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Horizon 8 vs Horizon Cloud Service comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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

Horizon 8
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
User Virtualization (1st)
Horizon Cloud Service
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Desktop as a Service (DaaS) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Horizon 8 is 7.6%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Horizon Cloud Service is 1.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Tim  Abboud - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly, reasonably priced, and simple to install
It can be challenging to assess the stability of Horizon because it relies heavily on the underlying infrastructure, including vCenter, network, and storage performance. It is important to pay attention to these factors when evaluating the stability of the system. We rely on vCenter, network, and storage performance, and any weakness in these areas will affect the performance of Horizon. When discussing this with customers, I always emphasize the importance of these factors. If the foundation is solid, Horizon should not experience any performance issues. If the fundamentals are weak, we will encounter issues with Horizon on a regular basis. However, the product itself, VMware Horizon, is highly stable. While the Horizon product itself is very stable, it is important to be well-informed about any potential side effects from using other related products.
SivaKuppala - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized management enhances multi-cloud flexibility with cost efficiency improvements
The cost of Horizon Cloud Service is high, however, it could be optimized. The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help. Improvements in application performance, especially for resource-heavy applications like intensive 3D workloads, are needed. More built-in automation for routine tasks like patching and upgrading could reduce administrative effort.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is a stable solution. It is wonderful for multi-user environments, and it supports different virtual machines and operating systems. You can go for any kind of virtual machine. It has many features, especially for a call center. You don't have the issue of computers going down from time to time. You just need to copy the virtual machine to deploy it. You also don't need many people to maintain computers. With Horizon 7, you just need one or two people."
"It's centralized management, and you have access gateway to enter the the VMs from outside."
"VMware is very helpful for customized platforms that offer auto-promotion and auto-deprovision."
"VMware's technical support is good."
"We like that VMware is the top competitor in virtualization."
"It offers great flexibility, allowing us to access it as a complete virtual machine or even just as individual applications."
"It is a stable product."
"The product helped us deploy complex applications."
"The product’s on-premise version has the ability to create an image of any updates or changes in the system."
"The interface is much easier to use compared to Microsoft and other VDI vendors that are well known on the market. I like VMware so much more than the others. With Horizon Cloud, you don't need to spend a lot of money upfront to buy the infrastructure. You can use it the on the cloud, so it lowers the barriers to entry. It's easier to test it and get started. Some clients stay in the cloud, but others prefer to go on-premise. It depends on the nature of the client."
"The product allows a VPN connection, adding extra value to its features."
"The tool remains pretty stable."
"The main benefit of Horizon Cloud Service is that it is cloud-based, allowing our organization to leverage the service without having to manage all infrastructure directly."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Horizon Cloud is all of its capabilities together."
"Its advanced management features are the most valuable, especially power management. One of the really important things was to be able to have power management in a consumption world. This means that unlike a Microsoft environment, you could actually turn off virtual desktops or have them start up and shut down. If you're consuming resources in the public cloud, you want to be able to do that because when you're not using those, such as at the weekend, you want to be able to turn them off. So, the advanced options for managing the BDIs are very important."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Horizon Cloud is the ability to manage a great number of desktops at once and the remote access for users that are working from outside of the office or from different offices in the country."
 

Cons

"The product has to improve its performance and connectivity."
"The standard license does not include certain features."
"There are some licensing issues in VMware Horizon"
"The remote connection, bandwidth usage, and error connection can be improved. Working with the load balancer sites should also be improved. For example, with Horizon, we can use two clients with a one megabit connection, but with Citrix, we can use four or five clients with the same bandwidth through ICA protocol. VMware must improve remote connection, connection stability, and load balancing."
"There is room for a more cost-effective pricing structure, as it could be more affordable."
"The initial startup costs for this solution are relatively high."
"The technical support offered by VMware is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"In the area of automation, there are some improvements needed in the solution."
"The application remoting features have some room for improvement."
"The product has a lot of bugs."
"There should be more emphasis on the Workspace One access part of the solution. This is essentially identity management provided with Horizon. There needs to be some kind of integration because you are able to have all of these desktops on any device, but you have to have this other component to make it easier from a single sign-on perspective. That's why there should be an emphasis on Workspace One access. It actually comes free with the product, but people don't really know how powerful it can be."
"Logging into VMware Horizon Cloud could be made easier. Additionally, the VMs could be better in their performance."
"The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help."
"The licensing model needs to be adjusted, as a cloud license is currently required even for on-premises devices."
"The cost of Horizon Cloud Service is high, however, it could be optimized. The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help."
"It can be very expensive to scale up because each part of scaling up requires you to have new components of the infrastructure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is expensive. A lot of companies in Mexico find that the price is too high."
"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"I rate the product cost a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price."
"VMware Horizon only has one license, which is a license to run desktops."
"VMware Horizon can be considered to be slightly expensive"
"For long-term use, perpetual licenses are more cost-effective, and for short-term use, subscription-based would be more cost-effective."
"It is an expensive product. We purchase its yearly license."
"The VMware Horizon 7 license is for three months. We are in the testing stage, we are still evaluating the product. We are sure now that we need to buy a license for the production environment."
"It is too expensive as compared to other solutions because of which we don't use it that much. We tend to go more for Hyper-V or Azure just because VMware licensing is quite up there. We sway people away from VMware Horizon Cloud. We have some clients who already have it. They stay on it for a little while, and then most of them end up moving off when we provide them a better solution that isn't as license heavy cost-wise."
"I rate VMware Horizon Cloud pricing a ten out of ten."
"VMware Horizon Cloud is an expensive solution. This solution is approximately 30 percent more than Microsoft Azure Cloud. There can be extra costs."
"For what you get, it is very compelling. You've got to look at the total cost of ownership of this type of piece of software in terms of being able to utilize it as a cloud service. I don't have to run everything on-premises. When you look at the total cost of just being able to use it and then being able to point it to any public or private cloud, it is very compelling. You have one less thing to manage."
"There is a license required for the use of this solution and there are different tier levels available."
"VMware Horizon Cloud is a low-cost solution. The model that they have is consumption-based. However, some features are expensive."
"Initially, the product is cheap, but it starts to get expensive when users try to scale out."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does VMware Workspace One compare with VMware Horizon 7?
VMware Workspace One has a powerful set of helpful features. The solution offers very good documentation, the initial setup is easy, and the product is very stable and reliable. I think the fact th...
What do you like most about VMware Horizon 7?
VMware offers a friendly environment, and it's easy to provide the user with the package. It is a bundled solution that is readily deployable. The advantage lies in its simplicity, it requires mini...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Horizon 7?
We paid a lot of money for software that is not really fully operational out of the box. We had to have patches from VMware to get it into production. Hence, we lost a lot of time implementing the ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Horizon Cloud?
Horizon Cloud Service's pricing is on the higher side. The cost management aspect could improve to increase adoption. The licensing structure is also complex, particularly for hybrid deployments.
What needs improvement with VMware Horizon Cloud?
The cost of Horizon Cloud Service is high, however, it could be optimized. The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help. Improvements in applic...
 

Also Known As

VMware Horizon, VMware Horizon View, Mware Dynamic Environment Manager
VMware Horizon Cloud, VMware Horizon DaaS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LCMC Health
Marriott, Sprint
Find out what your peers are saying about Horizon 8 vs. Horizon Cloud Service and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.