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ManageEngine OS Deployer vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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 August 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.6%, down from 9.9% 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 9.8%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.6%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform9.8%
ManageEngine OS Deployer1.5%
Other84.1%
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

"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."
"Microsoft Intune solutions, especially Microsoft Intune and Microsoft 365, have positively impacted my organization by improving endpoint security, enabling centralized device management, supporting remote work efficiently, reducing manual administrative effort through automation, and enhancing compliance and collaboration across the enterprise environment."
"What I like most about Intune is its seamless enrollment process, particularly the Autopilot method."
"It's normally able to meet 100% expectations of our customers."
"The best part of Intune is application deployment. We can deploy an application to several users with a single click. We can use conditional access, granting access to users based on certain conditions, such as location, platform, etc."
"The mobile application management, MAM, is the most useful aspect of the solution."
"We saw approximately forty to fifty percent reduction in manual device setup time with Microsoft Intune as onboarding became fully automated."
"Microsoft Endpoint Manager is not expensive overall, especially for small environments."
"Before OS Deployer, I used Microsoft WDS, which requires more manual labor than OS Deployer."
"It is agentless. I don't have to think about which client system my unit has understanding in or not, because I can execute from my system. It will go and configure it, and any module that it is looking for will be shipped out."
"The improvement is going to come in that we are going to be able to maintain configuration management, through the use of both Puppet and Ansible."
"Role-based access control and agentless architecture are the main features which may attract users."
"Some colleagues and other companies use it and comment that it is easy to use, easy to understand, and offers good features."
"The playbooks and the code the solution uses are quite useful."
"Automation is valuable. It saves us time in performing tedious tasks or repetitive tasks."
"Feature-wise, the solution is a good open-source software offering broad support. Also, it's reliable."
"The most valuable features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform are the agentless platform and writing the code is simple using the Yaml computer language."
 

Cons

"One major concern I have is user friction. When you enforce many policies and people log into apps like Microsoft Teams or Outlook, they encounter numerous MFA and other policies."
"There could be more features added. For me, as I mentioned, one area is the reporting. If the reporting became better, I think you would not need to use more RMMs."
"Enrollment into the Microsoft Intune service can still get easier, especially for legacy-managed systems, such as how we get it from a GPO or an SCCM configuration into Intune."
"Microsoft Intune could improve its reporting depth and make some policy configurations less complex, especially for hybrid environments."
"There is still a gap between SCCM and Intune, especially in the reporting, inventory, and software deployment areas."
"However, in Microsoft Intune that is not possible because Microsoft releases it across the world as one data piece."
"Microsoft Intune has a latency response time issue. The latency has room for improvement."
"Its configuration is fairly complicated. You have to do quite a bit of discovery to be able to deploy it for a customer. You have to ask them a lot of questions. So, its initial deployment is the biggest challenge. They should make it easier to deploy with the use of Wizards or something else. During the deployment stage, there could be profiles for the customers who are particularly wanting to use certain feature sets of Intune."
"I'd like to see more detailed explanations and support for how to use it through PXE."
"What I'm trying to figure out, personally, is, when doing mass updates, how I can parallelize that a little bit better. It seems right now - and maybe, it's a shortcoming on my end - that I run through one set of servers, and then another set of servers, ad then another set of servers, but it seems like I could throw a lot of these checks out. Different types of servers, like web servers and DB servers, if I could parallelize that a little bit to make everything run a little bit more efficiently, that would help."
"I have seen indications that the documentation needs improvement. They are providing a "How to Improve Your Documentation" presentation at this conference."
"We'll probably use it in conjunction with Puppet, because Puppet is more a solution where every 30 minutes it's going to check, whereas Ansible doesn't do that."
"Currently, Ansible can't do this with all the modules out there."
"Documentation could be improved. Many times, if I'm looking for something, I have to Google it in a lot of places, then figure out what the best approach will be. There are some best practices documents, but they don't give you the information."
"Because Ansible is establishing SSH sessions to perform tasks, there is a limit on scalability."
"The scalability of the solution has some shortcomings."
"The governance features could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's bundled with Business Premium and an E3 license, which is beneficial. If you have to pay extra, it's pricey, but with the bundled package, it's acceptable. They recently increased the Business Premium pricing, which we don't appreciate. The price increase and yearly commitment are causing some problems for us."
"We use Defender ATP and E5 licenses."
"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."
"The licensing costs we leave up to the customer and these vary from one to another."
"I would rate the price a four out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"Intune is inexpensive. It also comes bundled in some Office 365 licenses, so you can choose to purchase it separately or as a package."
"Its pricing seems reasonable."
Information not available
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"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 pricing for us is huge because we use twenty thousand nodes, so that is a huge infrastructure, but if someone is using a small infrastructure, then the pricing is not so much."
"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."
"Everything is generally fair. No one ever likes to pay a lot of money, but we are getting the value. We also get support with it. It has been fair and worthwhile."
"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."
"The cost is high, but it still works well."
"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business192
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise186
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise52
 

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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: July 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.