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 #11 with an average rating of 8.7. CloudBolt holds a 2.5% mindshare in CM, compared to Apache’s 5.1% 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

1,060 Views
471 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Read 31 CloudStack reviews

1,938 Views
1,445 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CloudBolt vs. CloudStack

June 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 (16th)

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudBolt is 2.5%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 5.1%, down from 5.9% 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.

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Wido Den Hollander

Community Ambassador at 42on

A solution that strikes a balance between user-friendliness, scalability, and stability

The market keeps changing, and so does technology. I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved. Regarding container technology, Kubernetes is something many people want to use and something which, as of now, many are using currently. However, there is still room for improvement in Kubernetes, particularly with networking functionality and network virtualization. When it comes to what needs to be improved in CloudStack, I would say that it should stay the way it is currently. It should continue being a stable product that people can rely on since many may be inclined to follow the latest trends and hype, which is not always good for a solution's stability. It is crucial to prioritize stability, which is a key factor that companies seek. In my view, the platform could benefit from adding more metrics. More metrics would offer more insights and data on the platform's performance, utilization, and usage. Overall, I believe that having more metrics available would be highly desirable.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Role-based access control and application blueprinting."

"The initial deployment was super easy."

"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 find the self-service features valuable."

"The solution's biggest advantage is flexibility"

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

"It has become easy to deploy new devices with no or minimal hardware changes. Now, a user can be ready to use a firewall within a few minutes, as compared to the traditional physical model which involved purchase, shipping, hardware configuration, cabling, power, etc."

"We like the virtualization capabilities."

"We had a relevant reduction of bureaucracy tasks."

"You can use a single API to get things done, rather than multiple APIs on multiple modules."

"You can build your own cloud and make it customizable with APIs."

"I liked the separation of the isolated network versus the shared network."

"You can manage infrastructure with a few people, since product is monolithic. We had three engineers (storage, virtual, Linux admins) only. Also, CS supports different flavours of hypervisors."

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."

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

"The management of SaaS must be improved."

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

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

"Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."

"CS has very descriptive logging, and every time I faced issues and asked for help, I didn’t get any reply from the community. Reason? Its quite obvious. CS runs on specific environments, unique to each case. So, unless it is a functional issue of CS, nobody can help you. All issues were resolved by myself going through logs. This is another reason why you need smart enough people to manage it. Engineers must have knowledge of hypervisors and understand how CS interacts with them."

"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."

"From time to time there is a bug in calculating limits of resources for customer domain/account. Maybe it’s a problem with 4.9.2."

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

"Lack of support for third-party software vendors such as Veeam and Zerto creates limitations on comprehensive offerings which would include backup and disaster recovery."

"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."

"VPN P2S is cutting all connections except the CloudStack environment for the user when he is connected. I would like to have VPN like Cisco's AnyConnect."

More CloudStack cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is reasonably priced."

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

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

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

"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."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"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."

"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."

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

"The solution is open-source and free."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

21%

Educational Organization

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

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

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BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs CloudBolt

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs CloudBolt

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 72% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 9% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudBolt

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

June 2025

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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

June 2025

Free Report: CloudBolt vs. CloudStack

Find out what your peers are saying about CloudBolt vs. CloudStack and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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