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AWS CloudFormation vs Chef comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Intune enhances efficiency and cost savings by replacing services and improving management and productivity through Microsoft 365 integration.
Sentiment score
9.0
Businesses saw full ROI from AWS CloudFormation over three years, thanks to swift operation restoration and reduced downtime losses.
Sentiment score
8.1
Chef improved deployment time, reduced human error, enhanced scalability, optimized resource use, and strengthened compliance and security management.
Everything we've gained from it makes my job easier day after day, and I see value in it as an engineer.
Importantly, when someone leaves the company, it helps protect document access on their devices.
Applications are deployed through Intune, and we see fewer tickets for common issues because we can resolve them through the solution.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Intune support varies, with premium assistance praised, while standard support lags; community and partners improve satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.3
AWS CloudFormation support is praised for speed and efficiency, but response times vary by subscription and environment type.
Sentiment score
6.0
Customers commend Chef for its responsive support, active community, comprehensive documentation, and efficient issue resolution despite occasional delays.
When a support ticket is submitted, it directly reaches someone with Intune support expertise.
When I contacted Microsoft, they had the same expertise, if not more, which is phenomenal because I felt heard and my problem was solved.
Sometimes, the support provided is excellent, and the representative is knowledgeable, while other times, the service needs improvement.
While this might be acceptable for some, it can be lengthy depending on the urgency of the issue.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Microsoft Intune offers scalable cloud-based solutions, supporting diverse platforms and organizational needs with high user capacity and minor macOS limitations.
Sentiment score
7.6
AWS CloudFormation offers scalable, flexible infrastructure management, earning high ratings for its speed and adaptability across various user types.
Sentiment score
7.8
Chef is highly scalable, efficiently managing infrastructures of all sizes and accommodating numerous clients based on server capacity.
The scalability of Microsoft Intune is ten out of ten.
Ideally, we want to automatically segregate devices based on user properties like primary use, but currently, dynamic groups seem limited to device properties.
It supports organizations with 200 endpoints and those with more than 15,000 endpoints.
Adjusting capacity and functionality is a fundamental use.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Intune is praised for stability and reliability, with minimal issues and consistent performance despite occasional bugs.
Sentiment score
7.7
AWS CloudFormation is highly stable, reliable, and efficient with minor challenges, praised for visual verification and ease of use.
Sentiment score
7.7
Users rate Chef's stability 8-9/10, comparing it favorably to competitors like Ansible, and find it stable for various use cases.
Microsoft Intune has been very stable.
A couple of years ago, the performance was not as good as it is now, but there are noticeable backend improvements.
We've encountered problems with other services like Exchange, Intune has remained unaffected.
It has been reliable and efficient in all my deployments.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Intune needs improvements in integration, policy management, and user experience, especially for non-Microsoft devices and cost-effective licensing.
AWS CloudFormation faces usability challenges, needing cross-cloud support, better customization, performance, integration, and more intuitive documentation.
Chef needs better support, pricing, role management, flexibility, documentation, integration, and improved automation to compete with Ansible.
There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now.
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.
Workspace ONE operates in real-time, whereas Intune has a noticeable delay when deploying policies or apps.
It presents challenges for users unfamiliar with coding, posing as a barrier to fully utilizing CloudFormation.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Intune offers value through bundled pricing with Office 365, appealing to enterprises but costlier for smaller businesses.
AWS CloudFormation is cost-effective, charging only for used resources, with affordable pricing compared to other cloud solutions.
Chef offers subscription plans with valuable automation features, but enterprise pricing is high and requires contacting sales for quotes.
Introductory professional services, like a fast-track service, were included with our E5 membership, and there have been no additional costs.
The Intune suite and add-ons, such as batch management and remote help, are costly.
Microsoft Intune's costliness stems from licensing fees and the overhead associated with its management, user experience, and device remediation.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Intune enhances device management with seamless integration, security features, and scalability, simplifying IT operations and reducing costs.
AWS CloudFormation simplifies deployment with templates, infrastructure as code, and integration, enhancing scalability and usability across regions.
Chef offers compliance, easy configuration management, and automation for IT infrastructure, integrating with CI processes and supporting multiple clouds.
Intune excels in configuration and compliance management for Windows 10, ensuring devices receive timely updates and adhere to organizational standards.
Dynamic groups allow us to set conditions for automatic membership, eliminating the need for user intervention or manual review and ensuring a seamless workflow.
Windows Autopatch is the most valuable because it removes the burden of patch management.
I can see the entire infrastructure and its connections through code.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
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Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
236
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
AWS CloudFormation
Ranking in Configuration Management
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Chef
Ranking in Configuration Management
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (17th), Release Automation (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 11.9%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS CloudFormation is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 1.3%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi - PeerSpot reviewer
Everything has worked better since we started using it
Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.
Mbula Mboma - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates efficient infrastructure deployment with visibility into resource connections
I primarily use AWS CloudFormation for deploying infrastructure efficiently. For instance, if I want to create load balancers with target groups and EC2 instances, I find CloudFormation simplifies the process of deployment and configuration, reducing the possibility of errors AWS CloudFormation…
Arun S . - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve
Chef can be scaled as needed. The Chef server itself can scale but it depends on the available resources. You can upgrade specific resources to meet the demand. Similarly, with clients, you can add as many clients as you need. Again, this depends on the server resources. If the server has enough resources, it can handle the number of servers required to manage the infrastructure. Chef can be scaled to meet the needs of the infrastructure being managed. The solution is good to manage multiple large infrastructures. We can have 10 to 10,000 users using this solution and it manages them well.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about AWS CloudFormation?
AWS Cloud automation reduces the time needed to create AWS resources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CloudFormation?
I am not concerned about the pricing or setup costs for AWS CloudFormation, as my account is funded and I haven’t nee...
What needs improvement with AWS CloudFormation?
The Infrastructure Composer is not fully complete, making it necessary to tweak the code manually after generating it...
What do you like most about Chef?
Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.
What needs improvement with Chef?
Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
CloudFormation
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Nextdoor, Coinbase, Expedia
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CloudFormation vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.