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Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) 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
7.1
Citrix DaaS reduces costs and boosts flexibility, efficiency, and continuity, offering long-term savings and environmental benefits.
Sentiment score
7.1
Horizon 8 users experience ROI within 2-3 years through reduced expenses, improved efficiency, and effective virtual desktop management.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Citrix DaaS' customer support receives mixed reviews, with praise for expertise but concerns about response times and support quality.
Sentiment score
5.8
Horizon 8's customer service is responsive and knowledgeable but faces issues with technical expertise and support variability.
The first level often wastes time because I usually have to escalate to an engineer for proper support.
Our support from VMware expired last December.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Citrix DaaS offers scalable, easy expansion, efficiently handling demands with flexible Azure integrations despite some expense concerns.
Sentiment score
8.2
Horizon 8 is praised for adaptability and flexibility, supporting diverse needs despite technical challenges and cost concerns for some users.
Citrix DaaS offers vast scalability options as workloads can be deployed across multiple data centers like Azure, Google, or AWS.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Citrix DaaS offers reliable, stable performance with high availability, ensuring user satisfaction for large-scale virtual desktop deployments.
Sentiment score
8.1
Horizon 8 is rated highly for stability and performance, but requires proper configuration and support for integration issues.
Citrix DaaS allows for satisfactory stability by facilitating workload deployment in various data centers including Azure, Google, or AWS.
 

Room For Improvement

Citrix DaaS struggles with performance, setup complexity, high costs, and requires enhancements in integration, support, and user experience.
Horizon 8 struggles with cost, Linux integration, setup, documentation, support, remote management, multimedia, Azure, Teams, and licensing issues.
More direct access to engineers would speed up resolution.
We have limited capabilities since we are not using a multi-instance solution, just single instances.
 

Setup Cost

Citrix DaaS pricing is costly yet competitive, with versatile licensing, complex management, and strategies needed for cost optimizations.
Horizon 8 has high costs, but offers long-term value and potential savings through bundled licensing and subscription flexibility.
Citrix DaaS is considered expensive, especially for companies that do not require multi-cloud.
I rate the cost-effectiveness of GenApp of Citrix equal to our CMS; it is quite cost-effective.
 

Valuable Features

Citrix DaaS offers high-performance remote access with strong security, seamless app virtualization, and scalability for consistent user experiences.
Horizon 8 offers centralized management, scalability, enhanced security, and high performance with VMware integration and user-friendly interfaces.
With Citrix, all connections are outgoing, minimizing firewall vulnerability.
The solution has data leak prevention features that ensure data is not copied from the base machine to VDI.
 

Categories and Ranking

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
Application Virtualization (1st), Remote Access (4th), Desktop as a Service (DaaS) (1st)
Horizon 8
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
User Virtualization (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 10.5%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Horizon 8 is 7.4%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Grant Waddell - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly and easily accessible, but cost could be made cheaper
We use Citrix Workspace on Citrix Cloud. We have all of our servers on the AWS public cloud. There are a number of tools that we can implement that would save us costs. However, we've stuck to Citrix for convenience. If the prices keep increasing, we will have to consider other solutions. Users need to understand the tool's limitations correctly and what they require from a usability perspective. They should also understand the configuration of security policies. In some cases, people are unable to download or upload files onto their PCs, which is necessary for them to do their work. Users should understand the limitations of the product or the configuration options. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
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.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user8922 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 23, 2013
Comparison of VMware View 5.2 VS Citrix XenDesktop 5.6
Recently I attended the VMware Partner Exchange 2013 and there was a session called “Technical Battleground – View VS XenDesktop”. In this post I will try and cover the differences that VMware showcased during their session and I am going to add an additional column for my comments and thoughts on…
 

Answers from the Community

DD
Oct 26, 2021
Oct 26, 2021
I think VMware Horizon View is a very solid product. I think it is the most mature product on the whole spectrum. All virtual desktop environments require tuning for performance. Depending on the size of the company you don't need 1/10 of the bells & whistles that the vendors include. For example, I have a small environment - 70 employees. I don't use instant clones, personas, their analys...
See 2 answers
EB
Jun 29, 2021
Hi @Abbasi Poonawala, @David Grudek​, @Payman Maher​, @Michal Sadlik ​, @Tonatiuh Torres Zamorano ​ , @JacquesBodenstein, and @Dan Withrow. Can you help @Dante Dano ​with your professional experience? Thank you.
DR
Oct 26, 2021
I think VMware Horizon View is a very solid product.  I think it is the most mature product on the whole spectrum. All virtual desktop environments require tuning for performance. Depending on the size of the company you don't need 1/10 of the bells & whistles that the vendors include. For example, I have a small environment - 70 employees. I don't use instant clones, personas, their analysis tools, ... Not only are they expensive (the tools) they overly complicate a complicated process. KISS.  I have honed down the environment to what is just needed. Most of the industry will tell you otherwise. And I do all this as a one-man IT department. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?
My focus has primarily been on publishing virtual applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?
I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?
I have found that Citrix DaaS is still a complex product, especially on the desktop side, which affects scalability. Although it works well on the apps side, the desktop aspect still has room for i...
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

XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace
VMware Horizon, VMware Horizon View, Mware Dynamic Environment Manager
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Exelon, Aeronamic, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Alameda County Medical Center, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Aloysius Stichting, Amarchand Mangaldas, AmBev, Amnet Technology Solutions, Arval
LCMC Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Horizon 8 and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.