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VMware Aria Automation vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
377
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Configuration Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (21st), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Configuration Management
20th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (34th), Network Monitoring Software (21st), Server Monitoring (14th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (17th), Log Management (39th), Cloud Monitoring Software (25th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 4.6%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 4.1%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.9%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune4.6%
VMware Aria Automation4.1%
WhatsUp Gold1.9%
Other89.4%
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Senior Business Development Executive at Digitaltrack
Centralized device management has automated onboarding and improves remote security compliance
One thing I feel Microsoft Intune could improve is troubleshooting visibility. In many cases, when a policy or application deployment fails, the error messages are a bit generic. So, admins still spend time checking logs manually or testing on devices one by one. Compared to the simplicity of deployment, troubleshooting sometimes feels less mature. I also think reporting and real-time monitoring could be stronger. The dashboard gives useful information, but in large environments, many teams still depend on additional tools or scripts for deeper reporting and analytics. If I had to focus on one area first, I would probably choose troubleshooting and reporting. Deployment through Microsoft Intune is generally straightforward, but when something fails, identifying the exact root cause can still take more time than expected. Error messages are sometimes too generic, and admins often have to dig through logs, sync status, or multiple portals to understand what actually happened. I think user experience and policy management could also improve further. Microsoft Intune has become much better over the years, but sometimes the admin portal still feels fragmented because certain configurations open in different sections or redirect to older interfaces. For new admins, especially, it can take time to understand where everything is located. Another thing is policy conflict handling. In larger organizations, multiple device policies, compliance rules, and configuration profiles can overlap. When conflicts happen, the visibility is not always very clear, so admins spend time figuring out which policy actually won or caused the issue.
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, Microsoft Intune has been a strong platform for modern endpoint management, especially for organizations supporting hybrid work and cloud-first device management strategies."
"Generally for the organization, Microsoft Intune has been a good investment for managing a lot of the company resources, saving a lot of money compared to using the on-premises version of the software."
"Without Microsoft Intune, it would be extremely challenging, if not impossible, for a large company to send out computers to users and have them set up and ready to use right out of the box in a remote location."
"Overall, Microsoft Intune is genuinely built for growth, catering well to both small teams and large enterprises with the same foundation and scaling smoothly without requiring a significant overhaul."
"I mainly use Microsoft Intune analytics for taking that data that exists and bringing it into Power BI dashboards to make it visible to our clients, showing them all the operating systems in their environment and where the latest patches are, and then from there creating plans."
"The ability to manage devices with different sets of policies is most valuable."
"Microsoft Intune has positively impacted our organization by improving our security posture and making device management much more efficient, especially for remote users and distributed teams."
"Microsoft Intune is brilliant for scalability and is excellent for scaling purposes."
"If you do a deployment for a proof of concept, it is simple."
"The time for provisioning a VM for one of our clients was cut in half, and we can now provide a solution to a customer on the same day that the request is made, whereas previously it would have taken us days and we often found instances where errors were made or things were forgotten."
"Being able to provide automation for my customers, essentially having guard rails on what they can deploy and how much it is they're deploying in my environment."
"We spent far less time to upgrade and configure all of our hosts."
"Using this solution has greatly reduced the time it takes to deploy a server; it used to take at least one month, whereas now, to deploy a server takes two hours."
"We've been using this product for a while and the stability is fantastic."
"We haven't hit any limits yet, scalability is good."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It's easy to deploy."
"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."
"It is very good at monitoring the network and keeps us up to date on the status of internal devices."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."
"In terms of pricing, I'd say that the pricing is nice and the product is good."
"We primarily use the solution to check the state of the network, monitoring thousands of devices and all of the internal network, and it is the first tool we use to see the state of the network for real-time monitoring."
"The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless."
"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides. Additionally, WhatsUp Gold is a Windows-based solution which is a benefit."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Intune lacks the ability to provide seamless remote assistance or remote control."
"However, in Microsoft Intune that is not possible because Microsoft releases it across the world as one data piece."
"I would like to see micro VPN. I like the way that some of the other providers have done something similar where, as you open that app on an end-point device, it creates a micro VPN straight into your device, which is quite a nice little feature. Also, Microsoft Intune relies heavily on its fellow products in the suite. It would be nice if Microsoft Intune could stand on its own two feet."
"It would help if administrators could pinpoint the exact location of a stolen device to help law enforcement retrieve it and apprehend the suspect."
"There are a few security features that are not available in Microsoft Intune, when compared to other products."
"I have one remark about the application management for the Android version. Often, the Play Store opens and leaves the possibility to download to the user, which is not good."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements in Microsoft Intune, especially related to policies and GPU."
"The synchronization could be improved."
"From that perspective, technical support has not done very well."
"Most of the time the upgrade experience has been good but sometimes things break after upgrading. For example, some API codes stopped working."
"They need to help in managing the change of corporate culture involved in establishing the solution."
"It would be nice in the next release if they added in tool tips. Whether you're putting it together, adding a blueprint, or you're making a change in the system, highlighting or selecting something and having it tell you what it does or what it will do would be nice. Because it's such a complex system, it's hard to work with unless you've been using it for years to know what everything is doing."
"New versions are quite scalable, but when it comes to managing a Telco environment, it has bottleneck."
"VMware needs to make it to where it is not as custom. Right now, you spend a lot of time making the services work. In order to get it up and running initially, that takes time."
"I would like to see a simpler way of provisioning it. As is, we can automate the provisioning of a VM, however, when it comes to the external IPs, that is outside of VMware."
"I think they are going to have a tough time with the Enterprise licensing. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"The licensing model could be improved. Right now, the levels are too far apart. This causes the solution to be more expensive than it needs to be."
"This product should add other options for monitoring. It does not currently meet the broader needs of the banking industry in the version we have deployed."
"The product is old and not updated."
"My understanding is that there are better products out there that do a better job."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."
"Honestly, I do not particularly like WhatsUp Gold. I think we should get rid of it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is relatively pricey, but considering its benefits, I'd say it's fair. The benefits outweigh the expensive licensing fees, especially for large organizations, but medium-sized and smaller businesses may be unable to afford it."
"There is a license needed for this solution and it is either included in one of the enterprise license agreements. Microsoft licensing is a mathematical institute, it could be quite complex. We tend to ask specialized organizations to research what the most profitable way it would be for us to use licenses in the organizations."
"There are licenses required for this solution. We enable licenses on the devices we need to manage."
"We are partners, so we receive some discount. However, from the customer's perspective, Microsoft Intune's pricing is competitive with non-Microsoft technology, and the price is good compared to other market competitors."
"Even if they charge a premium, they aim to provide equal value."
"For organizations that are a Microsoft shop, the pricing is compelling."
"There is a license needed to use the solution and we are on an annual license."
"Microsoft offers some licensing where it's included at no extra cost when customers are already using the licenses. In such a case, it's a really good value. If you have to buy the licensing for it, it's probably on par with other solutions. It isn't substantially more or less expensive. The great thing is that it is included in some of Microsoft's licensed packages. So, some customers don't have to spend additional money for it. Typically, most providers that support Intune do charge a management fee of some sort or some fee. Certainly, we're no exception."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."
"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business192
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise186
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything y...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A fre...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of compa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information fir...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complic...
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.