CloudStack vs Firefly comparison

Apache and Firefly are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Firefly is ranked #34 with an average rating of 9.3. Apache holds a 2.1% mindshare in CM, compared to Firefly’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Firefly users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

3,636 Views
3,491 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Firefly

Read 3 Firefly reviews

922 Views
922 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Firefly

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CloudStack and Firefly based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. Firefly Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Firefly

August 2026

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Helped 909,725 peers since 2012

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

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Firefly

Ranking in Cloud Management

34th

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.1%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Firefly is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
CloudStack	2.1%
Firefly	0.5%
Other	97.4%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam

Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys

Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls

I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

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MohammadRashid

Senior Software Consultant at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees

Design workflows have been transformed and now enable rapid ad visuals and campaign launches

Firefly offers several best features in my opinion. We have the TTS feature and TTV feature. Additionally, suppose I have a single image from the creative designer and I want to generate different variations or different sizes of that image that will get adapted mostly on Google Ads. For example, I want to generate different renditions of that same image in different resolutions. I can quickly go to Firefly and from a single image generate different multiple images in different renditions. Firefly also helps us expand images. For example, I have a small image that is a portrait and I want to convert that as a full image or a hero image, which fits on a wide screen. Firefly helps us generate the images. It will not be stretching or squeezing your image. Instead, Firefly takes the context from your image and generates the next object which could appear. For example, if I am standing on a beach, it will generate the beach. It will generate a few people, it will generate some pictures of the sea, maybe some coconut trees. Firefly has positively impacted my organization a lot. I can say it is helping us reduce the effort and cost, saving the cost. For example, I have to create one image for our social media post. For that, we have to request our creative team, and then a creative designer will work on that idea and take one day or two days to get the design complete. After that, it comes to the review. With the help of Firefly, we can quickly generate the images and get them reviewed. Our go-to-market becomes easy. Within two hours or three hours, we can complete this whole process: generation, review, and all, and go to the market instantly. Additionally, if we have one image available and I want to quickly launch a Google Ad campaign that requires different renditions of the image, I can quickly use Firefly and generate different renditions of the image using the single image. So, it also reduces the dependency which we had earlier with the creative designers and the creative team.

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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

"I can recommend CloudStack because there are a lot of large companies using it in production for critical mission systems, and everything else."

"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."

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

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

"The APIs for automation in CloudStack are excellent; everything is API-driven, and while the API is very rich and hard to learn, you can do everything you would want to do, including everything in the user interface and more."

"CloudStack provides an environment that is very simple to use, with built-in APIs and a web interface that supports almost all features of AWS and Azure."

"You can manage infrastructure with a few people, since product is monolithic."

"The product gives us the ability to orchestrate large virtual environments and is flexible enough to allow us to configure it for what we need. We value the flexibility of the networking feature set as well as the ability to build virtual private clouds."

More CloudStack pros

"Firefly has a positive impact on my organization by improving cloud governance, infrastructure consistency, and engineering productivity."

"Firefly has impacted my work positively by making it more creative and productive."

"Firefly saves one employee, it saves 5 million annually, and we are currently improving 40% of our go-to-market time while reducing cost by 30% and increasing revenue by approximately 20%."

"Firefly has a positive impact on my organization by improving cloud governance, infrastructure consistency, and engineering productivity."

Cons

"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."

"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."

"CloudStack lacks a billing solution which would complete it as a full 360-degree product."

"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."

"There are some minor things that can be improved even more such as, perhaps, a bit more polishing on the GUI side to catch up with the API possibilities (which are really extensive) but otherwise nothing critical."

"I think CloudStack needs to promote itself better, since I believe it a better solution than OpenStack."

"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."

"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."

More CloudStack cons

"I feel that Firefly can be improved by getting more models to generate high-end videos."

"Some of the areas Firefly can improve are a simpler onboarding process for organizations with large and multi-cloud environments, more customization for generated Terraform code to better match existing coding standards and module structures, and more native integrations with DevOps and ITSM tools."

"If I talk about the cost, the cost is a little high."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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 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."

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

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

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

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

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?

Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...

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What is your primary use case for CloudStack?

My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...

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What needs improvement with Firefly?

Some of the areas Firefly can improve are a simpler onboarding process for organizations with large and multi-cloud environments, more customization for generated Terraform code to better match exi...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Firefly?

My main use case for Firefly is cloud infrastructure management and Infrastructure as a Code governance. Specifically, I use it to discover and inventory cloud resources, detect configuration drift...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Firefly?

My advice for others looking into using Firefly would be to start with a well-organized Infrastructure as a Code strategy. Firefly delivers the most value when Terraform or another IaC tool is alre...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 9% of the time

Turbo360 (Formerly Serverless360) vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

Persistent Intelligent Cloud (PiCloud) vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

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env zero vs Firefly

Compared 56% of the time

AWS Trusted Advisor vs Firefly

Compared 34% of the time

CloudBolt vs Firefly

Compared 11% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

August 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

August 2026

Download Firefly product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

No data available

Overview

CloudStack offers an easy-to-manage platform compatible with multiple hypervisors, enabling seamless networking and efficient workload scaling. Its advanced APIs and open-source nature facilitate automation and customization, making it ideal for extensive cloud environments.

CloudStack is recognized for ease of setup, robust networking, and hypervisor compatibility. Supporting a range of workloads, it scales efficiently, offering flexible features like VM migration, private networking, and multi-zone support. Its user-friendly open-source design aids troubleshooting and customization, making it ideal for managing broad cloud deployments. Despite needing upgrades in interface and integration with third-party vendors and container technology, CloudStack remains a strong choice for businesses seeking effective virtualization solutions. Improvements in documentation, regional management, and emerging tech support would enhance usability and performance.

What are CloudStack's notable features?

Hypervisor compatibility: Supports diverse virtualization technologies for flexible deployment.
Robust networking: Ensures reliable and scalable network infrastructure management across zones.
Advanced APIs: Facilitates automation and integration to streamline cloud operations.
VM migration: Enhances operational flexibility with seamless virtual machine relocations.
Private networking: Provides secure and isolated network environments for critical tasks.
Multi-zone support: Offers scalable solutions for distributed cloud management.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Open-source model: Allows extensive customization without licensing costs, enhancing ROI.
Ease of management: Simplifies operations, reducing time and resources spent on maintenance.
Scalability: Enables growth and adaptability, fostering agility in expanding businesses.
Flexibility: Supports various workloads and environments, meeting diverse operational needs.

CloudStack is implemented across industries, used in managing virtual environments, offering IaaS in public, private, and hybrid cloud models. Companies use it for internal virtualization and customer service, integrating with hypervisors across data centers to orchestrate virtual machines and support development and testing globally.

Apache

Firefly offers a comprehensive set of tools designed to enhance productivity and streamline business processes. It delivers valuable features but may require tweaks in some areas to fully optimize its performance for all sectors.

Firefly stands out by providing functionalities that cater to a tech-savvy audience, assisting in managing tasks efficiently. Its flexible integrations and user-oriented features enable it to adapt to specific industry demands, enhancing efficiency and cross-platform collaboration. Feedback highlights areas such as scalability where Firefly could improve, yet it remains a robust resource for professionals seeking reliable technological solutions.

What features define Firefly?

Task Automation: Reduces manual workload by automating repetitive tasks.
Flexible Integrations: Seamlessly connects with other platforms for streamlined operations.
Data Analytics: Provides insightful data tracking for informed decision-making.

What benefits should you seek in Firefly reviews?

Increased Efficiency: Enhances workflow by minimizing tasks.
Scalability Opportunity: Offers a platform that can grow with organizational needs.
Cost-effectiveness: Provides a balance of functionality and affordability.

In industries like technology and finance, Firefly is often implemented to optimize operational efficiency and facilitate data management. Adaptations in workflow automation have proven beneficial, creating a versatile environment that supports innovation and adaptability in fast-paced sectors.

Firefly

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Firefly

August 2026

Free Report: CloudStack vs. Firefly

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