in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and wants a unified cloud-native endpoint management approach."
"Intune provides full visibility into all active mobile device users. If their devices are noncompliant with our security policies, I have the flexibility to update them remotely."
"What I value most about Microsoft Intune is that it is a cloud-native tool and is embedded into Premium at a reasonable cost."
"Autopilot is a great feature. Most users are looking for a zero-touch deployment."
"Overall, the best features of Microsoft Intune are its ease of management and robust security protocols, which are what I value most about it and how it stands out."
"Microsoft Intune scales very effectively with our growing needs."
"Before OS Deployer, I used Microsoft WDS, which requires more manual labor than OS Deployer."
"Ansible has brought a platform which has allowed us to automate a lot of services, not just server services, but network services as well."
"To me, a great thing about Ansible is that it can do everything: cloud, on-prem, Windows, Linux, networking, and I've not seen any other orchestration tool able to do that as easily."
"It is one of the best products to use, easy to understand and easy to manage, and you can use it if you have a cloud, physical server, or VMware because it is very good and offers operational efficiency."
"It is all modular-based. If there is not a module for it today, someone will write it."
"With this solution, we're able to cover our client's needs, the automation is very good, the operational automation and DevOps are the most valuable features for us, it's easy to set up, the solution can scale, and it's very stable."
"We can automate a few host configurations using the product."
"The playbooks and the code the solution uses are quite useful."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
 

Cons

"Issues such as Windows 32 app failures occur frequently, and detailed manual detection rules are often necessary."
"Management of Linux devices from Microsoft Intune would be great. Then we can manage any device and not only Windows and Apple."
"I rate Microsoft customer service six out of 10. While some technicians go above and beyond, there is inconsistency, and connecting with the most helpful representatives is occasionally challenging."
"Almost every day during the initial deployment, I would chat with technical support for solutions. They did not give me a suitable solution to solve the false positive alarms."
"The reporting and troubleshooting experience with Microsoft Intune could be improved because clearer and more detailed error reporting for failed policies or applications installed would make administration much easier, especially when diagnosing policy sync or device compliance issues across large environments."
"The security features should be improved."
"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."
"Sometimes, it takes time to synchronize the policies between the portal and the devices, you don't have a way to estimate how long it will take to deploy. You have some kind of gray area, where it can deploy in 30 minutes or three days."
"I'd like to see more detailed explanations and support for how to use it through PXE."
"It is a little slow on the network side because every time you call a module, it's initiating an SSH or an API call to a network device, and it just slows things down."
"The communication on it is not probably where it could be. We could use some real life examples where we could point customers to them and say, "This is what you are trying to do. If you follow these steps, it would at least get you started a bit quicker.""
"The communication on it is not probably where it could be."
"Ansible could probably help here with better documentation."
"It would be good to make the solution more user-friendly,"
"In modern infrastructure, there are more than just servers. The initial server-centric approach in Ansible is a bit strange."
"Ansible has just been upgraded, and the only issue that we are seeing at the moment is that the user interface can be slow. We're currently investigating the refresh period with Red Hat when you click a job and run a job. It seems that the buffer no longer runs in real-time. We haven't discovered whether that's partially an issue with our environment, but Red Hat has come back and said that they're working on a couple of bugs in the background. We've upgraded to that version in the last six months, and that's the only issue that we've seen."
"At this time, I do not have anything to improve. What we struggle with is the knowledge base, but that is more about us having to go and find it and learn the platform on our own rather than an actual Ansible issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Intune's pricing is competitive. For example, the license of Blackberry's Enterprise Mobility Suite was costly, but Intune is affordable. It is included as an additional feature when you buy security enhancements for your organization. For example, let's say I have fifty users in my organization and all of them are using Microsoft cloud services, like Teams, Office 365, and OneDrive."
"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."
"It comes with the E5 plan. We bought the E5 plan from Microsoft."
"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."
"The price is reasonable, but they should lower it a bit to make it more competitive. It's cheaper than AirWatch and other products, but I still feel like Microsoft can make a base version or with Exchange online or a la carte only Intune version which will be useful. A customer who doesn't want to go full-fledged E3 or E5 can take out or consume an Intune solution only for their purpose, and we want to target that customer."
"While Microsoft Intune boasts a wide range of features, its user-friendliness and bundled licensing cost are key considerations for me."
"It is expensive. The cost depends on the license that we choose."
"Most of our clients come to us with licensing already in place. On average, it costs $6 per device per month to add Intune to an Office 365 subscription, but I am not sure."
Information not available
"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."
"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business192
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise187
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

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What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There ...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
No data available
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
EMC, Costco Wholesale Australia, Canyon Bicycles, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Eleventh Judicial Circuit, WashingtonFirst Bank, SunEdison, Stafford Development Company, City of Redondo Beach, Columbia Medical Associates, Pratt Institute, Novati Technologies, Toyota Boshoku America, Flight Centre UK, RapidAdvance
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM and others in Configuration Management. Updated: August 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.