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Chef vs Microsoft Intune comparison

 

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
8.1
Chef improved deployment time, reduced human error, enhanced scalability, optimized resource use, and strengthened compliance and security management.
Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Intune boosts ROI by reducing costs and improving efficiency with seamless device management and reduced reliance on other services.
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
6.0
Customers commend Chef for its responsive support, active community, comprehensive documentation, and efficient issue resolution despite occasional delays.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Intune's customer support is mixed; premium tiers are quicker, but response times and complexity handling need improvement.
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.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Chef is highly scalable, efficiently managing infrastructures of all sizes and accommodating numerous clients based on server capacity.
Sentiment score
8.3
Microsoft Intune is highly scalable and flexible, easily supporting various business sizes with its cloud-based integration and licensing.
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.
 

Stability Issues

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.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Intune is stable and reliable, with minor issues; users generally rate it between seven to ten.
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.
 

Room For Improvement

Chef needs better support, pricing, role management, flexibility, documentation, integration, and improved automation to compete with Ansible.
Microsoft Intune needs improvements in reporting, device support, integration, user interface, and cost efficiency for better management.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Chef offers subscription plans with valuable automation features, but enterprise pricing is high and requires contacting sales for quotes.
Microsoft Intune is cost-effective, especially when bundled with Microsoft 365, offering competitive pricing and valuable features for enterprises.
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

Chef offers compliance, easy configuration management, and automation for IT infrastructure, integrating with CI processes and supporting multiple clouds.
Microsoft Intune offers seamless integration, robust security, and centralized management, enhancing compliance, scalability, and ease of use.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

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)
Microsoft Intune
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

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

Featured Reviews

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.
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.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 or docker images.
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 it easy to control security and manage the usage of mobile apps when you have a ...
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 the things I like about it: Pros: Protected productivity: Intune gives you th...
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 access to both Microsoft’s user community as well as around-the-clock customer s...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Microsoft Intune and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.