ControlUp vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

ControlUp and Broadcom are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. ControlUp is ranked #33 with an average rating of 8.3, while Broadcom is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.8. ControlUp holds a 0.7% mindshare in IM, compared to Broadcom’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ControlUp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

ControlUp

Read 13 ControlUp reviews

3,908 Views
2,267 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

6,376 Views
3,571 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

ControlUp

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and ControlUp compete in infrastructure monitoring and application management. VMware is favored for its comprehensive insights and analytics, while ControlUp shines with its robust feature set and pricing structure.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications provides advanced analytics, workload optimization, and predictive capacity planning. ControlUp offers real-time monitoring, proactive troubleshooting, and efficient multi-tenant support.

Room for Improvement: VMware could enhance its real-time insights and streamline its deployment process. It may also benefit from improved user experience features. ControlUp might improve its analytics depth, provide additional optimization tools, and expand its support for complex environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ControlUp is noted for its straightforward installation and responsive support. VMware offers a more complex deployment but benefits from a well-established support network that provides detailed configuration assistance.

Pricing and ROI: VMware, despite higher upfront costs, offers potential long-term ROI through increased efficiency. ControlUp's competitive pricing provides strong ROI with immediate operational performance benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed ControlUp vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

June 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

ControlUp

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

33rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (5th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (16th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.6%
ControlUp	0.7%
Other	97.7%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Jean-CharlesMoriaud

Senior IT Engineer Citrix at EDR Media LLC

Automation capabilities and proactive monitoring have improved infrastructure reliability and reduced troubleshooting time

ControlUp has a lot of automation in it. It detects problems and failures very well. It's not only monitoring, but it's also detecting, and it could even fix problems with a lot of automation that you can put in place to fix problems automatically before you even detect them. That's one of the strong points of ControlUp. All the automations, and there's a large customer-written automation. You can pick up those automations and use them on your environment, and it helps a lot. This is very good. It's not third-party, but it's external routines and automations that you can download from their website and implement on your side. That's one of the strong points of ControlUp. ControlUp, the way we implemented it, and the goal of ControlUp, is to be proactive instead of starting to work on a problem when it already happens. There are a lot of counters and monitors you can implement that will help you detect problems before they happen.

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Ajay Shukla

Consultant at HCLTech

Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome

The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

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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

"I would recommend this product because it is straightforward to use and stable."

"In terms of the public cloud, ControlUp's features make us feel very secure."

"It shows you so many details of what's going on in that log-on that, if there's a problem, you can identify it in five minutes."

"This product's most valuable feature is that it allows you to consume many resources from a centralized tool."

"It has a great career time monitoring tool."

"ControlUp has improved our organization by giving us full visibility into our systems, so we know what's running, where it's running, what it's doing, and the load on the system."

"Security, uptime, and reduced capital expenditures are the main reasons we use ControlUp. So basically, the money that we consume is based on the amount of time we are using a service."

"The most valuable feature is the granularity of visibility into the resources that are in use by our applications."

More ControlUp pros

"Wavefront gives us the complexity we need, instead of spending time coming up with a nice dashboard from some other means, or just creating and coding our own app."

"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."

"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."

"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."

"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."

"We haven't had any issues with stability."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"It can be improved by including script-based scheduling."

"Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices."

"The graphical user interface needs to be improved from version to version."

"We'd like to see the mobile app working again so that we can get alerts 24/7. This is especially useful for the person on call."

"There was some lag earlier, and reports pulled from the dashboard would sometimes be half an hour old. But now, the information provides real-time status, which is greatly appreciated. Overall, I've seen improvement in the product."

"The on-premises version has limited scalability as challenges occur because the console takes a lot of computer power."

"Something I would love to see from a partner perspective would be maybe a way to do this in a surface hosting provider."

"There is area for improvement, maybe in the reporting. It could use some work in reporting."

More ControlUp cons

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."

"They just need more capability. A few areas still need more enhancements in the technology capability space."

"However, it is still not a very mature product."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."

"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."

"Personally, I would say that the only thing I could compare it to is another monitoring tool that we use, Nagios."

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Healthcare Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ControlUp Real-time?

It is expensive. It is very expensive. I was working in a bank, and even in the bank, which was quite healthy, the ControlUp budget was something we had to defend very harshly.

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What needs improvement with ControlUp Real-time?

I don't see any.

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What is your primary use case for ControlUp Real-time?

I was taking care of a Citrix infrastructure, and as ControlUp is the best monitoring tool for those environments, I was also using ControlUp to monitor those environments.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...

See all answers

Comparisons

Nexthink vs ControlUp

Compared 16% of the time

Citrix uberAgent Monitoring vs ControlUp

Compared 7% of the time

eG Enterprise vs ControlUp

Compared 7% of the time

SysTrack vs ControlUp

Compared 6% of the time

Catchpoint vs ControlUp

Compared 2% of the time

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Datadog vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

LogicMonitor vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 5% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 4% of the time

Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 3% of the time

Nagios XI vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp

June 2026

Download ControlUp product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

May 2026

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

ControlUp is known for its powerful administration tools, real-time insights, and automation capabilities, enabling efficient VDI and infrastructure management. It integrates seamlessly with solutions like Netscaler, offering historical analytics and endpoint monitoring for proactive issue detection.

ControlUp provides an advanced platform for monitoring Citrix VDIs and user sessions, allowing administrators to perform in-depth infrastructure analysis and troubleshooting. It supports virtualization platforms like VMware and Hyper-V, delivering real-time data capabilities and capacity management. ControlUp also facilitates script-based actions and easy deployment, offering AI-enhanced VDI administration. Users can centralize resources for efficient management, benefiting from granular resource visibility and capacity planning. The tool integrates with Scoutbees for end-to-end analysis and supports historical reporting to detect potential issues before they arise.

What are the key features of ControlUp?

Real-Time Insights: Provides up-to-the-minute data for informed decision-making.
Automation Capabilities: Extensive automation through script-based actions to streamline tasks.
Customizable Interface: Adaptable settings to suit organizational workflows effectively.
End-to-End Analysis: Integration with Netscaler and Scoutbees for comprehensive infrastructure analysis.
AI-Enhanced Administration: Leverages AI for improved VDI management and operation.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in the reviews?

Proactive Issue Detection: Early detection of potential issues to minimize downtime and enhance reliability.
In-Depth Analyses: Detailed insights into infrastructure for better planning and optimization.
Efficient Resource Management: Centralization of resources contributes to operational efficiency and visibility.
Cost-Effective Management: Automating repetitive tasks results in reduced operational costs and improved productivity.
Improved User Experience: Comprehensive monitoring and analytics ensure a smoother digital experience for end-users.

Organizations rely on ControlUp for effective infrastructure monitoring and management across industries. Within the tech sector, it supports Citrix VDI environments and enhances digital experience evaluations. Healthcare providers utilize its real-time monitoring for seamless administration of virtual platforms, ensuring efficient patient data management. In finance, ControlUp aids in secure and responsive virtualization, key for transactional systems and customer interactions.

ControlUp

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

B/E Aerospace, North Carolina SECU, Vancouver Island Health Authority, University of Florida

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

June 2026

Free Report: ControlUp vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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