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Perforce Puppet vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
321
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
Perforce Puppet
Ranking in Configuration Management
16th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st), AWS Pro Service Providers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 6.9%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 3.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 11.9%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform11.9%
Microsoft Intune6.9%
Perforce Puppet3.8%
Other77.4%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Elevenxcapital
Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes
The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dynamic groups allow us to set conditions for automatic membership, eliminating the need for user intervention or manual review and ensuring a seamless workflow."
"It has a useful device management feature."
"Autopilot is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune."
"Microsoft Tech Support is good, providing solid support."
"We can securely manage both company-owned devices and personal devices enrolled in our BYOD program."
"The most valuable feature for us is the security, including risk analysis and patch management."
"Microsoft Intune has never crashed for me; it always works without fail."
"Intune helps the organization manage access to its internal apps, data, and resources."
"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."
"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."
"The agent-based feature helps me by being stable."
"I rate the stability of Puppet as 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."
"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."
"The versatility is great."
"The capacity to install products on the operating system is very valuable."
"The Organizations feature, where I can give clear silos and hand them over to different teams, that's amazing; everybody says that it's their own Tower. It's like they have their own Tower out there."
"One of the most valuable features is that Ansible is agentless. It does not have dependencies, other than Python, which is very generic in terms of dependencies for all systems and for any environment. Being agentless, Ansible is very convenient for everything."
"On the network side, I already have a lot of our firewall related processes automated. If it's not automated all the way from the ticket system, our network team members, our tier-one guys in India, can just go into the Tower web interface and fill in a couple of survey questions."
"The playbooks and the code the solution uses are quite useful."
"The most useful features are the playbooks. We can develop our playbooks and simplify them doing something like a cross platform."
"It was easy to read and learn. It is a YAML-based syntax, which makes it easily understand and pick up."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is valuable due to the simplicity of the YAML language."
 

Cons

"The reporting functionality of Microsoft Intune is limited compared to Microsoft System Center, which offers many more reporting options."
"The most significant challenge is reporting and monitoring. The reporting accuracy for deploying applications and all aspects of Intune needs to be improved."
"The security features should be improved."
"Microsoft Intune lacks live location tracking capabilities. Improvements should be made in terms of MDM platforms for other devices."
"It would be helpful if there was proactive remediation."
"An area for improvement is the absence of seamless integration, particularly with external dashboards."
"The worst aspect is the reporting."
"It should be easier to define policies and comply with those policies."
"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."
"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Additional features could be added."
"There could be more stuff in the workflows. I hope that if I have ten templates with different services on it, workflow could auto-populate all the template-based services."
"Documentation could be improved. Many times, if I'm looking for something, I have to Google it in a lot of places, then figure out what the best approach will be. There are some best practices documents, but they don't give you the information."
"For Ansible Tower, there are three tiers with ten nodes. I would like them to expand those ten nodes to 20, because ten nodes is not enough to test on."
"Performance has been an issue on larger environments, but it has gotten a lot better over the past two years."
"The area which I feel can be improved is the custom modules. For example, there are something like 106 official modules available in the Ansible library. A year ago, that number was somewhere around 58. While Ansible is improving day by day, this can be improved more. For instance, when you need to configure in the cloud, you need to write up a module for that."
"The technical support is not adequate. The Ansible sales and technical support services need significant improvement."
"The solution requires some Linux knowledge."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My team members bundled it together with their Microsoft solutions, including Microsoft 365 and related products."
"Microsoft Intune is not cost-effective as a standalone product."
"If you're ever going to buy an Office 365 environment, then pricing is reasonable given all that it does, but if you're not, then you might find the pricing expensive."
"There are licenses required for this solution. We enable licenses on the devices we need to manage."
"The overall pricing of Microsoft Intune is good for companies that have big IT budgets, 3,000 or more users and devices."
"There is a cost benefit of using Microsoft Intune because of the packaging with other Microsoft products."
"We have the business premium licenses for the solution."
"It comes as a bundle, so you do not really know what the prices are. Microsoft does not break it down to the user cost for us. It is just bundled with our E5 license."
"Puppet Enterprise’s pricing is competitive."
"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."
"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."
"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."
"We use the open-source version of the solution."
"We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."
"The pricing is okay."
"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."
"It’s an open-source tool."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."
"The pricing for us is huge because we use twenty thousand nodes, so that is a huge infrastructure, but if someone is using a small infrastructure, then the pricing is not so much."
"Like many Red Hat products, they have a no-cost version of the web application (AWX, formerly Ansible Tower), but you are on your own to install and it is a little more complicated than just installing Ansible."
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Comparison Review

it_user185772 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business122
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise160
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise48
 

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 ...
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...
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 ...
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 ap...
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 o...
What is your primary use case for Puppet Enterprise?
My main use case for Perforce Puppet is for configuration management.
What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management h...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There ...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Puppet
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Los Alamos National Laboratory, GitHub, IP Commerce, Cedexis, Spiceworks, Server Density, Swisstopo, Chockstone, Constant Contact, NICS, Citrix
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Perforce Puppet vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,044 professionals have used our research since 2012.