BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs CloudStack comparison

BMC Helix and Apache are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. BMC Helix is ranked #44, while Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2. BMC Helix holds a 0.9% mindshare in CM, compared to Apache’s 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of BMC Helix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Apache users who would recommend it.

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management

Read 5 BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management reviews

734 Views
360 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

2,000 Views
1,820 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management

CloudStack

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management compete in cloud infrastructure management. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management has the upper hand due to richer features, although CloudStack benefits from pricing and support advantages.

Features: CloudStack integrates well with OpenStack, offers extensive hypervisor support, and manages large-scale deployments effectively. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management provides automated provisioning, policy-driven governance, and integrated monitoring capabilities.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could enhance advanced feature integration and professional support options, while BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management might benefit from simplifying deployment processes and reducing costs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack's straightforward deployment and community support make it appealing for initial setup. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, though complex to deploy, offers extensive documentation and professional support, aiding smoother operations.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack is preferred for lower setup costs and faster ROI due to its open-source nature. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management incurs higher upfront expenses but provides significant long-term ROI through advanced management solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. CloudStack Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. CloudStack

December 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

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management

Ranking in Cloud Management

44th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (48th)

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 2.8%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
CloudStack	2.8%
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management	0.9%
Other	96.3%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Entprssol67

Enterprise Solution Architect at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Helps design blueprints in a cloud environment but the support is a major problem

One of the major problems is that support is not so good. I used to have a support expert in Spain but they left two years ago. BMC doesn't invest a lot in network automation but network automation is a major point in CLM. There aren't any experts here in Europe, maybe they have in America, I don't know. The main problem is the support in Europe. We had a lot of problems with the people who got put on our cases. The agents that we were assigned to were not so capable. They wanted to replicate the problem. If you have an incident, it takes a lot of time to troubleshoot the problem. The incident support is not so good. The technicians don't know the platform well. BMC doesn't want to invest in CLM. Two years ago we had a lot of problems. Maybe BMC realized that CLM is an end of life product.

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Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam

Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys

Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls

I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Integrates role-based access control with pre-configured policies for CIS, DISA, HIPAA, PCI, SOX, NIST, and SCAP documentation and remediation."

"Automates Java EE Application Deployment from an SCM system."

"By allowing end users to request their own services, the request process for systems is much quicker and more accurate."

"CLM has a multi-cloud portal because they have the resources to implement in various environments in various ports."

"Assesses change impact or completes an audit using multiple dashboard views."

"Supports unattended installs and image-based, script-based, or template-based provisioning."

"You can tie together your public and private cloud infrastructure into a "single pane of glass"."

"It gives us the ability to manage and segregate a guest network with openvSwitch and VLAN IDs."

"CloudStack’s private gateway networking feature is what enables us to offer utmost security and confidentially to our customers and partners, by enabling them to connect to their virtual data centers via dedicated, encrypted, private fiber lines that never touch the public internet space. Ease of setup and management are certainly important additional benefits for us on the engineering team."

"CloudStack supports every operating system that supports hypervisors, which makes the product more attractive, compared to vCloud Director or Azure."

"CloudStack is a very feature-rich product; it gives you a lot of control over your VM networks and has extensive integration with storage plugins where you can use many open source tools to bring storage into your CloudStack environment for backups or even to run VMs."

"My company could implement a lot of customizations and integration with load balancers and DNS. When we started using CloudStack, we didn't have that integration, so we developed that. We could fix anything missing in the solution."

"Multiple types of hypervisor support, multi-zone support, and VPC are great valuable features."

"Killer features for me were: support for many hypervisors, ability to match business logic, "everything in one box," available APIs."

"Valuable features include that it is a user-friendly portal, VPN P2S and S2S possibilities, and it's easy to manage accounts and limits."

More CloudStack pros

Cons

"The installation and configuration can be tricky due to it being built on Remedy."

"Needs integrations with other providers to provide a custom public cloud environment."

"One of the major problems is that support is not so good."

"The area of improvement could be the regionalization aspect. For example, managing multiple regions or HubStack deployments together was not thought out thoroughly in the versions I used. We faced issues around managing the global infrastructure and had to develop around it."

"My teammates have complained about the upgrade. The source code had massive files that had to be merged with our own development to upgrade to the latest version of CloudStack. It was quite painful for them. CloudStack could add some cost management tools to give me some control over the costs associated with the number of users of my services."

"The numerous, multi-layered drill-down menus make it difficult to find one simple knob to turn."

"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."

"The number of contributors to this solution is relatively small compared to other solutions. However, if more frequent users of CloudStack contribute to the open-source community, it will significantly enhance the overall community experience and make it more useful for everyone involved."

"Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."

"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."

"The product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization."

More CloudStack cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."

"Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer."

"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?

CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CloudStack?

My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

January 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Also Known As

BMC CLM

Vmops, Cloud.com

Overview

BMC's cloud management platform drives digital innovation with agile, full-stack service provisioning across cloud and traditional platforms. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management scales easily while integrating with essential compliance and governance policies to reduce risk.

BMC Helix

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

Apache

Sample Customers

JDA Software, Morningstar, Orange Business Services, Wipro

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000

Buyer's Guide

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. CloudStack

December 2025

Free Report: BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs. CloudStack

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