We performed a comparison between BigFix and Chef based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Configuration Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Intune's security features for Apple iOS and Mac OS are helpful. We can check enrollment, manage public and private settings, and manage the organization's data using security key features."
"It is very easy to use. It has a very easy interface."
"I like the tool's integration with Apple. Anyone who creates an ID in Intune will get an Apple ID."
"The solution appears to be stable and scalable."
"We have a BYOD policy, and this solution helps us manage our devices."
"Intune's most valuable features are the device, compliance, and configuration policies."
"The standout features of Intune are its excellent mobile device management and highly effective application management capabilities."
"Autopilot is a great feature. Most users are looking for a zero-touch deployment."
"BigFix is incredibly fast and accurate in patching, reporting, and remediation."
"It's enabled us to have a highly successful endpoint patching program for the past decade. It's been enormously successful there. It's also become a core part of many of our business processes, from compliance monitoring of endpoints, encryption management, key escrow, and local administrator password escrow. It's built into our inventory. It's very much everywhere."
"BigFix can manage lost devices, so you can wipe them remotely to ensure the IP doesn't get out in public. Unified endpoint security is a new perspective. I know that HCL is also collaborating with IBM, but I'm not sure if there is any cooperation between them and MaaS360 or other endpoint components."
"From a security standpoint, it allows us to make sure that we're not leaving ourselves vulnerable to exploits and things like that. That's the biggest advantage that we see to the product from a security standpoint."
"What I like most is that it is a powerful solution."
"Desktop patching is the most valuable feature, because with servers, we have complete control over them, and we can simply push patches to the servers."
"Almost every feature is wonderful in BigFix. It is very stable, and we can rely on it. It is an awesome tool."
"It has improved reliability upon delivery of software and has also helped reduce software expenses. The extensibility of BigFix helps to create custom solutions where we may have considered purchasing something instead."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."
"I wanted to monitor a hybrid cloud environment, one using AWS and Azure. If I have to provision/orchestrate between multiple cloud platforms, I can use Chef as a one-stop solution, to broker between those cloud platforms and orchestrate around them, rather than going directly into each of the cloud-vendors' consoles."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"Chef can be scaled as needed. The Chef server itself can scale but it depends on the available resources. You can upgrade specific resources to meet the demand. Similarly, with clients, you can add as many clients as you need. Again, this depends on the server resources. If the server has enough resources, it can handle the number of servers required to manage the infrastructure. Chef can be scaled to meet the needs of the infrastructure being managed."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"Intune's reporting and logging could be improved. When troubleshooting, it's difficult to collect the logs and determine what's happening. If I want to filter out the compliant devices, I can see it from the logs, but I would like the option to drill down further."
"Integration with Mac devices requires some improvement."
"It would be better if they can reduce the cost of the license."
"I would like to see the ability to deploy custom packages as a Windows 64-bit package, as opposed to the Windows 32-bit, which is the only one available now."
"Intune doesn't provide much control over Windows servers. It's something we struggle with."
"Some enrollment features could be improved."
"Reporting needs improvement."
"We need the capabilities of the Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) to be enhanced through Intune instead of Azure."
"The solution should have some kind of a local caching methodology, where the patches can be taken locally into a localized relay server, and from there, the patch can be applied, so that there is not much usage of the network required."
"I would like to see different types of reporting and the ability to integrate closer with the cloud."
"The tool should be more friendly in terms of Web UI and should be having better vulnerability scanning mechanisms so a third-party application is not required to fulfill that aspect."
"To make it a ten they should improve the licensing. Second, if they could have one environment for everything it would be nice. For you to install compliance you need to install the server, and then you add the modules. For you to install inventory you install the server and then you add the modules. It's not easy to do. When I was doing it before I learned it, it was not straight forward."
"I want to see a solution for being able to deploy automated software to a Mac running OS X 10.13, something that's going to deal with kernel exceptions and answering prompts for user permissions for data folders and whatnot. They need to really streamline and automate the Mac software deployment."
"Sometimes the workstations communicate back to the BigFix server two or three days in a week or something similar. Sometimes there can be a delay reporting back to the server for a variety of reasons, such as users turning their computer off when they go home. When the user comes back and turns the computer back on BigFix needs to synchronize and sometimes it can take some time, approximately one week. The communication between the agent and the server should be faster, there is room for improvement in this area."
"The product should become cloud-based. Also, the peer nesting ability of the product is a little backward."
"I'd like to see better integration, with the different applications within BigFix. Instead of sometimes feeling like four or five different applications, they need to be integrated a little better within themselves."
"There appears to be no effort to fix the command line utility functionality, which is definitely broken, provides a false positive for a result when you perform the operation, and doesn't work."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
BigFix is ranked 5th in Configuration Management with 91 reviews while Chef is ranked 16th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews. BigFix is rated 8.6, while Chef is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of BigFix writes "Very stable and easy to deploy with excellent patch compliance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Chef writes "Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation". BigFix is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, Microsoft Windows Server Update Services, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Tanium and ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus, whereas Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, SaltStack and Microsoft Configuration Manager. See our BigFix vs. Chef report.
See our list of best Configuration Management vendors.
We monitor all Configuration Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.