CloudStack vs Spot comparison

Apache and Spot - A Flexera company are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Spot - A Flexera company is ranked #31 with an average rating of 7.0. Apache holds a 3.9% mindshare in CM, compared to Spot - A Flexera company’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Spot - A Flexera company users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

1,964 Views
1,768 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Spot

Read 2 Spot reviews

1,146 Views
378 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Spot

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

CloudStack and Spot are in the cloud management solutions category, each presenting unique strengths. CloudStack dominates with its open-source capabilities, while Spot has better cost-saving automation features.

Features: CloudStack offers comprehensive cloud management focusing on flexibility, scalability, and a broad open-source toolset. Spot specializes in cost optimization and operational efficiency, with automation that enhances budget management and resource allocation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack’s deployment is more hands-on, benefiting from substantial community support, especially for larger operations. Spot offers a streamlined, faster deployment process with proactive customer service, noted for its simplicity and guidance during setup.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack provides competitive pricing with lower initial setup costs, ideal for businesses valuing upfront savings. Spot, despite a higher initial price, generates a significant ROI with consistent cloud expenditure savings, offering long-term value through intelligent resource management.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. Spot Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Spot

September 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

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Spot

Ranking in Cloud Management

31st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Virtualization Software (15th), Cloud Operations Analytics (1st), Cloud Analytics (4th), Compute Service (11th), Containers as a Service (CaaS) (5th), Cloud Cost Management (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 3.9%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spot is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
CloudStack	3.9%
Spot	1.1%
Other	95.0%

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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Manpreet_Singh

Senior Principal Infrastructure Engineer at Mphasis

Used to manage Kubernetes infrastructure, but it doesn't have support from OCI

Spot Ocean is deployed on the cloud in our organization. I would recommend the solution to other users. You need to have an experience with Kubernetes, or else this product is of no use. It is not difficult to learn to use Spot Ocean. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

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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

"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."

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

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

"The structuring of the components and isolated environments helped us when using parts of the framework at different levels of product development."

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More CloudStack pros

"The solution helps us to manage and scale automatically whenever there is a limit to the increase in the application workflow."

"The solution offers both block access and file access, making it a nice solution for customers."

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."

"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."

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

"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."

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

"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."

"The numerous, multi-layered drill-down menus make it difficult to find one simple knob to turn."

"The Windows hosts do not get their hostnames from cloud-init."

More CloudStack cons

"There are no particular areas for improvement I can identify."

"The solution doesn't have support from OCI, and it should start working to onboard OCI."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

21%

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

No data available

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?

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 do you like most about Spot Ocean?

The solution helps us to manage and scale automatically whenever there is a limit to the increase in the application workflow.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Spot Ocean?

There are no particular areas for improvement I can identify.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Spot Ocean?

Spot by NetApp is primarily used for backup and also for Fiservware.

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 76% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 7% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

IBM Turbonomic vs Spot

Compared 19% of the time

ProsperOps vs Spot

Compared 14% of the time

Flexera Cloud Cost Management vs Spot

Compared 12% of the time

Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs Spot

Compared 9% of the time

Pump.co vs Spot

Compared 9% of the time

More Spot Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

October 2025

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Analytics

September 2025

Download Spot product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

Spot Ocean, Spot Elastigroup, Spot Eco

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

Spot provides dynamic workload management for cloud environments, offering cost optimization and enhanced performance. It stands out with its unique approach to managing resources efficiently.

Spot is designed to enhance cloud resource utilization and cost-effectiveness through intelligent workload management. With real-time analysis, Spot determines and deploys the most efficient resources, ensuring optimal performance for applications. Businesses benefit from reduced cloud expenses and increased operational efficiency, making it an essential tool for managing cloud infrastructure effectively.

What are the key features of Spot?

Automated Scaling: Automatically adjusts cloud resources based on demand and usage patterns.
Real-Time Monitoring: Provides continuous oversight to ensure optimal performance and operational efficiency.
Cost Optimization: Reduces expenses by utilizing spot instances and leveraging cost-effective cloud resources.
Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with existing cloud services and infrastructures.

What benefits should users look for in Spot?

Cost Reduction: Users can expect to see a significant decrease in cloud expenses.
Improved Efficiency: Enhancements in operational processes and workload management.
Resource Optimization: Better allocation and usage of cloud resources.
Scalability: Capability to handle increasing amounts of work effectively.

In finance, Spot ensures cost-effective cloud computing for trading platforms, while in e-commerce, it dynamically manages back-end processes. In the entertainment industry, Spot optimizes media streaming by deploying resources when user demand spikes. Each industry leverages Spot to maximize performance and minimize operational costs, demonstrating its versatility and reliability across sectors.

Spot - A Flexera company

Sample Customers

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

Freshworks, Zalando, Red Spark, News, Trax, ETAS, Demandbase, BeesWa, Duolingo, intel, IBM, N26, Wix, EyeEm, moovit, SAMSUNG, News UK, ticketmaster

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Spot

September 2025

Free Report: CloudStack vs. Spot

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