Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs Perforce Puppet comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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

KACE Systems Management App...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Client Desktop Management (3rd), Endpoint Compliance (7th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (12th), Patch Management (9th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (10th)
Perforce Puppet
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is designed for Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) and holds a mindshare of 1.7%, up 1.5% compared to last year.
Perforce Puppet, on the other hand, focuses on Configuration Management, holds 3.8% mindshare, up 0.6% since last year.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)1.7%
Kaseya VSA15.2%
NinjaOne11.7%
Other71.4%
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Perforce Puppet3.8%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform11.9%
Microsoft Configuration Manager8.8%
Other75.5%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

MH
Server Administrator III at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Reliability and adaptability enable efficient application deployment and security management
The best features Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) offers include the scripting function, which stands out to me because I can find specific needs and deploy the applications based on those needs. There was a time when scripting really saved me time by allowing me to find specific registry entries and modify them to patch security vulnerabilities. Scripting has saved us hundreds of hours over the years when patching these vulnerabilities compared to how we did it before. I really enjoy the security features that are enabled to deploy Microsoft and other vendor patches, which stand out to me as key functionalities.
reviewer2284542 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automated configuration management ensures consistent server setups
The strength of Puppet is in automated configuration management. We can configure a server once and set rules with Puppet so that future server configurations are automatic and consistent with company requests. Puppet is declarative, meaning it finds the best state for itself and corrects any deviations in the configuration.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the Systems Deployment appliance. It's our bread and butter. It is every machine that gets imaged here in this building and out through the whole state goes through the SDA. We rely on it completely. There is no manual process of getting a laptop out of a box, plugging it up, turning it on, and waiting for Windows to start. If you were to go to Best Buy and buy a brand new laptop, you spend the next two to three hours just setting it up. We don't do that. We get a laptop, plug it into the network, connect it to the SDA, and within about three clicks, we're done."
"KACE has made our life much easier since we got off the Microsoft solution. The Microsoft solution was a lot harder to image over different ports and stuff. They would only have this one place where we could do all the imaging. Now, we have a whole building where we can image from. This means that we can image from our storage area, where we have a place to do our imaging. We can also image right at our desks, which is a lot easier."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to monitor updates—the software versions—on machines so that we can keep everything compliant."
"The big pros of Quest KACE Systems Management are its simple interface, and simple, direct management. It's very easy to maintain and manage the device, and it's easy to get it up and running. You can have it up and running in an hour..."
"This product made the job easy to do without having to go put hands on the machines."
"This solution makes it easy to control assets and upgrade all types of software."
"KACE’s knowledge-based articles are very good."
"Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."
"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."
"The versatility is great."
"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."
"The agent-based feature helps me by being stable."
"The main purpose for this automation tool would be: deploying, controlling, ordering change for the system and IT Infrastructure."
"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."
"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."
 

Cons

"Scalability is my primary concern right now."
"The labeling process should be more streamlined. It should be easier to do. It gets confusing at times."
"We'd love to see support for larger dependencies in the scripting feature."
"KACE implemented the possibility of reducing the network speed of the KACE agent. You can set it so that it takes whatever network speed you want or you can set it to 5 Mb, to save network speed. You set it for all the computers, but it would be preferable to separate between VPN connections in our home office and the local area. It would be great to be able to set separate speeds for different VLANs."
"The GUI needs some work. I love all that it can do, however, it can be just be so cluttered at times."
"The problem is that it's harder to directly emulate a lot of the stuff that the group policies do, using the KACE solution. With regular group policies, you just specify the various settings you want to change on the workstations, and then you specify the workstations and—while it's kind of an ugly mess—it does it. Whereas on KACE, you really have to know what you're doing with scripting to effectively script those exact same changes."
"We had issues with the tool's support. We are a Dutch firm and everything has to be in Dutch. We were not able to do the alerts. You were required to tweak them a lot to get them in the language that you preferred. The solution's support depended on the person that you got online. Sometimes, the response was fast and other times you needed to wait a long time. The support also depended on the levels of support that you had requested."
"They could make the booting solution easier for different things, e.g., easier to insert drivers. They could make it easier to create a new image and put it onto the server. Those would be some nice solutions. They could make it so that somebody who has no knowledge at all can do it. That would be really nice. Because every time, until I get it memorized, I still need to go back to the training, the manual, or Google it to figure it out again. If they would make it a lot easier, to where a nine-year-old could do it, that would be really cool. If they made it easier, I could have more people managing the images on the server, instead of just one or two people."
"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."
"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."
"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."
"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."
"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."
"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 is more complex and difficult to configure."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Based on other solutions that we had implemented, its pricing seems to be quite competitive. It is not inexpensive, but it is also not more expensive than any other solution. They have the standard licensing fees and support fees."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The pricing and licensing are good. It's worth it."
"Their pricing is per end-point device. There is an initial cost for the license for the server, which is pretty low, and then there is a per end-point device license, which is also fairly low. So, the pricing is still reasonable."
"We pay annually for technical support."
"It was a very attractive price. This is a huge feature of this product. If you would "credit score" this product versus others out there on the market, this one has a very attractive price."
"We are also saving on the licensing fee, compared to other endpoint management solutions."
"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."
"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 can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solutions are best for your needs.
884,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
12%
Non Profit
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest KACE Systems Management?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is that, hands down, it beat all of the others in simplicity and pricing.
What needs improvement with Quest KACE Systems Management?
I wish Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) would have a top-down approach since we use orgs; currently, we have to go into each org to deploy applications when we need them all across the...
What is your primary use case for Quest KACE Systems Management?
My main use case for Quest KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) is to deploy applications and maintain security, and we use it day-to-day to handle those tasks. With Quest KACE Systems Managemen...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Puppet Enterprise?
Regarding the cost, I find it expensive, always. I don't know how much the license would cost per year or per user approximately.
What needs improvement with Puppet Enterprise?
I don't know what could be improved in Perforce Puppet to make this tool better for the next release. I can't think of anything for now, except maybe the price, which I consider high at 50%.
What is your primary use case for Puppet Enterprise?
My main use case for Perforce Puppet is for configuration management.
 

Also Known As

Dell KACE Systems Management
Puppet
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Waypoint, Mattos Filho, Meetic, Gems Education, Green Clinic HealthSystem, Service King
Los Alamos National Laboratory, GitHub, IP Commerce, Cedexis, Spiceworks, Server Density, Swisstopo, Chockstone, Constant Contact, NICS, Citrix
Find out what your peers are saying about KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Perforce Puppet and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
884,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.