We performed a comparison between Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and VMware Horizon based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both solutions are easy to deploy and have good features. However, users of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services are happier with the price and more satisfied with the technical support.
"The most valuable features are availability and security."
"We use cloud remote support because we need to assist our customers. It allows them to connect from the web. I"
"The most valuable features of the solution are ease of use and the simple environment."
"It's part of the Microsoft Operating system and is free."
"It's pretty stable."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is managing the remote desktop end user or remote server."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"One of the most interesting features in the enterprise version is the ability to do some support. There is a feature for remote control and debugging, which is something we didn't have before having Horizon 7 and the enterprise version."
"The application delivery is it's most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Horizon 7 is that it can be accessed anywhere in my internal network. It has a lot of flexibility."
"The solution has enabled us to offer a secure desktop experience to our remote users. This ensures that our personally identifiable information and HIPAA data remain protected, eliminating the risk of being copied to a local, potentially mobile, device. Everything is contained within a centralized structure."
"We use VMware Horizon to provide remote access for remote users."
"VMware is a hyper-converged infrastructure model. Therefore, for scaling it you just add more servers to it in the inputs. It's rather straightforward."
"The benefits of this solution are that it is modern and it works perfectly well with the rest of the VMware environments we have. Having this vertical integration is what matters to us as an organization and this solution excels in this area. You deploy it and it works without much hassle."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it is easy to set it up, and the user experience it provides is just like a normal desktop."
"The performance depends on connectivity."
"I would like to be able to access the remote desktop using a web-based interface, rather than having to use the client."
"We'd like to see more integration with other vendors."
"Teams component can be a bit cumbersome to use. It takes some time to get it working as expected."
"I would like to see the hard drives work without locking up and integrate the local drives in the next release."
"In a future release, they could improve by providing more advanced technology and better buffering for if the connection is degraded or lost."
"My customers are worried that the RDP protocol can be easily compromised and would like the option to use an alternative like Blast."
"I would say it's expensive as there similar products available for free."
"Horizon 7's performance could be improved."
"The solution has a lot of issues and bugs."
"The remote connection, bandwidth usage, and error connection can be improved. Working with the load balancer sites should also be improved. For example, with Horizon, we can use two clients with a one megabit connection, but with Citrix, we can use four or five clients with the same bandwidth through ICA protocol. VMware must improve remote connection, connection stability, and load balancing."
"I would love to see so they can actually allow the use of Linux, from a hosting environment as well as from a VDI client environment."
"The multimedia playback is not very good and they could improve it by increasing the quality."
"It would be beneficial if VMware invested in developing a robust reporting engine, providing insights into user activities, locations, and more."
"The initial setup may be a little difficult for those with no experience."
"VMware Horizon 7 could improve by supporting the active-active data center. At this time we are only deploying it in the production environment. Our customer is considered to deploy the VMware Horizon 7 to a secondary data center, but we found out that it cannot fully support the user in the deployment in the active-active data center. Any improvement on this would be beneficial."
More Microsoft Remote Desktop Services Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is ranked 1st in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 76 reviews while VMware Horizon is ranked 3rd in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 34 reviews. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is rated 8.0, while VMware Horizon is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services writes "Easy to set up and reliable, but needs an additional control panel". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware Horizon writes "Compelling solution for virtual desktop infrastructure with advanced technology, straightforward licensing, easy setup, and seamless integration". Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is most compared with TeamViewer, Citrix Workspace, VMware Workstation, Parallels Access and Apache Guacamole, whereas VMware Horizon is most compared with VMware Workspace ONE, VMware Horizon View, VMware Player, VMware Horizon Cloud and VMware Workstation. See our Microsoft Remote Desktop Services vs. VMware Horizon report.
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We monitor all Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) 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.