CloudStack vs Spot by Flexera 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 #23 with an average rating of 8.5. Apache holds a 2.8% mindshare in CM, compared to Spot - A Flexera company’s 1.7% 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

2,000 Views
1,820 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Spot by Flexera

Read 5 Spot by Flexera reviews

1,639 Views
590 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Spot by Flexera

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

CloudStack and Spot by Flexera compete in cloud environment management. Spot by Flexera tends to have the upper hand with its robust feature set, particularly in cost management.

Features: CloudStack supports multiple hypervisors, offers robust virtualization management, and benefits from an active open-source community. Spot by Flexera delivers advanced cost optimization, seamless cloud integration, and automation tools, providing significant value in dynamic environments.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack can improve user interface design and enhance documentation for complex deployments. It may also benefit from expanding integration capabilities with new technologies. Spot by Flexera could enhance its initial cost structure, simplify user onboarding, and provide more granular control over cost optimization settings for better user autonomy.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack offers straightforward deployment with comprehensive documentation. Spot by Flexera streamlines setup through automated configurations and provides proactive customer support, enhancing deployment efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack typically involves lower startup costs due to its open-source model, offering potentially strong ROI for cost-conscious businesses. Spot by Flexera requires a higher initial investment but promises substantial long-term savings and favorable ROI through its advanced cost-saving features.

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

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Spot by Flexera

December 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 by Flexera

Ranking in Cloud Management

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Virtualization Software (14th), Cloud Operations Analytics (1st), Cloud Analytics (2nd), Compute Service (9th), Containers as a Service (CaaS) (4th), Cloud Cost Management (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.8%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spot by Flexera is 1.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
CloudStack	2.8%
Spot	1.7%
Other	95.5%

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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Karan Saini

Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees

Intelligent autoscaling has cut compute costs and now manages ephemeral workloads efficiently

I think overall Spot is quite good. The UI is powerful, but it can feel a bit dense for some new users. More guided onboarding would help teams adopt advanced features faster, and deeper insights into Kubernetes resource usage would be beneficial. Overall, it is a really good platform that is quite mature and stable. I chose a rating of nine because it may sometimes be a bit overwhelming for newcomers, and there are also a few areas in which the EKS Kubernetes level granularity is a little missing. Overall, I think Spot is a really good and stable tool.

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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."

"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."

"CloudStack is simple to stand up and get off the ground in a hurry. Its centralized design allows for easier troubleshooting when compared to OpenStack. Out of the box, it’s very well suited for white labeling and IaaS."

"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."

"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."

"Valuable features include that it is a user-friendly portal, VPN P2S and S2S possibilities, and it's easy to manage accounts and limits."

"Multiple types of hypervisor support, multi-zone support, and VPC are great valuable features."

"The initial implementation process was quite good."

More CloudStack pros

"Cost saving is the main benefit, and the manual effort required for reviewing and purchasing savings plans and other RIs is something we do not have to manage manually now, as we get automatic suggestions from Spot."

"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."

"My compute costs have reduced, capacity and production output have increased, and my overhead for maintaining custom scripts or doing some of the tasks manually has been saved."

"Spot has positively impacted our organization by automating cloud resource management, which has significantly cut costs and improved efficiency."

Cons

"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 is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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

"I have not seen a return on investment yet."

"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

"The solution is open-source and free."

"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."

"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."

"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."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

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 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

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?

Spot can be improved by adding deeper multi-cloud integrations, enhancing real-time security automation, and continuously making advancements based on customer feedback.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Spot Ocean?

I have been using Spot for five years. My main use case for Spot is cloud optimization.We use Spot for optimization by leveraging real-time optimization as well as auto-optimization. The company al...

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Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 45% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 8% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

HPE OneSphere vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

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IBM Turbonomic vs Spot by Flexera

Compared 11% of the time

ProsperOps vs Spot by Flexera

Compared 6% of the time

Pump.co vs Spot by Flexera

Compared 6% of the time

CAST AI vs Spot by Flexera

Compared 4% of the time

AWS Fargate vs Spot by Flexera

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

January 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

Spot by Flexera

January 2026

Download Spot by Flexera 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 by Flexera provides automated cost optimization and container management with multi-cloud integration, achieving up to 70% savings and greater efficiency. It adapts to demand changes using AI-driven insights.

Spot enables organizations to optimize cloud infrastructure in environments such as Kubernetes, AKS, EKS, and AWS. It offers advanced automation features for managing resources, leading to reduced overhead and increased production output. Spot's intelligent autoscaling and node replacement capabilities enhance scalability and reliability. While the platform lacks some granularity in EKS Kubernetes insights, it remains stable and mature, helping organizations minimize costs and improve resource utilization. Opportunities for improvement include OCI support, more detailed multi-cloud integrations, and enhanced Kubernetes insights.

What features does Spot by Flexera offer?

Automated Cost Optimization: Efficiently manages expenditure and provides significant savings.
Advanced Container Management: Streamlines container management across multiple platforms.
Multi-Cloud Integration: Seamlessly integrates with major cloud providers.
Intelligent Autoscaling: Automatically adjusts resources based on demand changes.
Zero-Downtime Node Replacement: Ensures seamless transitions without interrupting workflows.
Integration with AWS: Enhances scalability and system reliability.

What are the benefits of using Spot by Flexera?

Cost Efficiency: Achieves up to 70% cost savings through intelligent solutions.
Increased Production Output: Improves overall productivity by streamlining processes.
Scalability and Reliability: Offers robust autoscaling and no-downtime node replacement.
Support for Financial Governance: Aids in effective financial management and planning.

In industries heavily reliant on cloud-based services, Spot by Flexera is crucial for optimizing resource management and cost efficiency. Organizations leveraging Spot in sectors like technology and finance benefit from real-time optimization techniques and improved governance processes.

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 by Flexera

December 2025

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