CloudStack vs Red Hat CloudForms comparison

Apache and Red Hat are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0, while Red Hat is ranked #31 with an average rating of 6.0. Apache holds a 4.8% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 31 CloudStack reviews

1,888 Views
1,385 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Red Hat CloudForms

Read 10 Red Hat CloudForms reviews

657 Views
307 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Red Hat CloudForms

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

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Red Hat CloudForms

Ranking in Cloud Management

31st

Average Rating

6.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 4.8%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

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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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

"The API with CloudStack made integration into various external facing web applications simple enough."

"CloudStack helped us showcase our features through process visualization and functional solutions."

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

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"The back-end database design is simple and straight forward. The user interface is designed with external users in mind. Billing is relatively straightforward with this product. Not being restricted to just one hypervisor was nice."

"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."

"I have been impressed by CloudStack's most recent updates around Kubernetes. In particular, they have worked with Kubernetes to support the Cluster API, and you can now easily integrate Kubernetes into CloudStack and get access to a lot of good features."

"CloudStack’s private gateway networking feature is what enables us to offer utmost security and confidentially to our customers and partners, by enabling them to connect to their virtual data centers via dedicated, encrypted, private fiber lines that never touch the public internet space. Ease of setup and management are certainly important additional benefits for us on the engineering team."

More CloudStack pros

"The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"They are a very mature product."

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

Cons

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"A technology upgrade is one item which could be improved upon a lot."

"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

"The solution is still quite immature."

"It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs."

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

"I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

"The solution is open-source and free."

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

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

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

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

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Educational Organization

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

24%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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

What do you like most about Red Hat CloudForms?

I am impressed with the product's reports.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Red Hat CloudForms?

I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat CloudForms?

I would rate the product a four out of ten since its implementation is not as good as it sounds.

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 72% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 8% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

OpenNebula vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 24% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 22% of the time

Morpheus vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 19% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 18% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 18% of the time

More Red Hat CloudForms Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

June 2025

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms

June 2025

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

June 2025

Free Report: CloudStack vs. Red Hat CloudForms

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

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