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Perforce Puppet vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 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

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
312
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
7.2
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Network Automation (1st), AWS Pro Service Providers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 8.2%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Puppet is 2.9%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 13.5%, down from 18.4% 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 Platform13.5%
Microsoft Intune8.2%
Perforce Puppet2.9%
Other75.4%
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.
Sudhir Kumar Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
Have managed thousands of servers with streamlined configuration processes
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is very helpful due to passwordless integration and the ability to interact with multiple servers at once, which is especially advantageous when dealing with thousands of servers. The integration aspect of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has optimized my IT ecosystem significantly by consolidating multiple tools, such as a CI/CD pipeline with Jenkins, where we validate everything, including testing and SonarQube code quality. The agentless architecture of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, using the SSH key, makes it passwordless and allows us to push configurations with one click, creating a major advantage. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's main benefit is that it allows us to push configurations to multiple servers without manually visiting each one, maintaining efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support, in general, has been quite helpful."
"The biggest asset is the range of device management options available with Intune, whether it is a Windows device, a Linux device, a Mac device, or mobile devices."
"Microsoft Intune helps us avoid issuing everyone company-owned devices. We provide a stipend, allowing users to bring their own devices. This approach gives us leverage against other MSPs. It also enhances collaboration because clients already covered by specific licensing can optimize their usage of Microsoft Intune."
"Advanced endpoint analytics provides granular information about devices in Microsoft Intune, facilitating easier troubleshooting at system and application levels."
"The feature I like the most is that we can perform remote tasks. If we want to retire or wipe out personal data or corporate data from a device, we can use Microsoft Intune remotely, and with the click of a button, data is removed automatically. Nothing needs to be done from the end-user side."
"I like that it's very good and very simple. I found that we just needed to have a proper subscription for an Intune tenant, and from the subscription, if we have the right role assigned, like the global admin role or the owner role, we can use Microsoft cloud resources. With the help of that, we can do many things like setting up Microsoft Intune in the cloud to create our virtual machines. All these can be done, and the steps are very simple. I really liked it. I like features like Windows Auto-Enrollment. I like it very much because whenever you supply it to the end-user, it will be ready to use immediately. The end-user only needs to provide the user credentials, and then they are good to go. I also really like Cloud PC, which was recently launched on Azure."
"Fortunately, now everything is streamlined into a single, unified platform."
"I haven't used other mobile device management solutions, but compared to SCCM, we eliminate a lot of on-premises infrastructure and maintenance by using Intune."
"The agent-based feature helps me by being stable."
"Anything that we manage through Puppet always runs perfectly."
"Puppet3 and 4 series provides optimum deployment solutions for infrastructure and applications."
"Puppet Enterprise has reduced the time of production changes or environment changes."
"Puppet Enterprise is a stable solution."
"The versatility is great."
"Puppet Enterprise has good functionalities."
"I rate the stability of Puppet as ten out of ten."
"It is quick to production. It has an API in the back which allows for integrations."
"I like the fact that Ansible is agentless."
"The reason I like Ansible is, first, the coding of it is very straightforward, it's very human-readable. I'm also on a contract, and I can clearly iterate and bring people up to speed very quickly on writing a Playbook compared with writing up a Puppet manifest or a Salt script."
"The automation capabilities streamline deployment processes, providing reliability and reducing manual intervention and errors."
"The biggest thing I liked about Ansible is the check mode so that we can verify, after we've pushed, that the config there is actually what we intended."
"Its checking and validating ensures our packages are properly patched."
"I like being able to control multiple systems and push out updates quickly with just a couple of clicks of a button and commands. I like the automation because it is a time saver."
"It is all modular-based. If there is not a module for it today, someone will write it."
 

Cons

"Some enrollment features could be improved."
"Sometimes, it takes time to synchronize the policies between the portal and the devices, you don't have a way to estimate how long it will take to deploy. You have some kind of gray area, where it can deploy in 30 minutes or three days."
"Microsoft Intune has potential for improvement; I would like to see a lot more customization in the reporting tools."
"I have faced stability issues with Microsoft Intune plenty of times, but I think it's part of the process."
"They need to integrate more with security options."
"A more incisive reporting tool with automated progress updates and graphical representation would be beneficial, as the current manual method lacks efficiency and visual clarity."
"Microsoft Intune's app deployment presents challenges for non-MSI and non-store apps, particularly EXEs, requiring the use of a Win32 wrapper tool and adding overhead to the process."
"There is room for improvement in server patch management and allowing direct uploads of EXE applications instead of needing to convert them to Intune format, which would save time."
"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."
"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."
"Puppet Enterprise is more complex and difficult to configure."
"Puppet Enterprise should improve the general extensibility for places where they can't install it."
"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."
"We would like Puppet to add more integration for applications."
"It would be good to make the solution more user-friendly,"
"I have observed that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform could improve by creating modules for upcoming AI and ML tech stacks, as currently, specific modules for these are not available."
"The user interface on the Ansible Tower product could be better, but it is functional."
"At this time, I do not have anything to improve. What we struggle with is the knowledge base, but that is more about us having to go and find it and learn the platform on our own rather than an actual Ansible issue."
"The job workflow needs to be worked on. It's not really clear to how you actually link things together. What they probably could do is provide an example workflow on how to stitch things together. I think that would be very helpful."
"Additional features could be added."
"Accessibility. Ansible uses a CLI by default. Those accustomed to it can find their way and adopt the YAML files easily over time. But, some users are more comfortable using UIs..."
"There are challenges in using the graphical interface, particularly in open-source versions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is good because customers are not complaining about it."
"Microsoft Intune is more expensive than other solutions, but it offers a wider range of features and control."
"The price for Intune is fair."
"The pricing is inherently reasonable, as Microsoft leverages market insights to maintain the total cost of ownership at around ninety to ninety-five percent of what would be incurred in an on-premise scenario."
"There is a license needed to use the solution and we are on an annual license."
"My team members bundled it together with their Microsoft solutions, including Microsoft 365 and related products."
"The pricing is competitive, but it is not cheap."
"The price is reasonable, but they should lower it a bit to make it more competitive. It's cheaper than AirWatch and other products, but I still feel like Microsoft can make a base version or with Exchange online or a la carte only Intune version which will be useful. A customer who doesn't want to go full-fledged E3 or E5 can take out or consume an Intune solution only for their purpose, and we want to target that customer."
"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’s pricing is competitive."
"Puppet Enterprise can be an expensive solution for smaller businesses."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."
"Users have to pay a per-node cost of around $ 100 per node."
"The pricing is okay."
"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
"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."
"We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
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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
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business121
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise154
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: December 2025.
880,954 professionals have used our research since 2012.