Chef vs Perforce Puppet comparison

Progress Software and Perforce are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Progress Software is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.0, while Perforce is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.5. Progress Software holds a 2.0% mindshare in CM, compared to Perforce’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Progress Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Perforce users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 2025

Perforce Puppet and Chef are prominent players in the infrastructure automation space, each providing robust solutions for automating IT processes. Chef seems to have the upper hand, attributed to its comprehensive functionalities and significant ROI, which many consider worth the investment.

Features: Perforce Puppet offers strong configuration management with a declarative programming model, facilitating system provisioning and effective change enforcement. It provides stability and precise control over changes, making it ideal for controlled environments. Chef, with its imperative programming model, focuses on integration with cloud services and managing complex deployment scenarios, aiding in dynamic and scalable environments. It supports headless operations and allows writing recipes for versatile automation.

Room for Improvement: Perforce Puppet could enhance its integration capabilities with third-party services and improve the user interface for non-technical users to widen adoption. Increasing documentation for advanced users and reducing the footprint of agent installations would also be beneficial. Chef could simplify its setup process to reduce complexity in initial deployments. Enhancing rollback capabilities during deployments and expanding native cloud service integrations could improve its flexibility. Better out-of-the-box reporting and analytics features are also areas for growth.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Perforce Puppet integrates well with existing systems through a straightforward deployment model, supported by reliable technical assistance for smooth implementation. Chef requires more hands-on setup given its complex configurations. However, the customer service is commendable for extensive support and guidance throughout the deployment process, addressing initial complexities effectively.

Pricing and ROI: Perforce Puppet is often perceived as offering competitive pricing with moderate setup costs, gradually delivering positive ROI due to its reliable performance. Chef, although bearing higher initial setup costs, provides substantial ROI through its feature-rich capabilities and flexibility, ensuring long-term value through its robust automation solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Chef vs. Perforce Puppet Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. Perforce Puppet

July 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.2%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 2.0%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 1.2%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble

Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24

Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license

The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.

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Aaron P

DevOps Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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Erik Ableson

Owner at Infrageeks

A stable solution that is more suited for larger companies with mature CI/CD structures and image management processes

Puppet Enterprise is more suitable for clients working up much more structured deployment images they manage internally. Before choosing Puppet Enterprise, users should think seriously about what they're trying to accomplish and ensure they put the right pieces in place. Overall, I rate Puppet Enterprise an eight out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The central administration con dashboard is very easy to use and provides very good oversight on all that needs to be monitored."

"The ability to manage devices over the cloud is a big benefit, as devices now receive updates regardless of location."

"It is a stable solution."

"The solution appears to be stable and scalable."

"Autopilot is a feature I really like."

"The security-related tools are excellent; these features allow us to secure devices, lock them down, and ensure compliance."

"Users can make screenshots, and devices only need the minimal version of iOS."

"It supports end-users who tend to lock their devices quite frequently. Its conditional access policy helps us keep the users logged into their devices."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"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 important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."

"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."

"It has been very easy to tie it into our build and deploy automation for production release work, etc. All the Chef pieces more or less run themselves."

"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."

"If you're handy enough with DSL and you can present your own front-facing interface to your developers, then you can actually have a lot more granular control with Chef in operations over what developers can perform and what they can't."

"The most valuable feature is automation."

"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."

More Chef pros

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."

"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."

"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."

"The versatility is great."

"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."

"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."

"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."

More Perforce Puppet pros

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."

"There is room for improvement in server patch management and allowing direct uploads of EXE applications instead of needing to convert them to Intune format, which would save time."

"They can improve their MAM policies a little bit more and make them more granular. They should include more granular group policies. They are there, but they need to be more granular. Its stability should also be improved. It is not very stable. Sometimes, it shows some inconsistencies across tenants."

"China blocks Google and Google Play Store, which makes installation challenging. Microsoft Intune is a company software, which has to be installed to the app portal or Microsoft Software Center."

"There are a lot of small use cases where we realized that some technical solution was missing in Microsoft in comparison to other products. For example, it lacks something similar to sensing or location-based rules and configurations."

"The biggest problem we ever have is when something goes out of date after 30 days when nobody has logged into it. We do have a problem trying to get those back online. We've been working with Microsoft to resolve that problem, but that's been the only issue that we've had in the last few years."

"Setting up Intune Autopilot can be a little complicated."

"Deploying an app can be a complex process due to dependencies."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"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."

"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."

"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."

"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."

"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."

"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."

"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."

More Chef cons

"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."

"There's a lot of scope for enhancement on the DevSecOps side. They should definitely include features for compliance, for both the Linux and Windows side of the devices, as well as for network devices. Compliance is something they need to work on."

"Clients with less technical expertise may find Puppet complex to configure. Our team may struggle if technical team members leave the organization, leaving others uncertain about using the tool."

"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."

"The solution has really complex code, you have to understand the Ruby language. However, once you know the code then you can move ahead without any problems."

"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."

"It's a bit of a pain point to make sure that everything works once we've upgraded it because Puppet has been evolving pretty fast."

"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs we leave up to the customer and these vary from one to another."

"Intune comes with the licensing that is common for large organizations. However, Microsoft has recently released many add-ons that are very expensive, especially for large organizations or corporations."

"While I don't have access to high-level financial information, I believe we have achieved lower costs with this implementation."

"It's monthly for us, but it's built into the license cost that we pay our IT each month. It's maybe 129 Kroner per head, which translates to £10. There are some additional costs. Our IT had to set up and configure their own server, so there is an extra cost for that, but I'm not sure what that costs."

"Intune is included in the Microsoft 365 licensing package that we have."

"I am not that aware of the pricing, but as compared to other MDM solutions, Microsoft is providing a lot of things at the organizational level. So, it is quite reasonable as compared to other MDM solutions."

"Microsoft Intune is a cost effective choice. It is less expensive than other products on the market."

"Licensing depends on how you are providing support to your enterprise, whether it's device-based or user-based."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"Pricing for Chef is high."

"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."

"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."

"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."

"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."

"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."

"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."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."

"Depending on the size of the organization there is a point when the price of Puppet Enterprise should be lower. However, they provide really good functionality, features, and capabilities."

"The main thing that we noticed when we switched from the enterprise version to the community version was the difference in cost — the infrastructure is pretty expensive."

"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."

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Comparison Review

it_user185772

Senior Software Architect with 5,001-10,000 employees

Oct 27, 2015

Docker v. CFEngine v. Puppet Data Center Automation v. Chef v. Ansible

Originally posted at http://technologyconversations.com/2015/08/26/configuration-management-in-the-docker-world/ Anyone managing more than a few servers can confirm that doing such a task manually is a waste of time and risky. Configuration management (CM) exists for a long time and there is no…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

16%

University

Retailer

Educational Organization

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

11%

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 ...

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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...

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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 ...

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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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?

Chef is priced based on the number of nodes.

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What needs improvement with Chef?

Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container...

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What do you like most about Puppet Enterprise?

Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Puppet Enterprise?

Puppet is not cheap. I would rate its affordability as seven or eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Puppet Enterprise?

Clients with less technical expertise may find Puppet complex to configure. Our team may struggle if technical team m...

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Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 11% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

BigFix vs Chef

Compared 45% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs Chef

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Chef

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Chef

Compared 8% of the time

More Chef Competitors

AWS Systems Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 35% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 25% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 24% of the time

More Perforce Puppet Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

June 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Chef

July 2025

Download Chef product report

Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet

June 2025

Download Perforce Puppet product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

Puppet

Overview

Microsoft Intune provides centralized management of mobile devices and applications, ensuring security, compliance, and productivity through integration with Microsoft services like Microsoft 365 and Azure Active Directory.

Organizations use Intune for managing mobile devices and applications, enhancing security and compliance across platforms. With features like single sign-on, conditional access, and zero-touch deployment via Autopilot, it facilitates efficient operations. Intune's scalability, easy enrollment, and capabilities such as remote wipe support diverse device management, offering robust data protection and efficient operation. Despite its features, improvement areas include reporting, compatibility with non-Microsoft devices, and better support for macOS and Linux devices.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Seamless Integration: Works with Microsoft 365, Azure Active Directory, and System Center for streamlined management.
Conditional Access: Enhances security with policies that restrict access based on conditions.
Autopilot: Provides zero-touch deployment for setting up new devices efficiently.
Mobile Device Management: Enables control over both personal and corporate devices.
Application Deployment: Facilitates app delivery across a range of devices.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Centralized Management: Reduces complexity by managing devices and applications in one place.
Security Enhancement: Protects data with features like remote wipe and compliance monitoring.
Improved Productivity: Enhances efficiency with seamless integration and automation features.
Device Scalability: Supports diverse device management for growing business needs.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and education, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure secure and compliant device management. Companies leverage its capabilities to deploy security policies and manage both corporate-owned and BYOD environments, facilitating a unified approach to data protection and compliance.

Microsoft

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

Perforce Puppet provides robust features for configuration management, compatible with Linux, Windows, and UNIX. It simplifies infrastructure management with automation and role-based access control, though it requires mastering command-line operations due to limited GUI.

Perforce Puppet utilizes a hub-spoke architecture to enhance automation across production environments, excelling in provisioning and configuration management for on-prem servers. Its infrastructure as code approach eases deployment and maintenance, supported by community resources for stabilization. Support for diverse devices makes it adaptable for complex configurations, but pricing and integration gaps, especially with Infosec tools, pose challenges for some.

What are the key features of Perforce Puppet?

Remote Package Installation: Centralized server management for remote installations
File Management: Streamlined file operations from a single point
Infrastructure as Code: Simplifies infrastructure maintenance
Scalability: Grows with organizational demands
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures secure user management
Device State Control: Efficient device integration and configuration

What benefits should users expect?

Automation Efficiency: Reduces manual tasks with hub-spoke architecture
Versatility: Supports multiple operating systems
Community Support: Backed by a stable and organized community
Configuration Simplicity: Simplifies and streamlines setup processes

Puppet is implemented across industries for managing production servers, especially in regulated environments. Its security compliance checks ensure adherence to required standards, while public configurations assist in device network integration. Industries benefit from its ability to streamline Linux server automation and explore expansion into Windows systems to meet cross-platform requirements.

Perforce

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

Los Alamos National Laboratory, GitHub, IP Commerce, Cedexis, Spiceworks, Server Density, Swisstopo, Chockstone, Constant Contact, NICS, Citrix

Buyer's Guide

Chef vs. Perforce Puppet

July 2025

Free Report: Chef vs. Perforce Puppet

Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. Perforce Puppet and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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