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BigFix vs Chef comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
250
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
BigFix
Ranking in Configuration Management
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (22nd), Patch Management (2nd), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
Chef
Ranking in Configuration Management
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (20th), Release Automation (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.2%, up from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BigFix is 9.1%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 1.6%, up 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.
Bella Yakoby - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers third-party patching feature, good scalability, and enhance endpoint management capabilities
From the perspective of the team that's handling the environment, it's not so user-friendly compared to other solutions, the competitors. We hire new teams from time to time, and they are complaining, look, although BigFix is very robust and cross-platform, it's not so fun to work with. The user interface for the technical teams is not so advanced. It's not so intuitive compared to SCCM, compared to ManageEngine. And this is the fact that they have, with the teams, because they have the rejection. The look and feel of the system are old-fashioned. For new employees, it's less easy to find someone I don't need to educate on how to work with BigFix. Although it's easy, it's not as intuitive as the other solutions, and the functionality of the other solutions is less advanced. Let's summarize: The user interface has to be changed from the perspective of the teams that are managing the product. It's old school.
Aaron  P - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation
In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dynamic groups allow us to set conditions for automatic membership, eliminating the need for user intervention or manual review and ensuring a seamless workflow."
"It is a stable solution."
"The biggest benefits of Intune are the ability to push changes and the added security. When we moved forward with Defender, we onboarded all those machines automatically. That helps dramatically. For a while, we were left with machines that weren't protected. We could see where people had done things they shouldn't have done, and Defender saved our skins a few times. It didn't happen a lot, but it happened enough that it made us glad we made that decision."
"The Microsoft Windows Autopilot and Defender policies are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The stability of Microsoft Intune is good."
"Agile and easy to deploy MDM solution that covers the maximum number of policies. Stable, scalable, and with knowledgeable technical support."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The conditional access policies that we set up are very useful."
"It's good for reporting hardware and software."
"Ability to run custom reports and custom relevance."
"It's easy to use, not complicated."
"The most valuable feature is patch management, a must have, even for Linux and iOS."
"It has improved reliability upon delivery of software and has also helped reduce software expenses. The extensibility of BigFix helps to create custom solutions where we may have considered purchasing something instead."
"One of the biggest benefits BigFix has had for our organization is the ease and efficiency to perform many different tasks, across pillars and platforms, all from one pane of glass."
"The most valuable feature of BigFix is the software deployment."
"The architecture for patching and the 100% correct reporting makes BigFix stand apart from other solutions."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."
"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
 

Cons

"I would like Intune to natively support easier report generation. This improvement would enable less experienced staff to run reports more efficiently without relying on additional tools or functions."
"At this time, I do not have any areas for improvement. I have heard about some downtime, but I am not in the local IT team."
"We haven't really gone through all the features of Intune. We are just discovering them. Every day, we see a new feature that we want to apply, but what will be great for Intune is to be able to deploy apps in a simple fashion. We should be able to easily install various apps on the Windows platform, iOS, and Android. Currently, we have to write some scripts. It's not as straightforward as we would like it to be. It should be simplified so that we can do it just with three clicks—next, next, finish—without needing to write a script."
"I would like to see better integration with Microsoft. There are a few things I can still do with Jamf that I am unable to do with Intune yet."
"The backend of Microsoft Intune needs to be improved. We have seen a little bit of delay as compared to other MDM solutions. That needs to be improved. A little bit more granularity should also be added"
"Since GMS is unavailable in China, we currently rely on device administrator enrollment for managing Android devices there."
"The technical support by Microsoft is not so good. We have to manage many things by ourselves and do not receive responses in a timely manner."
"Intune doesn't provide much control over Windows servers. It's something we struggle with."
"The sub-capacity licensing was a challenge for some of it. We had trouble getting it to calculate right."
"We need a much better multi-tenant option."
"The product should become cloud-based. Also, the peer nesting ability of the product is a little backward."
"The reporting and dashboard parts have room for improvement."
"It can be improved speed-wise. They can make it a little bit light. If you do any query for servers in bulk, it can take some time. Similarly, creating a job can take some time."
"License management isn't quite as easy as it should be to deal with the licensing. You need to take the server down to import the new licenses which I find to be annoying."
"The self-service application seems to need some work to replace the client UI. There are a lot of pop-ups if you use a baseline as the object that you're setting to a workstation. Unless you're using web UI, the message is not customizable in the user notification."
"I would like to see much better web reporting because as it is now, it's convoluted, basic, it's not modern, and there are limitations to it."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"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."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft's licensing is more flexible and adaptive than its competitors."
"Microsoft Intune's costliness stems from licensing fees and the overhead associated with its management, user experience, and device remediation."
"I have no comment on pricing of the solution."
"Our Office 365 Business Premium license, including Office 365 and Intune Management, offers excellent value."
"We don't get Intune as a separate module. Most of the time, we use it within an enterprise agreement like E3 or E5. Those licenses are at a good price, but what is annoying is that every single year they go higher."
"Intune is linked with Microsoft. We can deploy the Microsoft E365 license to users by Intune. There are different types of licenses, such as device administrator licenses, E5 licenses for device enrollment manually, and P1 and p2 licenses for device enrollment automatically. These are the licenses required for the administration."
"Microsoft licenses are costly."
"The price of Intune is included with the license for Office 365, so we don't have to pay anything extra for it."
"The license is subscription-based."
"The cost is slightly high."
"Its price is very reasonable."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"There's not much big cost. We only have to pay the agents' cost for the server, and for the systems."
"It might be about $23 a client."
"When purchasing, buying with other IBM tools provided us with a very good discount in pricing."
"The price of the solution is high. There are not any additional fees from the standard license."
"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."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"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 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
49%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
18%
University
7%
Healthcare Company
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 BigFix?
The most valuable features of the solution are Windows patching and the hardware and software inventory.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
The pricing is competitive, but not the most competitive.
What needs improvement with BigFix?
Implementing a business solution with BigFix has some issues, primarily concerning the time required for distribution...
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
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.