Spiceworks vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Spiceworks and Broadcom are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Spiceworks is ranked #42 with an average rating of 9.0, while Broadcom is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.8. Spiceworks holds a 0.5% mindshare in IM, compared to Broadcom’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of Spiceworks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Spiceworks

Read 47 Spiceworks reviews

2,782 Views
1,085 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

3,869 Views
2,089 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Spiceworks

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Spiceworks and VMware Aria Operations for Applications compete in the service desk and monitoring category. VMware Aria Operations for Applications has the upper hand due to its robust monitoring capabilities and integration features.

Features: Spiceworks offers free inventory and helpdesk capabilities, network scanning features, and community support. VMware Aria Operations for Applications provides cloud and hybrid monitoring, Kubernetes integration, and detailed monitoring insights.

Room for Improvement: Spiceworks needs better monitoring tools, reporting capabilities, and scalability for larger enterprises. Improvement in the ticketing system and streamlining the community login process would enhance its offering. VMware Aria Operations for Applications requires easier setup, improved integration with Kubernetes, and more predictable costs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Spiceworks provides versatile deployment options, being available on-premises or in the cloud, with community-driven support. VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers robust official support across on-premises and hybrid solutions, suitable for enterprises needing structured support.

Pricing and ROI: Spiceworks is free, providing an excellent ROI for small businesses. Its effectiveness relies on user expertise and time investment. VMware Aria Operations for Applications, though more expensive with licensing fees, provides comprehensive features justifying the costs for large organizations seeking detailed application insights.

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

Buyer's Guide

Spiceworks vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

March 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

Spiceworks

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

42nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Help Desk Software (15th), IT Asset Management (10th)

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 (20th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Spiceworks is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.6%, up from 1.2% 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%
Spiceworks	0.5%
Other	97.9%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Rohit Samel

Account Manager Enterprise Sales at Navdeep Technologies Pvt.Ltd

Cloud storage with no hardware needed and great comprehensive reports

The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally. It is a fully software-based solution, eliminating the need for investment in hardware. We have the capability to create reports as needed. It is good software to use, as there were no incidents where I needed to contact technical support. Additionally, it is free software.

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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution can find all asset details automatically, whether it's a Mac address, computer name, IP address, models, etc. It's very helpful."

"The price, as it's free."

"Customer Service: Pretty good, but some issues were unresolvable."

"Spiceworks was the best product per our testing, and was recommended by other IT professionals at the time."

"The nice thing about Spiceworks is always it's free. Monitoring of printers for low toner. Finding machines that have low memory or low hard disk space."

"Spiceworks provides a centralized system through which all IT requests are funnelled, with requests being auto-assigned a ticket number, thus streamlining organization and prioritization of requests."

"Spiceworks' dashboard allows you to drill down to the notes, where I can take an inventory of the network and see the devices I need to monitor."

"Considering this is AdWare this is a very good product with all the right tools for a medium sized IT department."

More Spiceworks pros

"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

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

"No issues with stability."

"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

"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."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The main issue we had with the Spiceworks was always performance related."

"I think troubleshooting errors became the most frustrating part since it is free; you can’t complain."

"I would not recommend running Spiceworks on a desktop machine for long, I have had to reboot the services more often than I would like."

"I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment."

"Sometimes, it can be difficult to integrate what you need."

"Most problems are the system bugs and slowness, also because the product has a web interface that makes a lot of problems like refreshing and information loss."

"The devices keep showing offline in the dashboard, but when we check it, it's already online."

"The only issue encountered was setting up the email server information."

More Spiceworks cons

"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."

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

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

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is free! Get it now."

"The tool is cheap."

"Seeing that it is a low-cost solution, I would advise you to go ahead with Spiceworks and experiment with it to see if you can get things working properly, especially if you currently don't have any existing service desk software in place."

"It's free."

"It might be about $300 annually for a bigger company. If you pay annually, it's better and cheaper."

"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."

"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."

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

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

University

10%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	10

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

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Spiceworks?

I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment, however, I can provide feedback later. Currently, there do not seem to be any issues.

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What is your primary use case for Spiceworks?

If our customers need backup support, we can work with them and provide it. Whatever solution the customer requires, we will ensure it is provided.

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What advice do you have for others considering Spiceworks?

It performs its intended functions. We may use it, but perhaps not for ourselves, but for our customers, potentially with Channel Partners. Whenever we are posting any query or reply on a ticket, i...

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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

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Spiceworks

February 2026

Download Spiceworks product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

February 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

From network inventory and network monitoring to help desk software, and mobile device management (MDM) to cloud services detection, Spiceworks helps you manage everything about your IT workday from one easy place.

Spiceworks

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

Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino

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

Spiceworks vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

March 2026

Free Report: Spiceworks vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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