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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
314
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 February 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 7.4%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 3.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 12.2%, 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 Platform12.2%
Microsoft Intune7.4%
Perforce Puppet3.7%
Other76.7%
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
Senior 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

"The management control feature is the most valuable."
"The user experience of Microsoft Intune is quite good because there's not much disturbance in the background; it's just running in the background."
"The most valuable feature is probably mobile device management. Small businesses are coming under greater scrutiny and requirements for compliance as time goes on. We don't have to worry about a VPN because we can manage these devices, control company data, and lock users out. If needed, we can remotely wipe devices and deadman-switch them."
"It is absolutely a positive investment."
"Stable product that's easy to set up compared to other MDM products."
"I would say the biggest benefit is the single-pane view. There's no jumping around multiple UI's to do your overall management."
"Easy to use."
"Cloud-based device management is the best feature for me as it impacts my company the most; it is much easier than the previous Configuration Manager or SCCM."
"The versatility is great."
"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."
"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."
"The most valuable features are the agent, high load balancing, and overall robustness and features."
"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."
"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."
"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."
"Some colleagues and other companies use it and comment that it is easy to use, easy to understand, and offers good features."
"The development tools are decent and being able to consistently manage those servers is really the key, which is why we went with Ansible in the first place."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is quite stable. If you set it up correctly with the right configurations and there are no hiccups during installation and deployment, it will be stable. I'd give stability a rating of eight out of ten."
"Ansible Galaxy is helpful for roles and Git Submodules: No dependency in managing playbooks. Also, fact caching in redis for host/role grp information speeds up execution. Finally, variable management is easy."
"Ansible is agentless. So, we don't need to set up any agent into the computer we are interacting with. The only prerequisite is that the host with which we are going to interact must have the Python interpreter installed on it. We can connect to a host and do our configuration by using Ansible."
"Installing it is a PIP command. So, it's pretty easy. It is a one liner."
"There are so many models that I don't have to create one."
"It is all modular-based. If there is not a module for it today, someone will write it."
 

Cons

"It would be interesting to integrate the server side of Intune. Some group policy updates we have on the Windows Server side and possibly some on the client side could also be included."
"The information we receive at the device level needs improvement."
"Microsoft Intune fails a lot when it comes to device compliance."
"A feature I would want to see added in Microsoft Intune is the ability to manage other non-Microsoft devices."
"Currently, Microsoft Intune's focus is mainly on Windows, but they can make much more improvement in terms of other platforms."
"Intune is not the most user-friendly mobile device management platform available."
"It would be beneficial to have a more straightforward understanding of Intune's capabilities, presented in a simplified manner."
"When we implemented Intune, it would have been helpful if Microsoft had provided some videos or data about Intune."
"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."
"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."
"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."
"At the beginning the initial setup was kind of complex."
"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."
"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."
"The user interface on the Ansible Tower product could be better, but it is functional."
"There are challenges in using the graphical interface, particularly in open-source versions."
"The communication on it is not probably where it could be. We could use some real life examples where we could point customers to them and say, "This is what you are trying to do. If you follow these steps, it would at least get you started a bit quicker.""
"We are not using the Dashboard a lot because we have higher expectations from it. The default Dashboard from Tower doesn't give that much information. We really want to get down into more than if the job succeeded or what was the percentage of success. We want to get down to task-level success. If, in a job, there are ten tasks, we want to see this task was a success, and this was not, and how many were not. That's the kind of granularity we are looking for, that Tower does not give right now."
"When you set up Playbooks, I may have one version of the Playbook, but another member of the team may have a different vision, and we will not know which version is correct. We want to have one central repository for managing the different versions of Playbooks, so we can have better collaboration among team members. This is our use case for using Git version control."
"Ansible is great, but there are not many modules. You can do about 80% to 90% of things by using commands, but more modules should be added. We cannot do some of the things in Ansible. In Red Hat, we have the YUM package manager, and there are certain options that we can pass through YUM. To install the Docker Community Edition, I'll write the yum install docker-ce command, but because the Docker Community Edition is not compatible with RHEL 8, I will have to use the nobest option, such as yum install docker-ce --nobest. The nobest option installs the most stable version that can be installed on a particular system. In Ansible, the nobest option is not there. So, it needs some improvements in terms of options. There should be more options, keywords, and modules."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
"The SSM connection access needs improvement"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We work with the subscription rather than a server license. I think it's economical this way because we don't have to have a server license for that, and I think that works in our favor."
"Existing E5 license holders for M365, Intune, and Azure, receive a free license."
"The product is relatively pricey, but considering its benefits, I'd say it's fair. The benefits outweigh the expensive licensing fees, especially for large organizations, but medium-sized and smaller businesses may be unable to afford it."
"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."
"It is cheap, but as compared to Google, it is costly. Google is cheaper, but quality-wise, Microsoft Intune is better."
"Microsoft Intune is available for individual purchase at a low per-device cost."
"For Microsoft 365 E5 clients, cost is not an issue as this product is one of the benefits."
"Intune is linked with Microsoft. We can deploy the Microsoft E365 license to users by Intune. There are different types of licenses, such as device administrator licenses, E5 licenses for device enrollment manually, and P1 and p2 licenses for device enrollment automatically. These are the licenses required for the administration."
"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."
"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."
"Everything is generally fair. No one ever likes to pay a lot of money, but we are getting the value. We also get support with it. It has been fair and worthwhile."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
"Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."
"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."
"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."
"We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."
"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."
"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."
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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
10%
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
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business121
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise156
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
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 do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

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: February 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.