Alibaba Cloud vs VMware Cloud Foundation comparison

Alibaba and VMware are both solutions in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category. Alibaba is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.3, while VMware is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.3. Alibaba holds a 12.9% mindshare in ISI, compared to VMware’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Alibaba users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Alibaba Cloud

Read 19 Alibaba Cloud reviews

6,335 Views
5,045 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

VMware Cloud Foundation

Read 31 VMware Cloud Foundation reviews

668 Views
481 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Alibaba Cloud

VMware Cloud Foundation

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Alibaba Cloud and VMware Cloud Foundation are competing in cloud infrastructure, focusing on virtualization and cloud services. Alibaba Cloud has a competitive edge in cost-effectiveness and flexibility, particularly in Asia, whereas VMware Cloud Foundation excels in robust infrastructure management and disaster recovery.

Features: Alibaba Cloud offers cost-effectiveness, a range of features including compute instances and databases, and user-friendly tools with strong server communication capabilities. VMware Cloud Foundation provides robust disaster recovery, life cycle management, and simple deployment, suited for complex virtualization needs.

Room for Improvement: Alibaba Cloud should improve usability, expand SDK and API support, and enhance support services and integration with other systems. VMware Cloud Foundation needs to lower pricing, improve integration capabilities, refine its upgrade process and customization options, and enhance support responsiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Alibaba Cloud offers ease of use as a public cloud solution with flexible deployment but needs better customer support and technical documentation. VMware Cloud Foundation provides an intuitive deployment process for on-premises and hybrid clouds but could benefit from more knowledgeable support staff and improved documentation.

Pricing and ROI: Alibaba Cloud is known for competitive pricing, often cheaper than AWS and Azure, leading to satisfactory ROI with its pay-as-you-go model. VMware Cloud Foundation is perceived as expensive, with high annual subscriptions and licensing costs, though users feel the quality and features justify the price but would benefit from more competitive pricing models.

To learn more, read our detailed Alibaba Cloud vs. VMware Cloud Foundation Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud vs. VMware Cloud Foundation

June 2025

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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

Alibaba Cloud

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

9th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Cloud Foundation

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 12.9%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Foundation is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo

Chief Marketing Officer at Soft Intelligence

The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved

The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.

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Mangesh Parjane

Technical Manager at Owens & Minor, Inc.

Experience has improved centralized management through single console operations

There is room for improvement in how section updates are handled. The challenge lies in the difficulty of pinpointing issues when something goes wrong at a single stage. Also, each user needs deep knowledge of every aspect of virtualization, and the VMware personnel might not fully grasp aspects outside their expertise, requiring the involvement of other professionals.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is easy to set up."

"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."

"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."

"What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area."

"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."

"Flexibility and costs were probably the most important thing for us. The cost was one of the big factors for choosing Alibaba Cloud relative to other cloud solutions, especially in Asia"

"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."

More Alibaba Cloud pros

"The ability to auto-scale is the most valuable feature."

"We are using it for infrastructure automation."

"VMware Cloud Foundation provides us with the vSphere dashboard through which we can manage, monitor, schedule, and spin up your virtual machines. We can manage, monitor, and get reports of your infrastructure."

"I'm able to deploy many platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, and Azure on VMware."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of migrating from on-premises infrastructure when transitioning away from older systems."

"The product enables flexibility in network structures."

"The fact that it automates a lot of manual processes in a net new environment build is most valuable."

"VMware Cloud Foundation makes it easy to set up new environments. You get hosts in a pool, which you can build into a new cluster."

More VMware Cloud Foundation pros

Cons

"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."

"It is not robust."

"The support offered by the tool is ridiculous."

"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature. For example, a customer wants to provision some VM that has many configurations. If I want to show the price to the customer, it is very challenging. The SDK that Alibaba has provided is very limited. We can have the pricing for VM, but we cannot have pricing for RDS databases or some other services. This is a big concern area for us. They should put more effort into the SDKs or APIs that they provide, for example, pricing APIs or pricing SDK. They do not provide support for most of the services they provide. For example, if I want to get the price of MongoDB, that SDK is not available from Alibaba. Similarly, robust API support is required for S3, which is OSS or Object Storage, so that we can read the data in a faster manner, for example, in chunks. We have raised many issues with the Alibaba support team, and they have been fixing the issues after we report them."

"I think that sometimes the customer service for Alibaba Cloud is inefficient.... Sometimes it's hard to reach out to them."

"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."

"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."

More Alibaba Cloud cons

"Cost is a challenge when convincing clients, especially for large deals."

"VMware Cloud Foundation is complex, and there are always updates regarding security features, accessibility, and the user interface. Making changes isn't simple because there are a lot of tables to update. People in the field may not feel confident about managing it."

"From a stability perspective, there may be some issues."

"We would like the ability to write to both sites at the same time, in a synchronous fashion."

"There may be room for improvement in the resource allocation feature."

"They should provide integration with Azure VMware Solution."

"The solution is quite expensive."

"The use of cloud and other integrations need to be improved and made easier."

More VMware Cloud Foundation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."

"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."

"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."

"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."

"The product is not that expensive."

"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."

"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."

"The cost is better than similar solutions."

More Alibaba Cloud pricing and cost advice

"The price of VMware Cloud Foundation is a bit high. However, it comes with a lot of useful features and can handle a lot of operational complexity. Overall the price can be seen as being fair for what it offers."

"The price of VMware Cloud Foundation is expensive."

"The pricing is moderate. I would rate it six out of ten."

"This solutuion can be expensive for small and medium-sized companies."

"I give the price a three out of ten."

"If our customer has the option to buy a server for $4,000 or $5,000, but VMware asks for two-person licensing $7,000 to $8,000, which is more than the hardware price. So sometimes, the customer cannot pay for it because it's too expensive."

"There is an annual license required to use the solution."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."

More VMware Cloud Foundation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?

ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?

Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Cloud Foundation?

VMware Cloud Foundation provides us with the vSphere dashboard through which we can manage, monitor, schedule, and spin up your virtual machines. We can manage, monitor, and get reports of your inf...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Cloud Foundation?

I'm not involved in sales, so I have no specific information about pricing. However, I've heard it's not a cheap product, but the cost includes very good support.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Cloud Foundation?

VMware Cloud Foundation is complex, and there are always updates regarding security features, accessibility, and the user interface. Making changes isn't simple because there are a lot of tables to...

See all answers

Comparisons

Google Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 31% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 29% of the time

Tencent Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 9% of the time

More Alibaba Cloud Competitors

Azure Stack vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 50% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 14% of the time

AWS Outposts vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 11% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs VMware Cloud Foundation

Compared 4% of the time

More VMware Cloud Foundation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud

June 2025

Download Alibaba Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Cloud Foundation

May 2025

Download VMware Cloud Foundation product report

Overview

Alibaba Cloud offers a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to support growing enterprises worldwide, including data storage, relational databases, big-data processing, and content delivery networks.

Alibaba

VMware Cloud Foundation makes it easy to deploy and run a hybrid cloud. VMware Cloud Foundation provides integrated cloud infrastructure (compute, storage, networking, and security) and cloud management services to run enterprise applications in both private and public environments.

VMware

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint

ricoh, dell technologies, sky

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud vs. VMware Cloud Foundation

June 2025

Free Report: Alibaba Cloud vs. VMware Cloud Foundation

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