Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs Horizon Cloud Service comparison

Citrix and Omnissa are both solutions in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category. Citrix is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while Omnissa is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.0. Citrix holds a 10.0% mindshare in VD, compared to Omnissa’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Citrix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Omnissa users who would recommend it.

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...

Read 126 Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) reviews

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5,298 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Horizon Cloud Service

Read 11 Horizon Cloud Service reviews

1,160 Views
940 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...

Horizon Cloud Service

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Citrix DaaS and Horizon Cloud Service compete in the Desktop as a Service (DaaS) market. Citrix DaaS leads in simplicity and cost-effectiveness, whereas Horizon Cloud Service excels in feature-rich offerings at higher costs.

Features: Citrix DaaS offers comprehensive scalability and security features, empowering enterprises with extensive control and customization. Horizon Cloud Service emphasizes seamless integration with existing infrastructure and advanced desktop management capabilities, offering features like intuitive management interfaces, extensive virtual desktop customization, and impressive integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Citrix DaaS could enhance its feature-rich offerings to match the robust capabilities of competitors and improve integration flexibility. Horizon Cloud Service could focus on simplifying deployment processes and reducing the dependency on advanced technical expertise. Both solutions could aim for more streamlined management tools to enhance user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Citrix DaaS offers a straightforward deployment process with excellent customer support, enabling quick setups and issue resolutions. Horizon Cloud Service provides flexible deployment models but demands more time and technical expertise. Despite delivering strong customer support, its deployment complexity remains an area for improvement.

Pricing and ROI: Citrix DaaS provides a cost-effective solution with clear ROI, utilizing an efficient licensing model and affordable setup costs, making it suitable for budget-conscious enterprises. Horizon Cloud Service requires a higher initial investment but justifies its long-term ROI with its substantial feature set, appealing to organizations prioritizing advanced capabilities over upfront costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Horizon Cloud Service Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Horizon Cloud Service

April 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

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...

Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

3rd

Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

126

Ranking in other categories

Application Virtualization (1st), Remote Access (5th)

Horizon Cloud Service

Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

11th

Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 10.0%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Horizon Cloud Service is 1.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Featured Reviews

Mohd Abdul Aziz Shah Sulaiman

Assistant General Manager Endpoint Application at Telekom Malaysia

Delivers secure and unified access to apps, desktops, and content for enhanced productivity

Citrix Workforce is good, but it needs improvement in diagnosing network issues. When errors occur, it is difficult to determine if they're due to network issues, Workspace issues, or environment issues. The error messages are too vague, just stating "connection error" without specifying if it's an IP address issue, connectivity problem, or something else related to the network. This lack of detail makes troubleshooting difficult. We often have to reinstall everything in Workspace, without knowing the root cause. Even after engaging with Citrix and sending logs, the feedback is often unsatisfactory, not meeting my expectations. This trial-and-error approach isn't effective problem-solving. While these issues aren't everyday occurrences, when they do happen, they can be catastrophic for our operations team.

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SivaKuppala

Enterprise Architect at Wipro Limited

Centralized management enhances multi-cloud flexibility with cost efficiency improvements

The cost of Horizon Cloud Service is high, however, it could be optimized. The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help. Improvements in application performance, especially for resource-heavy applications like intensive 3D workloads, are needed. More built-in automation for routine tasks like patching and upgrading could reduce administrative effort.

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 has improved delivering applications to remote locations with its lower bandwidth utilization."

"In terms of scalability, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops have a lot of technologies baked in there that allow an organization to scale up or down, as required. Further, leveraging Azure for scalability has added value to our organization. For example, pre-COVID-19, we had very few resources in Azure. We had some Virtual Desktops and no application servers. When COVID-19 came along, we knew people were going to be home. We knew that we had to ramp up very quickly. We fully leveraged MCS to be able to scale. Being able to take a single image and build 400,000 Virtual Desktops, all within minutes, was second to none in terms of any other technology out there that we could have used. The scalability to be able to do that in Azure, where we really don't have to worry about storage and compute power because Microsoft does that for us, was fantastic. It was almost like giving our environments steroids. It has been amazing in terms of that scalability. Now, as people start coming back to the office, we can just as quickly scale down so the compute and resource costs in Azure aren't so great anymore."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the desktop virtualization, which allows me to connect from anywhere."

"Citrix Workspace's standout feature is its flexibility."

"For the most part, overall stability is what you would expect."

"Citrix Workspace can present desktop applications with ease, in an efficient and secure manner. The performance is good, it is a great piece of software."

"I found the ease of deployment, scalability, and security to be to our benefit when supplying virtual applications to our clients."

"Citrix Workspace allows you to work in a remote environment and gives you data security."

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) pros

"I honestly liked the application itself because it was just like using a desktop. You could copy and paste, inside and outside, and you could use multiple monitors. You could access it anytime, anywhere, no matter whether you were in the office or out of the office. I could leave the office, go somewhere, go back in, and everything would be there. I could just leave it up and running. I absolutely love this feature in VMware Horizon Cloud."

"The most valuable feature of VMware Horizon Cloud is all of its capabilities together."

"Horizon Cloud Service provides deployment flexibility across multiple clouds with a scalable architecture that easily scales virtual desktops and applications up or down based on demand."

"Its advanced management features are the most valuable, especially power management. One of the really important things was to be able to have power management in a consumption world. This means that unlike a Microsoft environment, you could actually turn off virtual desktops or have them start up and shut down. If you're consuming resources in the public cloud, you want to be able to do that because when you're not using those, such as at the weekend, you want to be able to turn them off. So, the advanced options for managing the BDIs are very important."

"The main benefit of Horizon Cloud Service is that it is cloud-based, allowing our organization to leverage the service without having to manage all infrastructure directly."

"Horizon Cloud Service provides deployment flexibility across multiple clouds with a scalable architecture that easily scales virtual desktops and applications up or down based on demand."

"The most valuable feature of VMware Horizon Cloud is the ability to manage a great number of desktops at once and the remote access for users that are working from outside of the office or from different offices in the country."

"VMware Horizon Cloud is easy to use and the full development cloud is very good. The main features of VMware are included. It's a cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure software that allows you to permit the virtual desktops and applications to any device from the single unified management control. These are managed from the dedicated remote session desktop."

More Horizon Cloud Service pros

Cons

"There are a lot of shortfalls with supporting printing over XenApp."

"Scalability depends on the server and the number of users in the organization."

"Some customers find the price to be a significant factor. They have a hard time understanding the extra cost of the services"

"I've recently tried to use Citrix on Ubuntu, and I don't know if this is an Ubuntu issue or a vendor issue, but you can't use Citrix right now on Ubuntu 20.04."

"They can simplify the process of printers. Printers were quite a difficult issue. It took us a long time to iron this issue out. We have the most simple use case where people connect from home to either a virtual machine or their physical desktop. We tried more complex solutions like Machine Creation Services, and they were more overhead than they were worth for us. I found them difficult to work with and confusing, and they were not worth the work for us."

"If anything could be improved, it might be some of the Director functionality, and some of the dashboard customization, or the overall Director customization."

"Performance could be better if there was a low latency improvement."

"The solution's cost has almost doubled this year, and it could be made cheaper."

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) cons

"It can be very expensive to scale up because each part of scaling up requires you to have new components of the infrastructure."

"The product has a lot of bugs."

"The application remoting features have some room for improvement."

"In the design phase, sometimes the tools for designing Horizon solutions have issues when they're calculating the number of nodes and platforms needed to support the VDI systems."

"The licensing model needs to be adjusted, as a cloud license is currently required even for on-premises devices."

"The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help."

"Logging into VMware Horizon Cloud could be made easier. Additionally, the VMs could be better in their performance."

"The cost of Horizon Cloud Service is high, however, it could be optimized. The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help."

More Horizon Cloud Service cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I suggest using the concurrent user licensing scheme."

"Citrix is a mid-range cost solution compared to some others out there."

"If one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the tool's price a three."

"Based not only on the cost of Citrix, but additional costs like firewalls, IPS, and other solutions, the total cost of switching users from using normal laptops with VPNs to connection via Citrix were so huge that the CEO of our company decided to postpone the deployment process."

"The licensing of Citrix Workspace is worth it. However, it is expensive. Citrix is probably more competitive now than VMware, but it is still a costly solution."

"Citrix is expensive."

"The licensing, in general, is expensive. A lot of customers battle to pay the amount. It's very difficult to ensure that your solution provides the business value that the customer is after."

"Citrix solutions cost a lot in comparison with competitors, like Azure Virtual Desktop or VMware Horizon. Those solutions cost around 50 to 60 percent less, per month per user, than Citrix."

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) pricing and cost advice

"For what you get, it is very compelling. You've got to look at the total cost of ownership of this type of piece of software in terms of being able to utilize it as a cloud service. I don't have to run everything on-premises. When you look at the total cost of just being able to use it and then being able to point it to any public or private cloud, it is very compelling. You have one less thing to manage."

"I rate VMware Horizon Cloud pricing a ten out of ten."

"VMware Horizon Cloud is a low-cost solution. The model that they have is consumption-based. However, some features are expensive."

"VMware Horizon Cloud is an expensive solution. This solution is approximately 30 percent more than Microsoft Azure Cloud. There can be extra costs."

"There is a license required for the use of this solution and there are different tier levels available."

"Initially, the product is cheap, but it starts to get expensive when users try to scale out."

"It is too expensive as compared to other solutions because of which we don't use it that much. We tend to go more for Hyper-V or Azure just because VMware licensing is quite up there. We sway people away from VMware Horizon Cloud. We have some clients who already have it. They stay on it for a little while, and then most of them end up moving off when we provide them a better solution that isn't as license heavy cost-wise."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Healthcare Company

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.

See all answers

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.

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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...

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What do you like most about VMware Horizon Cloud?

The tool remains pretty stable.

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

The cost is considered normal, not remarkable but not outrageous. In terms of expense, compared to other virtualization products, I would rate it as a six.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Horizon Cloud?

The licensing model needs to be adjusted, as a cloud license is currently required even for on-premises devices. Horizon Cloud Service should continue improving their protocol and work with other h...

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Virtual Desktop vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Compared 42% of the time

Amazon Appstream vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Compared 7% of the time

Rocket Exceed TurboX vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Compared 5% of the time

Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Compared 5% of the time

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) Competitors

Horizon 8 vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 35% of the time

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon Appstream vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 15% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon WorkSpaces vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 7% of the time

More Horizon Cloud Service Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

May 2025

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) report

Download Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) product report

Buyer's Guide

Horizon Cloud Service

May 2025

Download Horizon Cloud Service product report

Also Known As

XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace

VMware Horizon Cloud, VMware Horizon DaaS

Interactive Demo

Citrix

Demo not available

Omnissa

Overview

Enable secure, flexible work with the leader in virtual apps and desktops

Deliver desktop as a service (DaaS) from any cloud or datacenter

Get started with Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) in minutes to provide a familiar, high-performance digital workspace experience to your users. We’ll manage the infrastructure and security. You focus on your business.

Citrix

The VMware Horizon Cloud Service delivers feature-rich virtual desktops and applications using a purpose-built cloud platform that is scalable across multiple deployment options, including fully managed infrastructure from VMware, public cloud infrastructure from Microsoft Azure, or on-premises hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). The service supports a cloud-scale architecture that makes it easy to deliver virtualized Windows desktops and applications to any device, anytime. And, with a flexible subscription model and turnkey solutions, organizations can easily get up and running and scale quickly.

Omnissa

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

Marriott, Sprint

Buyer's Guide

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Horizon Cloud Service

April 2025

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