KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs Perforce Puppet comparison

The compared Quest Software and Perforce solutions aren't in the same category. Quest Software is ranked #11 in RMM , with an average rating of 10.0, and holds a 1.7% mindshare in the category. Perforce is ranked #16 in CM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Perforce users who would recommend it.

KACE Systems Management App...

Read 39 KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) reviews

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341 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Perforce Puppet

Read 14 Perforce Puppet reviews

1,321 Views
1,176 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

KACE Systems Management App...

Perforce Puppet

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Perforce Puppet and KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) are competing in system management and automation. Perforce Puppet holds the upper hand in automation functionalities, while KACE SMA is known for its extensive device management capabilities.

Features: Perforce Puppet includes agent-based functionality, integrates well with Bomgar, and offers a large code repository. KACE SMA allows mass package deployment, provides comprehensive asset management, and features a powerful scripting tool for automation.

Room for Improvement: Perforce Puppet could improve on ease of deployment and reduce reliance on technical support. KACE SMA may benefit from enhanced integration with non-Windows systems and reducing its overall system complexity for smaller businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: KACE SMA features straightforward deployment models and reliable customer service, making management tasks easier for IT admins. Perforce Puppet offers robust solutions but requires more initial setup and technical guidance.

Pricing and ROI: Perforce Puppet offers competitive pricing with potentially favorable ROI for automation tasks. KACE SMA may demand higher initial costs but justifies them with its comprehensive feature set, delivering substantial value over time.

To learn more, read our detailed KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Perforce Puppet Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Perforce Puppet

January 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

KACE Systems Management App...

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Client Desktop Management (3rd), Endpoint Compliance (7th), Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (11th), Patch Management (9th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (10th)

Perforce Puppet

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

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 1.3% compared to last year.
Perforce Puppet, on the other hand, focuses on Configuration Management, holds 3.7% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.

Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)	1.7%
Kaseya VSA	15.8%
NinjaOne	11.4%
Other	71.1%

Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)

Configuration Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Perforce Puppet	3.7%
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform	12.2%
Microsoft Configuration Manager	9.5%
Other	74.6%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

Michael Huffman

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.

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reviewer2284542

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pretty much all of the features are valuable. The inventory is very helpful to be able to keep track of our devices. The deployments make it easy to deploy new software packages or upgrade packages. The help desk is also a great tool for tracking problems and problem tickets."

"It also does patch management. At the moment, I'm rolling out a new feature update, 20.8.2, and it's a great challenge because we have to deploy it to 1,200 computers in the home office. We want to do it without interrupting production, but KACE is reliable and it's easy to adapt it to my needs for how and when to deploy the feature update."

"My company had bought some new machines. We used the tool to do some basic settings to ship every machine the same way and undertake the Windows deployment. We did the scripted installation. The tool helped us deploy custom software for specific departments. We also did Windows updates with the product."

"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."

"There is ease of use, and its pricing was a driving factor."

"The software asset management has been a big help, even when it comes to license true-ups. I can use it to find out how many Tivoli we have, and boom, there's the number... And you can actually click on the information about the software and it shows, for example, that these five servers are where it's being reported. If you really want, you can log in to them and validate."

"Patching is definitely the most valuable feature. It gives us good, centralized software, which comes in very handy since we are doing 400 servers at a time. It enables us to manage all the servers, and to deal with the application team regarding reboots and scheduling."

"The solution provides us a single pane of glass with everything that we need for endpoint management of all devices. It definitely has made our endpoint management process much easier."

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) pros

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

"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."

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

"The agent-based feature helps me by being stable."

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

"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."

"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."

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

More Perforce Puppet pros

Cons

"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."

"The customization of the interface needs improvement for things like end user tickets. While the functionality is good, some of that UI stuff does need improvement."

"I have complaints about smart label adaptation and because of this, I recommend a 24 to 48 hour bake-in period."

"There may be a good reason why some things are not easily able to be done, yet it needs work to compete with some of the other ticketing systems out there now."

"The initial setup was complex. It is a Linux-based virtual server, where the customer cannot get into the back-end, so you can only follow their prompts. Then, there are specific things that have to be done in their implementation and upgrade phases that have to be done in a certain order or steps. If you don't get those steps right, the system doesn't work. I think that either simplifying that process or providing really good step-by-step documentation would be helpful."

"The software asset management functionality is an area that needs to be improved. It could be more automated because when connections need to be made, such as when I connected Adobe and my malware removed, the process was pretty much manual."

"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 KACE Go Mobile App crashes a lot, and it always has. I would love to see that get fixed because it's very convenient when it does work properly, but most of the time it does not."

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) cons

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay annually for technical support."

"Its pricing model is good for what it offers. Nobody here gives me a hard time about renewing the contract every year. It might be a little cost prohibitive for a smaller company who has to stand up a virtual environment as well as have virtual environment licensing and the hardware. If you have a smaller environment, it might be cost prohibitive. If you only have a couple of hundred computers, you might be more willing to do those manually. In our environment, the cost savings of having KACE far outweigh the licensing costs. We are okay with its pricing model."

"We are a university. So, we have a very good price for the system. I think the price for the system is worth it because of the security patch management. The security patch management is very important for us. The price is very good for KACE SMA, the functionality you get, and the patch management."

"The cost of KACE has been relatively low compared to other systems. Even if those systems have the same cost, they do not do as much of the third-party patching that KACE natively does."

"n terms of pricing and licensing, my advice is that you need to assess what you need and then look at what they offer. It's easy to get caught up in the things that you want, but don't really need."

"We need it, so we have to pay the price. It is what it is. If you need a gallon of milk, then you have to pay the price for it. You don't want to buy the cheap stuff. You want to buy the stuff that is organic and good for your body, which doesn't have all this other junk in it. You want it clean for your body. Quest has done that for our deployment and management systems."

"The product is reasonably priced."

"The pricing is great. It's billed annually and it's very reasonable."

More KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

University

11%

Non Profit

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

Marketing Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

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.

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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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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%.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Puppet Enterprise?

My main use case for Perforce Puppet is for configuration management.

See all answers

Comparisons

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ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

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GFI LanGuard vs KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Intune vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Perforce Puppet

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

February 2026

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) report

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Buyer's Guide

Perforce Puppet

January 2026

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Also Known As

Dell KACE Systems Management

Puppet

Overview

KACE Systems Management Appliance offers integration capabilities, efficient image deployment, and comprehensive asset management. It supports centralized management across diverse devices and locations, simplifying IT processes and enhancing security.

KACE Systems Management Appliance provides single-pane visibility for endpoint management, mass software deployment, automated patch management, robust scripting, and detailed inventory tracking. It streamlines IT management and improves cyber-security compliance through remote software updates and centralized IT request handling. Despite struggles with scalability and the need for interface improvements, it enables efficient device imaging, script automation, and network management through detailed reporting. Organizations find it effective for software deployment, asset management, and endpoint monitoring, serving thousands of IoT devices and desktops.

What are the key features of KACE Systems Management Appliance?

Integration capabilities: Seamlessly connects with existing IT systems.
Efficient image deployment: Facilitates quick and effective distribution of system images.
Comprehensive asset management: Provides detailed tracking and management of IT assets.
User-friendly helpdesk: Simplifies handling IT requests and issues.
Automated patch management: Ensures devices are up-to-date with security patches.
Robust scripting: Allows for automation of complex IT tasks.
Detailed inventory tracking: Maintains accurate records of all IT assets.

What benefits should users expect from KACE Systems Management Appliance?

Simplified IT processes: Centralized management enhances operational efficiency.
Improved security: Streamlines cyber-security compliance through automated updates.
Flexibility in customizations: Adapts to specific IT environment needs.
Increased productivity: Efficient ticketing and reporting ease organizational operations.
Remote software updates: Ensures all devices are current, reducing security risks.

In healthcare, KACE Systems Management Appliance is used for maintaining device compliance and security standards. Educational institutions benefit from its capabilities to manage large numbers of endpoints across campuses. In finance, it aids in strict compliance requirements through automated patch management and detailed reporting. Retail sectors leverage its asset management features to streamline operations across numerous locations.

Quest 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

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

Buyer's Guide

KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Perforce Puppet

January 2025

Free Report: KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Perforce Puppet

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