ControlUp vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

ControlUp and Broadcom are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. ControlUp is ranked #32 with an average rating of 8.3, while Broadcom is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.8. ControlUp holds a 0.8% mindshare in IM, compared to Broadcom’s 1.5% 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

4,385 Views
2,631 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

7,303 Views
4,017 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

ControlUp

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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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: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 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

32nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (6th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (18th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.5%, up from 1.4% 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	1.5%
ControlUp	0.8%
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

"The Solve interface has provided us the ability to view our entire estate including physical devices in a single pane of glass, transforming the way we approach the troubleshooting and reporting of our estate."

"ControlUp has some good functionalities, such as remotely pushing scripts in the device through the tool."

"ControlUp is a very good solution, but when we monitor an environment, it is very difficult."

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

"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."

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

"When using ControlUp, the core feature that we have found valuable is its UI. It is a valuable tool to view the analysis reactions of a base core Level 2 or Level 1 team so that they can complete the necessary troubleshooting."

"The most valuable features in ControlUp are endpoint monitoring and the many features that are available."

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."

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

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

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

"Using Wavefront, we have been able to reduce the complexity of our pipeline."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."

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

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"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."

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

"The most common complaint that I have heard, at least within our organization, is about reporting. They have their own reporting. It's just that it doesn't yet include everything that you can look at within the application. You can only report on specific metrics or collections."

"ControlUp could improve the integration. Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring has better integration."

"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."

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

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

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

More ControlUp cons

"The support from VMware is not very helpful. This is because you always receive many questions from the support service but few actual solutions."

"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."

"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."

"So far, the solution's learning curve has been pretty high."

"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."

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

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

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

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Healthcare Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ControlUp Real-time?

I don't see any.

See all answers

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

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Compared 15% of the time

eG Enterprise vs ControlUp

Compared 7% of the time

Citrix uberAgent Monitoring vs ControlUp

Compared 6% of the time

SysTrack vs ControlUp

Compared 6% of the time

Compared 5% of the time

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Splunk Observability Cloud vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 4% of the time

LogicMonitor vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 4% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics 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

August 2026

Download ControlUp product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

July 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

August 2026

Free Report: ControlUp vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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