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CloudStack vs Freshservice comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

IBM Turbonomic
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (5th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (1st), AIOps (5th)
CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Freshservice
Ranking in Cloud Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (8th), Project Management Software (12th), IT Asset Management (6th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 5.6%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 5.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Freshservice is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Keldric Emery - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time and costs while reducing performance degradation
It's been a very good solution. The reporting has been very, very valuable as, with a very large environment, it's very hard to get your hands on the environment. Turbonomic does that work for you and really shows you where some of the cost savings can be done. It also helps you with the reporting side. Me being able to see that this machine hasn't been used for a very long time, or seeing that a machine is overused and that it might need more RAM or CPU, et cetera, helps me understand my infrastructure. The cost savings are drastic in the cloud feature in Azure and in AWS. In some of those other areas, I'm able to see what we're using, what we're not using, and how we can change to better fit what we have. It gives us the ability for applications and teams to see the hardware and how it's being used versus how they've been told it's being used. The reporting really helps with that. It shows which application is really using how many resources or the least amount of resources. Some of the gaps between an infrastructure person like myself and an application are filled. It allows us to come to terms by seeing the raw data. This aspect is very important. In the past, it was me saying "I don't think that this application is using that many resources" or "I think this needs more resources." I now have concrete evidence as well as reporting and some different analytics that I can show. It gives me the evidence that I would need to show my application owners proof of what I'm talking about. In terms of the downtime, meantime, and resolution that Turbonomic has been able to show in reports, it has given me an idea of things before things happen. That is important as I would really like to see a machine that needs resources, and get resources to it before we have a problem where we have contention and aspects of that nature. It's been helpful in that regard. Turbonomic has helped us understand where performance risks exist. Turbonomic looks at my environment and at the servers and even at the different hosts and how they're handling traffic and the number of machines that are on them. I can analyze it and it can show me which server or which host needs resources, CPU, or RAM. Even in Azure, in the cloud, I'm able to see which resources are not being used to full capacity and understand where I could scale down some in order to save cost. It is very, very helpful in assessing performance risk by navigating underlying causes and actions. The reason why it's helpful is because if there's a machine that's overrunning the CPU, I can run reports every week to get an idea of machines that would need CPU, RAM, or additional resources. Those resources could be added by Turbonomic - not so much by me - on a scheduled basis. I personally don't have to do it. It actually gives me a little bit of my life back. It helps me to get resources added without me physically having to touch each and every resource myself. Turbonomic has helped to reduce performance degradation in the same way as it's able to see the resources and see what it needs and add them before a problem occurs. It follows the trends. It sees the trends of what's happening and it's able to add or take away those resources. For example, we discuss when we need to do certain disaster recovery tests. Over the years, Turbo will be able to see, for example, around this time of year that certain people ramp up certain resources in an environment, and then it will add the resources as required. Another time of year, it will realize these resources are not being used as much, and it takes those resources away. In this way, it saves money and time while letting us know where we are. We've saved a great deal of time using this product when I consider how I'd have to multiply myself and people like me who would have to add resources to devices or take resources away. We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time. Those saved hours are across months, not years. I would consider the number of resources that Turbonomic is adding and taking away and the placement (if I had to do it all myself) would end up being hundreds of hours monthly that would be added without the help of Turbonomic. It helps us to meet SLAs mainly due to the fact that we're able to keep the servers going and to keep the servers in an environment, to keep them to where (if we need to add resources) we can add them at any given time. It will keep our SLAs where they need to be. If we were to have downtime due to the fact that we had to add resources or take resources away and it was an emergency, then that would prevent us from meeting our SLAs. We also use it to monitor Azure and to monitor our machines in terms of the resources that are out there and the cost involved. In a lot of cases, it does a better job of giving us cost information than Azure itself does. We're able to see the cost per machine. We're able to see the unattached volume and storage that we are paying for. It gives us a great level of insight. Turbonomic gives us the time to be able to focus on innovation and ongoing modernization. Some of the tasks that it does are tasks that I would not necessarily have to do. It's very helpful in that I know that the resources are there where they need to be and it gives me an idea of what changes need to be made or what suggestions it's making. Even if I don't take them, I'm able to get a good idea of some best practices through Turbonomic. One of the ways that Turbonomic does to help bring new resources to market is that we are now able to see the resources (or at least monitor the resources) before they get out to the general public within our environment. We saw immediate value from the product in the test environment. We set it up in a small test environment and we started with just placement and we could tell that the placement was being handled more efficiently than what VMware was doing. There was value for us in placement alone. Then, after we left the placement, we began to look at the resources and there were resources. We immediately began to see a change in the environment. It has made the application and performance better, mainly due to the fact that we are able to give resources and take resources away based on what the need is. Our expenses, definitely, have been in a better place based on the savings that we've been able to make in the cloud and on-prem. Turbonomic has been very helpful in that regard. We've been able to see the savings easily based on the reports in Turbonomic. That, and just seeing the machines that are not being used to capacity allows us to set everything up so it runs a bit more efficiently.
Wido Den Hollander - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Trilochana Gouda - PeerSpot reviewer
Smooth incident management and easy to use while needing better escalation management
We are using Freshservice for the IT ticketing system for business users We use the ticketing system primarily, which is very easy to use for all users. Freshservice is helpful, especially in incident management. Incident management is very helpful, and the system is straightforward, making it…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature for optimizing VMs is the most valuable because a number of the agencies have workloads or VMs that are not really being used. Turbonomic enables us to say, 'If you combine these, or if you decide to go with a reserve instance, you will save this much.'"
"Rightsizing is valuable. Its recommendations are pretty good."
"The notifications saying, "This is a corrective action," even though some of them can be automated, are always welcome to see. They summarize your entire infrastructure and how you can better utilize it. That is the biggest feature."
"It has automated a lot of things. We have saved 30 to 35 percent in human resource time and cost, which is pretty substantial. We don't have a big workforce here, so we have to use all the automation we can get."
"We have VM placement in Automated mode and currently have all other metrics in Recommend mode."
"Turbonomic can show us if we're not using some of our storage volumes efficiently in AWS. For example, if we've over-provisioned one of our virtual machines to have dedicated IOPs that it doesn't need, Turbonomic will detect that and tell us."
"The most important feature to us is an objective measurement of VM headroom per cluster. In addition, the ability to check for the right-sizing of VMs."
"The recommendation of the family types is a huge help because it has saved us a lot of money. We use it primarily for that. Another thing that Turbonomic provides us with is a single platform that manages the full application stack and that's something I really like."
"Key features include stability, centralized management design that scales well, and transparent interoperability with different hypervisors and manufacturers.."
"The structuring of the components and isolated environments helped us when using parts of the framework at different levels of product development."
"The API with CloudStack made integration into various external facing web applications simple enough."
"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."
"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."
"It works, and pretty much always has. Reliability and support for enterprise features, with a multi-tenant interface, makes CloudStack a very compelling solution."
"When compared to OpenStack, CloudStack is also an open-source platform that is continuously improving its features and capabilities with each new version release. Having worked with CloudStack 4.7, 4.14, and most recently, 4.17, I have noticed significant enhancements in the platform's features and customer experience, such as the introduction of a new user interface in the latest release. Notably, the latest versions have made major improvements to VM live migrations, making them more efficient and effective."
"My company could implement a lot of customizations and integration with load balancers and DNS. When we started using CloudStack, we didn't have that integration, so we developed that. We could fix anything missing in the solution."
"It has a very easy, flexible model. You can open up a particular module and work on the next. That's what we did. Overall, it provides a simple way of getting your support teams up and running. That was one thing that I thought was quite easy to do."
"The portal is straightforward for the end-user, but that's not the best part of Freshservice. Integration is the part that's interesting because it's easy to set up a process. It's extremely simple to integrate. In one week, you can add change management. It's incredible."
"It's very handy and very easy to use."
"One of the things I liked about Freshservice was how easy it was to implement. While it doesn't have extensive customization capabilities, the available options are sufficient for certain sizes of companies. You don't need to customize your ticketing system much. Freshservice is a great solution because you can implement it very quickly. You can upload your catalog, and you're done in maybe a week or two."
"It is a stable solution. My company hasn't faced any problems with the solution."
"We found the initial setup to be very simple."
"The most valuable features of Freshservice are the notifications, customization, and flexibility."
"What I have seen in Freshservice is there's no room for customization. Which works as an advantage in some cases and it works as a disadvantage in others. If you are someone that starts managing your IT services, it is a great solution, because there's no way to go out away from the direction of the system. You have to follow the process as it was intended for the designers of a solution because there's no room for customization or configuration."
 

Cons

"Additional interfaces would be helpful."
"It can be more agnostic in terms of the solutions that it provides. It can include some other cost-saving methods for the public cloud and SaaS applications as well."
"The planning and costing areas could be a little bit more detailed. When you have more than 2,000 machines, the reports don't work properly. They need to fix it so that the reports work when you use that many virtual machines."
"The old interface was not the clearest UI in some areas, and could be quite intimidating when first using the tool."
"There is an opportunity for improvement with some of Turbonomic's permissions internally for role-based access control. We would like the ability to come up with some customized permissions or scope permissions a bit differently than the product provides."
"They could add a few more reports. They could also be a bit more granular. While they have reports, sometimes it is hard to figure out what you are looking for just by looking at the date."
"The one point is the reporting. We do have reports out of it, but they're not the level of graphical detail I would like."
"The deployment process is a little tricky. It wasn't hard for me because I have pretty in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes, and their software runs on Kubernetes. To deploy it or upgrade it, you have to be able to follow steps and use the Kubernetes command line, or you'll need someone to come in and do it for you."
"The Windows hosts do not get their hostnames from cloud-init."
"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."
"The main reason why we started looking for another solution: backups, replication, HA, and dependency on secondary storage. CS is quite sensitive for infrastructure, and any kind of network disruption between CS and secondary storage leads to VM hanging."
"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."
"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."
"Environment is sensitive, so, unlike VMware, you can not afford middle-skilled engineers, they will ruin everything."
"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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in reporting for project management."
"The chat portal is not that great."
"The ability to customize the user interface is a bit lacking, and the reporting is a bit lacking because they're very stringent upon what you can pull reporting-wise within Freshservice. They have a lot of built-in reports that are very nice, but when it comes to customizing these, they just provide you with certain data. When you try to build your own report wizard, you aren't able to go and select some of the data that is shown in some of the reports that come with Freshservice. This is something that we have brought up with our account representative, and we have suggested these as feature updates in the future. We're still waiting on them to go and implement something like that."
"I experienced some delay in response time for non-function critical queries."
"It's hard to interact directly with the users themselves."
"Freshservice could improve the integration with Microsoft Outlook."
"The most significant area for improvement is consistency across the different modules, as they are inconsistent. It makes me think the modules have different development teams with no consistent approach. From an end-user perspective, I can do certain operations in one module, such as instant management, but not in problem management, for example, and I don't see why that should be the case. It would be good to see more consistency in the development process."
"The reporting and management information (MI) are very limited, and stopped realistic and timely reporting on outstanding incidents."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's worth the time and money investment if you can afford it."
"You should understand the cost of your physical servers and how much time and money you are spending year over year on expanding your virtual farm."
"I have not seen Turbonomic's new pricing since IBM purchased it. When we were looking at it in my previous company before IBM's purchase, it was compatible with other tools."
"IBM Turbonomic is an investment that we believe will deliver positive returns."
"Licensing is per socket, so load up on the cores rather than a lot of lower core CPUs."
"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."
"The product is fairly priced right now. Given its capabilities, it is excellently priced. We think that the product will become self-funding because we will be able to maximize our resources, which will help us from a capacity perspective. That should save us money in the long run."
"Contact the Turbonomic sales team, explain your needs and what you're looking to monitor. They will get a pre-sales SE on the phone and together work up a very accurate quote."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"​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."
"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 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."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"The price of Freshservice could improve, it is expensive."
"It is good for the price you pay. It has different plans. If you need all features, you need to go for a higher plan. Currently, with the second tier plan, you cannot completely separate the group of agents. So, the agent in each group can see another person's ticket. You also cannot modify the rules based on the viewable, readable stuff and cannot have a custom role in this plan. If you want to do that, you have to go for a higher plan. It works in our case because it doesn't matter if the other group can see our ticket because it doesn't contain anything sensitive. We also didn't need the project or change management features. That's why we didn't go with a higher plan."
"Freshservice's licensing costs are pretty good, and it has different categories of pricing based on what modules and features you choose, which gives a lot of flexibility."
"Freshservice price is competitive, it is not more than other solutions on the market."
"Its price is great. Its pricing is supposedly a lot less than ServiceNow and other alternatives."
"Compared to other tools, Freshservice is affordable."
"The pricing information is on their website. It's my understanding that their Pro Plan, for example, is around $89/month."
"One of the key benefits of Freshservice is license management. Asset management has the possibility to keep track of licenses and that's very useful. The price of the solution is very good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
21%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?
It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...
What needs improvement with Turbonomic?
The implementation could be enhanced.
What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?
We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...
What do you like most about CloudStack?
The initial implementation process was quite good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?
CloudStack is an open-source product without any inherent costs. Service and support are available through various ve...
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
The product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization.
What do you like most about Freshservice?
The solution has been very helpful engineering insights into the client's environment. We have been able to manage c...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Freshservice?
The solution offers flat licensing and appears to be cost-effective.
What needs improvement with Freshservice?
There is a need for improvement in terms of automatic escalation to the next level if an issue is not resolved. It sh...
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
Vmops, Cloud.com
Flint
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Western Carriers, Judson University, Golf Canada, Travix, Proxama, Paymentez, Ready Auto Transport
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. Freshservice and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.