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Amazon WorkSpaces vs Horizon 8 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Amazon WorkSpaces receives mixed ROI ratings; users praise easy setup and infrastructure but some find no financial benefits.
Sentiment score
7.1
Users report positive ROI with Horizon 8 through reduced hardware needs, better efficiency, and cost savings in administration.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.8
Amazon WorkSpaces customer support is well-rated, though response times vary; various support plans are available for different needs.
Sentiment score
5.8
Horizon 8 support is praised for proficiency but faces concerns about delays, complexity, and off-hours accessibility.
Resolving issues is often complicated due to it being a complex product.
Our support from VMware expired last December.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Amazon WorkSpaces is scalable, flexible, and cost-effective, supporting various user levels with ease and a pay-as-you-go model.
Sentiment score
8.2
Horizon 8 offers exceptional scalability and adaptability but requires technical expertise and may encounter budget constraints for large deployments.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon WorkSpaces offers strong stability, reliant on connectivity, with minor issues like reconnection needed when idle, enhancing resource efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware Horizon 8 is stable with few issues, with ratings between 8-9, but requires strong infrastructure and proper configuration.
Especially with the integration of NVIDIA, we experience multiple problems including crashing applications, crashing desktops, spontaneous logoffs, black screens, and systems that no longer respond or cannot reconnect.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon WorkSpaces needs better conferencing, app installation, VPN, pricing, support, identity management, and faster operational responses.
Horizon 8 needs better pricing, integrations, documentation, Linux support, analytics, security, NVIDIA integration, and simplified deployment.
I would like to see improvements in Horizon 8, specifically integration with NVIDIA for graphical performance upgrades because it creates many issues such as crashing and black screen systems, causing users to lose access to their current desktop and work.
We have limited capabilities since we are not using a multi-instance solution, just single instances.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon WorkSpaces costs $85-$150 monthly per machine, influenced by capacity, with mixed opinions on affordability and licensing flexibility.
Horizon 8 pricing is high but may offer long-term savings and value, especially with bundled options.
After VMware was bought by Broadcom, the pricing was ridiculous, but now that Onmises has VMware Horizon 8, the pricing is back to an acceptable level.
I rate the cost-effectiveness of GenApp of Citrix equal to our CMS; it is quite cost-effective.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon WorkSpaces offers mobility, strong security, fast connectivity, scalability, and easy provisioning, enhancing remote work with efficient performance.
Horizon 8 offers centralized management, rapid provisioning, seamless remote access, strong security, and efficient scalability for virtual desktops.
From a security point of view, security in Horizon 8 is one of the main points in keeping the system resources from the company away from bad actors. You can keep the desktops completely isolated, and you don't need to share your file shares or database with the end-user system.
The solution has data leak prevention features that ensure data is not copied from the base machine to VDI.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon WorkSpaces
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Desktop as a Service (DaaS) (2nd)
Horizon 8
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
User Virtualization (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Amazon WorkSpaces is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Horizon 8 is 7.5%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Bhaskar Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Management console is very easy to use, readily available infrastructure and easy to scale
It's very stable. There is a big difference between traditional physical servers and cloud servers. With physical servers, we need to plan for purchasing, procurement, capacity, storage, get quotations, and then procure them. That took some time. Maybe it would take more than one month or maybe two months to procure and then install. With AWS, it is readily available. Just pay and immediately create the VPC, network, and everything. It is very easy. Within two or three hours, we can implement any server or launch any application. Within five minutes, we can just spin up and publish our servers on the Internet.
Muhammad JunaidJawed - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps ensure data leaks do not occur from the base machine to VDI while multi-instance capabilities remain limited
I have been using Horizon for two years. It provides my DevOps team access to PAM and server through the provider The solution has helped ensure data leaks do not occur from the base machine to VDI, and it saves data through API copyright. The solution has data leak prevention features that…
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions are best for your needs.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon WorkSpaces?
Performance and scalability are valuable features.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon WorkSpaces?
For Amazon WorkSpaces pricing, I think it is affordable; it is a final decision made through the management part. I am not satisfied with the billing part because sometimes it bills for huge usage ...
What needs improvement with Amazon WorkSpaces?
I have not integrated AWS VPN with my Amazon WorkSpaces setup. Regarding disadvantages, I feel that the product has no areas for improvement. The billing part could be improved. Some features could...
How does VMware Workspace One compare with VMware Horizon 7?
VMware Workspace One has a powerful set of helpful features. The solution offers very good documentation, the initial setup is easy, and the product is very stable and reliable. I think the fact th...
What do you like most about VMware Horizon 7?
VMware offers a friendly environment, and it's easy to provide the user with the package. It is a bundled solution that is readily deployable. The advantage lies in its simplicity, it requires mini...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Horizon 7?
We paid a lot of money for software that is not really fully operational out of the box. We had to have patches from VMware to get it into production. Hence, we lost a lot of time implementing the ...
 

Also Known As

WorkSpaces
VMware Horizon, VMware Horizon View, Mware Dynamic Environment Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GrubHub, Endemol Shine Nederland, CMC Property Services
LCMC Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon WorkSpaces vs. Horizon 8 and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.