CloudStack vs Red Hat CloudForms comparison

Apache and Red Hat are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Red Hat is ranked #33. Apache holds a 2.5% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

2,189 Views
2,036 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Red Hat CloudForms

Read 10 Red Hat CloudForms reviews

1,091 Views
1,080 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Red Hat CloudForms

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and Red Hat CloudForms compete in the cloud management space. Red Hat CloudForms stands out due to its comprehensive feature set.

Features: CloudStack is known for straightforward orchestration, scalable infrastructure, and extensive hypervisor support. Red Hat CloudForms offers robust automation capabilities, policy-based governance, and integration with Red Hat's ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could enhance its automation and governance capabilities. It might also benefit from deeper integration with third-party tools. Additionally, broadening its feature set could make it more competitive. Red Hat CloudForms could improve its pricing model to be more accessible. Simplifying the deployment process could also be beneficial. Enhancing user interface intuitiveness would make the product easier to use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack offers a simple deployment process and efficient customer service. Red Hat CloudForms provides customizable deployment options with excellent support for enterprise integration.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack offers lower upfront costs, making it appealing for budget-conscious businesses with fast ROI. Red Hat CloudForms requires higher initial investments but offers long-term value through advanced features and integration, promising substantial ROI over time.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. Red Hat CloudForms Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Red Hat CloudForms

March 2026

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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

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

Red Hat CloudForms

Ranking in Cloud Management

33rd

Average Rating

6.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.5%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
CloudStack	2.5%
Red Hat CloudForms	1.9%
Other	95.6%

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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Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

A stable solution that helps to provision servers

We use the solution to provision servers. I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs. The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved. I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. I would rate the product's scalability a seven out of ten and…

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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

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

"It gives us the ability to manage and segregate a guest network with openvSwitch and VLAN IDs."

"It is very easy to install and manage. It has the all modules in one node, unlike other software (OpenStack). The product allows a customized look and feel, and the ability to add custom workflows."

"CloudStack supports every operating system that supports hypervisors, which makes the product more attractive, compared to vCloud Director or Azure."

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

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

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"We like the virtualization capabilities."

More CloudStack pros

"Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running."

"They are a very mature product."

"The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't had any issues with it."

"I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs."

"The solution is compatible and integrates with various infrastructures or providers."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability."

"I am impressed with the product's reports."

"The multi-tenancy feature has been very helpful for our clients. It has been working fine and seamlessly for them. Its interface is also very simplified, and it is also an open and easy-to-scale solution."

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

Cons

"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."

"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."

"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."

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

"The product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization."

"I encountered some stability issues. When I tried to remove high-capacity virtual machines it took a long time to update, and sometimes the VM status failed to update properly in the cloud database. This occurred multiple times, even though I had sufficient resources."

"For time consuming operations like storage migrations, volume Snapshot restore and the like, we faced issues like MySQL operations timing out and status update failures. Those areas needs improvement."

"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."

More CloudStack cons

"Because the solution needs to integrate with other products that surround it, there is a lot of configuration required, and this can be quite complex. It's not as easy as it is with, for example, VMware."

"Our clients had challenges or issues with the updates. Its updates should be better managed. They should provide quicker and more stable updates. Its stability can also be better. We initially faced ease-of-use and compatibility issues while integrating it. We had a lot of compatibility issues with other products. Our clients are concerned about whether it is under IBM or it is still Red Hat. Clients are not very clear about the support, and they're not really happy with it. Currently, they're getting support from Red Hat, but going forward, they're not really clear about what would be the life cycle of the product, which is a concern for them."

"All of the areas of Red Hat CloudForms could improve. It doesn't do half of the things that it says it can do out of the box. It takes configuration to make any of it work, which is not uncommon for solutions similar to this. However, it is frustrating."

"The solution is still quite immature."

"The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved."

"The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware."

"Red Hat CloudForms could improve by allowing more customization of reports. We have to do a lot of coding to accomplish what we want. Additionally, the compatibility with the multi-cloud could improve. The latter versions of the solution removed Google support and the cost comparison between other clouds was high."

"The problem is that the platform requires it to be maintained and updated. Also, a few cases are still pending with the Red Hat support team since they are not closed yet."

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"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."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"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."

"Red Hat CloudForms has a subscript-based pricing model. The cost is approximately $20,000 annually which allows you to use as many users as you want."

"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

"The product's licensing is based on the number of servers."

"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Marketing Services Firm

Government

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	4
Large Enterprise	7

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Compared 27% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 6% of the time

CloudCheckr vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 5% of the time

Morpheus vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

March 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms

February 2026

Download Red Hat CloudForms product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

No data available

Overview

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

Manage container, virtual, private, and public cloud infrastructures

Managing a complex, hybrid IT environment can require multiple management tools, redundant policy implementations, and extra staff to handle the operations. Red Hat® CloudForms simplifies IT, providing unified management and operations in a hybrid environment.

As your IT infrastructure progresses from traditional virtualization toward an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model, CloudForms evolves, protecting your investments and providing consistent user experience and functionality.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

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

Cox Automotive, Penn State, FICO, G-ABLE, Seneca College, ITandTEL, The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS), MyRepublic, Macquarie, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, CBTS, Network Data Solutions (NDS)

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Red Hat CloudForms

March 2026

Free Report: CloudStack vs. Red Hat CloudForms

Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. Red Hat CloudForms and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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