CloudBolt vs CloudStack comparison

CloudBolt and Apache are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. CloudBolt is ranked #19 with an average rating of 7.3, while Apache is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0. CloudBolt holds a 2.7% mindshare in CM, compared to Apache’s 4.7% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of CloudBolt users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Apache users who would recommend it.

CloudBolt

Read 8 CloudBolt reviews

1,211 Views
1,078 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Read 32 CloudStack reviews

2,031 Views
1,848 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

CloudBolt

CloudStack

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and CloudBolt are competing cloud management platforms, both offering a range of features and services in cloud management solutions. CloudBolt seems to have the edge with its expansive feature set and integration capabilities, making it a compelling choice despite its higher cost.

Features: CloudStack offers scalable infrastructure, extensive hypervisor support, and robust security protocols. It supports multiple availability zones, ensuring broad scalability. CloudBolt provides seamless multi-cloud management, customizable workflows, and advanced analytics, with additional flexibility for integration.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could improve its flexibility and customer support personalization. Enhancements in integration support and more comprehensive workflow options could benefit users. CloudBolt’s initial setup could be simplified, and its documentation could be more detailed. Streamlining customer service processes and optimizing setup costs are areas for growth.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack features a straightforward deployment with minimal setup requirements, aided by extensive documentation. CloudBolt, while requiring more intricate deployment, offers superior customization options and highly responsive, personalized customer support services.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack has a lower setup cost, yielding a quicker ROI due to its open-source model and straightforward pricing. In contrast, CloudBolt requires a higher initial investment, justified by its robust features and integration capabilities, offering substantial long-term returns for enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudBolt vs. CloudStack Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CloudBolt vs. CloudStack

July 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

CloudBolt

Ranking in Cloud Management

19th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Cost Management (18th)

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudBolt is 2.7%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 4.7%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

AdeolaEkunola

Director at NIGERCUBES LTD

The solution offers reliable resource control but needs to improve its UI

Cloudbox is just an abstraction software. There is no need for scalability. It's quite a simple solution. You might only need to increase the resources you apply to the CloudBold deployment. If, for example, the number of users increases, you might have to check the recommendations from CloudBolt and act accordingly. We have over 100 internal users. Regarding the infrastructure it sits on, the solution sits on the private of the on-prem, a VMware infrastructure that stands across two sites, the DR and the main production. We have over 60 ESXi of Asterisk and about 500 or 1,000 virtual machines.

Read full review

Nelson Marcos

Engineer Manager at Globo.com

It's easier to provision VMs than other solutions and you can customize it to integrate with load balancers

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.

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

"The solution's biggest advantage is flexibility"

"The initial deployment was super easy."

"I find the self-service features valuable."

"Role-based access control and application blueprinting."

"Hybrid cloud platform for VM and app deployment and management, with very good stability. It's customizable, easy to set up, and can be deployed within half an hour."

"I have been impressed by CloudStack's most recent updates around Kubernetes. In particular, they have worked with Kubernetes to support the Cluster API, and you can now easily integrate Kubernetes into CloudStack and get access to a lot of good features."

"It works, and pretty much always has. Reliability and support for enterprise features, with a multi-tenant interface, makes CloudStack a very compelling solution."

"The back-end database design is simple and straight forward. The user interface is designed with external users in mind. Billing is relatively straightforward with this product. Not being restricted to just one hypervisor was nice."

"The platform is very simple to scale-out."

"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."

"Key features include stability, centralized management design that scales well, and transparent interoperability with different hypervisors and manufacturers.."

"We like the virtualization capabilities."

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

More CloudStack pros

Cons

"The solution is not easy to use. It's not intuitive enough to click anywhere in the solution and make it work."

"The area of integrating on-prem and cloud needs improvement."

"Could increase the number of integrations and add more out-of-the-box work flows."

"The scheduling feature of CloudBolt needs improvement because sometimes, it doesn't work."

"The management of SaaS must be improved."

"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."

"The Windows hosts do not get their hostnames from cloud-init."

"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."

"Companies need to be knowledgeable about cloud technology. It's not for novice users."

"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 absence of the feature, deploy an instance from a snapshot, is the weak point of the platform. It is a feature that everyone needs nowadays."

"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."

"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."

More CloudStack cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten because the solution is expensive."

"The solution is reasonably priced."

"The system is cheaper if a customer has fewer servers since you pay by the node."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

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

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

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

"The solution is open-source and free."

"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."

"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."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Educational Organization

12%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CloudBolt?

I find the self-service features valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudBolt?

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten because the solution is expensive. The license is expensive to acquire.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudBolt?

The area of integrating on-prem and cloud needs improvement. Another area that the solution needs to improve on is the UI. The UI can be much better.

See all answers

What do you like most about CloudStack?

The initial implementation process was quite good.

See all answers

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?

CloudStack lacks a billing solution which would complete it as a full 360-degree product. Additionally, more themes and drag-and-drop interfaces could enhance the user experience. Improved document...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 53% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudBolt

Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs CloudBolt

Compared 8% of the time

Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs CloudBolt

Compared 6% of the time

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OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 73% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 8% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudBolt

August 2025

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Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

August 2025

Download CloudStack product report

Also Known As

No data available

Vmops, Cloud.com

Overview

CloudBolt supports a variety of cloud technologies, from on-premises virtualization and private cloud to a wide range public and hybrid cloud configurations.

No need to rip-and-replace. CloudBolt provides easy import, syncing, and management of legacy deployments even as it helps you build out new cloud environments.

CloudBolt lets administrators create and maintain configuration standards while developing a reusable library of service and application templates.

CloudBolt

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

WM, CyWest, Panic, Camden, University of Maryland, Xerox, Neustar, Medidata, Continu, Aruba Networks, Neuberger Berman, Peak6, EverBank, Ascensus, Hosting Edge

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

Buyer's Guide

CloudBolt vs. CloudStack

July 2025

Free Report: CloudBolt vs. CloudStack

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