CloudBolt vs OpenNebula comparison

CloudBolt and OpenNebula are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. CloudBolt is ranked #21, while OpenNebula is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.5. CloudBolt holds a 2.3% mindshare in CM, compared to OpenNebula’s 5.1% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of CloudBolt users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of OpenNebula users who would recommend it.

CloudBolt

Read 8 CloudBolt reviews

1,236 Views
1,100 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

OpenNebula

Read 15 OpenNebula reviews

3,009 Views
2,889 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CloudBolt

OpenNebula

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudBolt and OpenNebula compete in cloud management platforms. CloudBolt appears to have an edge in support and cost-efficiency, whereas OpenNebula excels in feature robustness.

Features: CloudBolt offers automation, hybrid cloud management, and integration with a focus on customization. OpenNebula provides extensive virtualization support, hybrid cloud flexibility, and efficient resource management.

Room for Improvement: CloudBolt could enhance its documentation, simplify user interface elements, and expand native support for more third-party tools. OpenNebula may benefit from a more intuitive deployment process, faster customer support response, and expanded integration options for additional platforms.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudBolt's deployment is intuitive, with responsive customer service. OpenNebula, though initially requiring some learning, offers comprehensive documentation and community support.

Pricing and ROI: CloudBolt provides transparent pricing, promoting quick ROI. OpenNebula's open-source nature lowers initial costs but requires investment in technical expertise for full utilization.

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

Buyer's Guide

CloudBolt vs. OpenNebula

November 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

21st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Cost Management (34th)

OpenNebula

Ranking in Cloud Management

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudBolt is 2.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 5.1%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
OpenNebula	5.1%
CloudBolt	2.3%
Other	92.6%

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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Thomas Bennett

Manager, DevOps System Engineering team at MX

Robust with great CLI tools and UI

I've found OpenNebula upgrades to be more complex than those of some of the competitors and the support to be mediocre. I would also like to see more and better ancillary tools related to OpenNebula, for example, more robust tools for backups, user support, etc. The support knows their software stack reasonably well. However, OpenNebula depends on so many open-source projects that they lack expertise. As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today.

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 initial deployment was super easy."

"The solution's biggest advantage is flexibility"

"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."

"Role-based access control and application blueprinting."

"I find the self-service features valuable."

"The ability to use it almost like a public cloud for an organization is a big asset, as it will create a value proposition and can control costs in a great way."

"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."

"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."

"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."

"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."

"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."

"For the entire data center, as a private cloud, I believe that user management, expert management, and the virtual data center is completely magic for the users."

"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

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

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

"The management of SaaS must be improved."

"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."

"An area for improvement in OpenNebula is the number of features it has. The solution doesn't have that many cloud features compared to other solutions. You'd say, "Okay, simplicity over a rich feature list?" Some say, "No, I need a big machine or a cloud interface for my customers to manage resources. I don't have to go and do it for them." Some people do it that way, and it works, but I'd like to improve the limited features in OpenNebula."

"It should have a simple REST API like most other tools. It's the industry standard format. An XML-RPC API gives you an XML document that you have to convert and then do something with that. REST API endpoint provides outputs in a JSON document. I would also like to see support for user data or heat templates, which OpenStack offers, but OpenNebula doesn't have this yet."

"They have been saying for the past two and a half years that they would develop a feature to hot-add RAM and CPU, but it does not work."

"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."

"The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well."

"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."

"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."

"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."

More OpenNebula 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 licensing for OpenNebula used to be free, but now it's no longer free. A customer contacted me asking to move to another provider because of the changes in the licensing terms for OpenNebula. I have no information on how much the OpenNebula license is because the customer pays for it, and I only do the integration."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"The solution is open source so is free."

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"OpenNebuoa has recently come up with a new subscription model that is economical and a lot of new customers are choosing this as it is an easy subscription model."

"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Computer Software Company

17%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about OpenNebula?

The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenNebula?

OpenNebula gives good value for money.

See all answers

What needs improvement with OpenNebula?

The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement. Another area for improvement is the integration with hardware to manage the lower layer of the n...

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VMware Aria Operations vs CloudBolt

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Compared 40% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs OpenNebula

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 10% of the time

Morpheus vs OpenNebula

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudBolt

November 2025

Download CloudBolt product report

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula

October 2025

Download OpenNebula product report

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

OpenNebula provides the most simple but feature-rich and flexible solution for the comprehensive management of virtualized data centers to enable private, public and hybrid IaaS clouds. OpenNebula interoperability makes cloud an evolution by leveraging existing IT assets, protecting your investments, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

OpenNebula is a turnkey enterprise-ready solution that includes all the features needed to provide an on-premises (private) cloud offering, and to offer public cloud services.

OpenNebula

Sample Customers

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

Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.

Buyer's Guide

CloudBolt vs. OpenNebula

November 2025

Free Report: CloudBolt vs. OpenNebula

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