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Chef vs UrbanCode Deploy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

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

Chef
Ranking in Release Automation
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (20th), Configuration Management (18th)
UrbanCode Deploy
Ranking in Release Automation
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UrbanCode Deploy is 5.0%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user587571 - PeerSpot reviewer
It offers OOTB plugins for middleware.
By standardizing the automated deployment application process, reducing the amount of errors due to manual steps and by providing visibility into the release cycles of various teams/applications, we've improved our global efficiency by at least 25% and still counting, since we've only used the product for a short period of time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"You set it and forget it. You don't have to worry about the reliability or the deviations from any of the other configurations."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"One thing that we've been able to do is a tiered permission model, allowing developers and their managers to perform their own operations in lower environments. This means a manager can go in and make changes to a whole environment, whereas a developer with less access may only be able to change individual components or be able to upgrade the version for software that they have control over."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"It is very easy to make a software release. It used to take us at least a couple of hours to make a release, now we went to production with a new one last night. This new release took me five minutes."
"The most valuable functionality is the ability to define the deployment process, schedule the deployment and automatically execute the deployments to different environments."
"The most valuable feature is the snapshot functionality, which allows us to access previous versions of the artifacts."
"The solution handles complex deployments very efficiently."
"Stable solution that's good for automating the CI/CD pipeline: from development to production."
"The stability is good. I haven't experienced any issues."
 

Cons

"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"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."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"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 scalability of this application needs improvement. Changes and variations in the application become bottlenecks as they need to be more seamless and comfortable."
"The technical support of the solution could definitely be improved as PMRs take long to resolve."
"I would like to see more reporting for container architecture."
"The interface allows access in a number of ways but that can be confusing."
"I certainly would like to have a better way to pass information between deployment steps using UrbanCode Deploy because that's really difficult to do."
"I would like to have the agent up and running at all times, as opposed to only while it is in the DevOps pipeline."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"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."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"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."
"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."
"The cost of the solution is high but it offers great ROI."
"The licensing fees for this solution are based on the number of servers that are being deployed and the number of agents that you have."
"Considering COVID-19, the price is too high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
18%
University
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
63%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
3%
 

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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

No data available
uDeploy
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
As policy, IBM does not release customer names on non-IBM web sites.  However, public DevOps and UrbanCode Deploy case studies can be found here. IBM's UrbanCode Deploy customers span Small-Medium Businesses to Fortune 500 companies across all industries worldwide.
Find out what your peers are saying about Chef vs. UrbanCode Deploy and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.