We performed a comparison between Chef and SaltStack 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.
"The standout features of Intune are its excellent mobile device management and highly effective application management capabilities."
"Intune enables us to manage our devices from anywhere."
"...Intune itself integrates with that entire Microsoft ecosystem. As an individual product itself, it's okay. It holds up. But when you start saying "I've bought this as part of a wider solution, as a company we are going Microsoft throughout," then it makes more sense to have Microsoft Intune... so you have that single dashboard."
"The Autopilot feature is fantastic. It is a Microsoft product, so it deals best with Microsoft operating systems, but it can integrate with iOS, Mac OS, Linux, and Android."
"For the price, the features included with Microsoft are appealing."
"Among the most valuable features are the Company Portal that is built into Intune, and the update rings so that we can manage what types of future updates the devices get."
"The technical support of Microsoft Intune is good."
"The most important thing for me is the autopilot feature."
"Manual deployments came to a halt completely. Server provisioning became lightning fast. Chef-docker enabled us to have fewer sets of source code for different purposes. Configuration management was a breeze and all the servers were as good as immutable servers."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"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."
"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"One thing that we've been able to do is a tiered permission model, allowing developers and their managers to perform their own operations in lower environments. This means a manager can go in and make changes to a whole environment, whereas a developer with less access may only be able to change individual components or be able to upgrade the version for software that they have control over."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"It is a highly stable solution."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack."
"I want to build automation that is intelligent, part of the fabric of our environment, and is somewhat self-sustaining. I think SaltStack can help me do this."
"SaltStack has given us the ability to deal with systems at scale and rectify issues at scale."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."
"The solution can have some compliance problems in general and the end-point user can bypass easily the company policies in Intune."
"Microsoft Intune is not user-friendly to manage and has room for improvement."
"The closest Microsoft Intune can be to GPOs, the better. There needs to be more granularity on application deployments. However, they have done better recently with the application deployments."
"The mobile and tablet-based versions need improvement because they are not completely user-friendly, compared to the web version. Also, data synchronization with our existing asset manager, the synchronization between multiple assets and multiple devices, takes a lot of time due to the security scanning. It should be reduced."
"What would make this product better is adding more security policies and features in the next upgrade."
"I think that there is room for improvement with the reporting. If this is done, it will be a better product."
"There are items that require improvements. One is the controls from iOS."
"It's only good for a Microsoft environment."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"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."
"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"Web UI."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
"A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated."
"It is difficult to set up."
"Its configuration process could be better."
Chef is ranked 15th in Configuration Management with 18 reviews while SaltStack is ranked 14th in Configuration Management with 33 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while SaltStack is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SaltStack writes "Orchestration tool that powers automation of processes with the click of a button". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Configuration Manager and CFEngine Enterprise, whereas SaltStack is most compared with VMware Aria Automation, Microsoft Configuration Manager, HashiCorp Terraform, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and BMC TrueSight Server Automation. See our Chef vs. SaltStack 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.
