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

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

"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."

"CloudStack, by default, gives us a zone-based setup which makes it easier to manage datacenters located in different geographical areas."

"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."

"Key features include stability, centralized management design that scales well, and transparent interoperability with different hypervisors and manufacturers.."

"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."

"The platform is very simple to scale-out."

"CloudStack has greatly helped integrate our existing infrastructure because we manage a massive cloud platform with thousands of VMs and around 1,200 to 1,500 hypervisors."

More CloudStack pros

"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."

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

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

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

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

"They are a very mature product."

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

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

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

Cons

"The area of Apache CloudStack that could stand the most improvement is the functionality/features around the virtual routers. They can be somewhat cumbersome to deal with at times and are the least stable piece of the product."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We recognize that CloudStack is an easy-to-use cloud management platform and, in my opinion, there has been a large number of improvements in the past few years, particular when it comes to the modern UI and overall ease of management. However, I believe that CloudStack needs to grow their marketing in the commercial side. They don't have a great piece of market share right now."

"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."

"We did encounter issues with stability, and the main issue was secondary storage. When it is not available, XenServers and hypervisors are affected. And CS doesn’t do anything to reboot, or fix. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t, considering their approach – CS just orchestrates everything else on the hypervisor and storage level."

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."

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

"The solution is still quite immature."

"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."

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

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

"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."

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

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

"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

14%

Educational Organization

10%

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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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 4% 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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