Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
Users report positive ROI with Horizon 8 through reduced hardware needs, better efficiency, and cost savings in administration.
 

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 support is praised for proficiency but faces concerns about delays, complexity, and off-hours accessibility.
The first level often wastes time because I usually have to escalate to an engineer for proper support.
The support team is helpful and offers assistance.
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 offers exceptional scalability and adaptability but requires technical expertise and may encounter budget constraints for large deployments.
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
7.9
VMware Horizon 8 is stable with few issues, with ratings between 8-9, but requires strong infrastructure and proper configuration.
Citrix DaaS allows for satisfactory stability by facilitating workload deployment in various data centers including Azure, Google, or AWS.
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

Citrix DaaS struggles with performance, setup complexity, high costs, and requires enhancements in integration, support, and user experience.
Horizon 8 needs better pricing, integrations, documentation, Linux support, analytics, security, NVIDIA integration, and simplified deployment.
More direct access to engineers would speed up resolution.
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

Citrix DaaS pricing is costly yet competitive, with versatile licensing, complex management, and strategies needed for cost optimizations.
Horizon 8 pricing is high but may offer long-term savings and value, especially with bundled options.
Citrix DaaS is considered expensive, especially for companies that do not require multi-cloud.
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

Citrix DaaS offers high-performance remote access with strong security, seamless app virtualization, and scalability for consistent user experiences.
Horizon 8 offers centralized management, rapid provisioning, seamless remote access, strong security, and efficient scalability for virtual desktops.
With Citrix, all connections are outgoing, minimizing firewall vulnerability.
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

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 (2nd), 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
114
Ranking in other categories
User Virtualization (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 12.1%, up from 11.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Horizon 8 is 7.8%, down from 13.9% 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…
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions are best for your needs.
860,168 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
20%
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.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.