No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Horizon Cloud Service vs Microsoft Remote Desktop Services vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Horizon Cloud Service is 3.1%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is 5.9%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Workstation is 12.0%, down from 16.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Workstation12.0%
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services5.9%
Horizon Cloud Service3.1%
Other79.0%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1970973 - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtual Desktop and Applications Offerings Global Offering Manager at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Cloud-based platform offers flexibility with robust protocol and exceptional user management
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. This offers significant flexibility and efficiency. Additionally, Horizon Cloud Service has a robust protocol, making app management straightforward. The scalability of Horizon Cloud Service is also excellent, and its stability is strong for our use cases.
reviewer2795433 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Secure remote access has protected sensitive country data and supports strict compliance needs
I understand from the IT team managing Microsoft Remote Desktop Services that it is complex to set up the multiple roles, certificates, and networks required. Networking is quite complicated. Even though on the data center side it is quite simple, maintaining the farm of other connections that connect to that server is the complex piece. I understand there are more modern systems replicating what this solution does, which are easier to use, such as Azure Virtual Desktop within Microsoft Azure Cloud or Amazon WorkSpaces, which I have used before. Rather than having to manage all the complex networking, you could abstract it away a little further in the cloud for easier use. I also understand that this tool is in an end-of-life state now, with Microsoft actively pushing people towards Azure Virtual Desktop or Windows 365. I do not believe further features will be rolled out due to its end-of-life state, making it a legacy solution now.
GC
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Creating and destroying test machines has simplified our operations and reduced manual recovery time
The Snapshot feature has helped with workflows by allowing us to more easily reconstruct something if we lose it or need it. We've been making Snapshots on a consistent basis, mainly of servers. The VX Rail has worked effectively because we can create machines as we need them. It's helpful for resetting and has helped with our operations because I had set up failover servers on Vertex, but we don't have to do that anymore since VMware will just create a new machine immediately if we have a problem. We're doing our domain servers on there, and we've been very happy with that. We appreciate that we can create machines simply to test things out and then destroy them. I use it for a test machine for checking emails, so if the email has a virus in it, we can just destroy the machine and create a new one. We're slowly moving into the VMware environment, although the pricing with Broadcom has been a disaster.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"VMware Horizon Cloud is easy to use and the full development cloud is very good."
"The tool remains pretty stable."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Horizon Cloud is all of its capabilities together."
"The product’s on-premise version has the ability to create an image of any updates or changes in the system."
"I honestly liked the application itself because it was just like using a desktop. You could copy and paste, inside and outside, and you could use multiple monitors. You could access it anytime, anywhere, no matter whether you were in the office or out of the office. I could leave the office, go somewhere, go back in, and everything would be there. I could just leave it up and running. I absolutely love this feature in VMware Horizon Cloud."
"Horizon Cloud Service provides deployment flexibility across multiple clouds with a scalable architecture that easily scales virtual desktops and applications up or down based on demand."
"The tool shares computer resources perfectly."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services are unification, central management, and accessibility."
"The most valuable feature is the remote application access."
"The solution is really fast."
"It's simple and easy to use."
"The initial setup is great; it's very simple and straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"The initial setup is not that difficult. I have gone through the RDS initialization steps, which only seem easy."
"The features are good."
"VMware workstation is expensive but with its excellent features and performance for a desktop, the cost is nothing."
"Having ten people working off a single piece of hardware reduces costs."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the speed of access and quality of upgrade. Those are the more important and pertinent aspects as far as we were concerned. Functionality and features were relevant for the customers. What a customer chose, we had to make sure that it operated."
"The solution's customer service is good."
"VMware is way cheaper if I take it as an application or a software compared to any hardware."
"VMware Player's best feature is the ability to run different OS's simultaneously."
"It's stable."
 

Cons

"The licensing model needs to be adjusted, as a cloud license is currently required even for on-premises devices."
"Our technical support of VMware is good, but the main problem is it takes a lot of time."
"It is too expensive as compared to other solutions because of which we don't use it that much."
"The application remoting features have some room for improvement."
"It can be very expensive to scale up because each part of scaling up requires you to have new components of the infrastructure."
"The application remoting features have some room for improvement."
"The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help."
"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."
"The solution is unsuitable for direct external internet connections. You must set up a VPN and password handling to use it."
"Microsoft Remote Desktop Services could be improved because we have keyboard compatibility issues with some platforms; on macOS, we sometimes experience keyboard connectivity issues, and it can be problematic when connecting to servers that then need to connect to other servers, as the keyboard layout doesn't match."
"We are searching for a product with better remote access and remote sessions."
"The reliability of the solution could improve."
"I rate Microsoft's customer service support a two out of ten. In general, Microsoft has poor support."
"Teams component can be a bit cumbersome to use. It takes some time to get it working as expected."
"The pricing could be better."
"Microsoft Desktop Services is stable but it takes up a lot of resources in the CPU. It's a bit heavier than some solutions."
"I have encountered stability issues with the virtual networks and have had run into issue with copying or moving VMs."
"Customer Service: I think support is an issue for VMware - they only offer support for this product once you purchase more than 10 licenses. This is a show-stopper for smaller organizations like us."
"It would be great if VMware Workstation had more networking options and compatibility, that would be great. I would like to deploy virtual switches and play around with networking a bit more. Otherwise, I have to deploy ESXi Virtual Edition and emulate it, which is painful and clunky."
"I would want to see features included that make deployment easier."
"VMware Workstation could improve the export and import of virtual machines."
"The network configuration was not as easy as it could be and could take less time."
"They could bring in many different features from VMware vSphere to Workstation."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting capabilities, particularly around snapshot activity. It would be helpful to have a summary of changes made prior to deploying an application, allowing us to provide comprehensive reports to our management on a regular basis."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Initially, the product is cheap, but it starts to get expensive when users try to scale out."
"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."
"We do not have to pay for the product."
"There is a licensing cost."
"The solution has a pretty comparable pricing."
"The pricing could always be improved."
"I am aware that for Azure we do have an extra license because we are leveraging on different tenants."
"The solution is expensive. My company pays toward the monthly licensing costs of the solution...The additional cost, apart from the solution's licensing cost, is related to the technical support a user wants."
"The tool must be cheaper."
"It's not an expensive product."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is almost the same as what Google Cloud, AWS, or Microsoft would charge you."
"VMware Workstation is an expensive solution in Asian countries."
"VMware Workstation's costs are lifetime."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The product has a moderate price."
"With all its support and ease of use, VMware Player's pricing is fair."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions are best for your needs.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Media Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Horizon Cloud?
The cost is considered normal, not remarkable but not outrageous. In terms of expense, compared to other virtualizati...
What needs improvement with VMware Horizon Cloud?
The licensing model needs to be adjusted, as a cloud license is currently required even for on-premises devices. Hori...
What is your primary use case for VMware Horizon Cloud?
Our primary use case focuses on virtual desktop and application hosting. This is spread across different industries. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services?
I was not involved in the pricing and licensing perspective, so I cannot speak too much on that. However, I know that...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services?
I understand from the IT team managing Microsoft Remote Desktop Services that it is complex to set up the multiple ro...
Which VMware solution would you go with - Workstation or vSphere?
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM ...
What do you like most about VMware Workstation?
The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up.
What needs improvement with VMware Workstation?
The product's integration capabilities are an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.
 

Also Known As

VMware Horizon Cloud, VMware Horizon DaaS
Remote Desktop Services
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Marriott, Sprint
Bank Alfalah Ltd.
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix, Broadcom, Omnissa and others in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.