Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops vs Microsoft Remote Desktop Services
We performed a comparison between Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Many PeerSpot users use Microsoft Remote Desktop Services as it is already embedded into their Microsoft operating systems (at no additional cost) and can scale on demand. The PeerSpot users that work outside of the Microsoft universe choose Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops due to its excellent virtualization capabilities and that it is a mature, reliable solution.
"XenApp is a fast, secure and reliable solution for remote connections that is completely different than and superior to older Windows solutions."
"The product is simple to set up, and its deep integration with Microsoft is also a valuable feature."
"Citrix Virtual Apps is the most valuable feature. Many customers use this feature to publish only applications, and not the full desktop. They can publish the internal resource or allow the end-user to reach a site or an application without having the full desktop. That's why they love this feature. It helps them save on resources."
"For our company's customers, I feel that the product is stable."
"We've been able to scale the environment quite nicely by using the Citrix Remote PC. I can't say enough about that. And because that relies on utilizing your existing hardware resources, and making those available as a part of your Citrix farm — with a second level of authentication and security pieces around it — we added some 4,000 workstations without an additional overhead or cost."
"The user experience when using the solution's technology remotely is definitely superior to our VPN and/or Windows Remote Desktop. It's a much better user experience for those folks."
"The most valuable feature is the gateway to a remote connection, to a physical or a virtual PC. Compared to a normal VPN client and connection, the connection via Citrix is more stable and does not consume as much network bandwidth."
"It has the best remote working features."
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"The solution is user-friendly and has a good user experience."
"It is a stable product."
"The solution is easy to deploy and there are many features available that you can turn on or off depending on your budget."
"It's largely stable."
"It's part of the Microsoft Operating system and is free."
"I like that it works. In most cases, it's predictable. You know what you get."
"It's almost an out of the box function once you have installed the other components."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"There is room for improvement on the hypervisor side, providing better integration between the hypervisor and the product line. I suspect that they haven't put the work into that because of the move to the cloud. They want everything to be cloud-hosted. But for folks like us, who will always be a hybrid model, that's of some concern."
"Scalability depends on the server and the number of users in the organization."
"Templating the deployment process could use improvement. When you start, there are a large number of details that are quite client-specific, although they do share common themes. To get somebody up and running in a day is very difficult to do. They should streamline by use case."
"Pricing and technical support needs improvement."
"There have been many issues with stability."
"The cost of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is high and has room for improvement."
"Where improvement could be driven is in terms of clarity as to the functionality of some of the solutions. If you go back to the older Citrix Xen products that we had, we understood those really well. As we've come into the new workstation premium suite, there is a lot of additional functionality that we perhaps have not yet fully exploited. It is not because we can't, but simply because we don't yet understand the depth of functionality that's offered."
"It is not easy to set up."
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"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is its security and simple configuration."
"The training profiles could be better."
"Microsoft Remote Desktop Services could improve by having graphical acceleration."
"It could offer better security for enterprises."
"We'd like them to continue to improve on security."
"We'd like, in the future, if it would work with Linux or Unix-based operating systems or even Mac."
"I would like to be able to leverage it on other operating systems."
"The only issue I experienced was with the initialization of the session, which affected the stability of the solution."
More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) Pricing and Cost Advice →
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Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is ranked 3rd in Remote Access with 90 reviews while Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is ranked 2nd in Remote Access with 69 reviews. Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) writes "Flexible Deployment, reliable performance, and fast transmission speeds". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services writes "Easy to set up and reliable, but needs an additional control panel". Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is most compared with VMware Horizon View, Citrix Workspace, Amazon Appstream, Amazon WorkSpaces and Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS), whereas Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is most compared with TeamViewer, VMware Horizon, VMware Workstation, Citrix Workspace and Splashtop Remote Support. See our Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services report.
See our list of best Remote Access vendors and best Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) vendors.
We monitor all Remote Access reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.