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VMware Aria Automation vs Zesty comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (21st), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
Zesty
Ranking in Cloud Management
17th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Cost Management (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.5%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zesty is 1.0%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.5%
Zesty1.0%
Other93.5%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Srinivas Rayudu  - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Zensa Technologies
Managing complex onboarding has been challenging but automated cost optimization delivers strong savings
Zesty is a good solution; however, the learning curve can be complex for new users without a solid tech background, posing a challenge in training and the initial setup process. I would deduct one point for this aspect since everything else is fine. A specific example of where the learning curve caused issues is when we introduced Zesty to our new development team, which struggled to understand the platform while working on a project related to AI and ML. Our system architects explained how Zesty works, but I believe a more proactive approach to training and foundational data could help teams be more self-sufficient and less reliant on internal support.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are able to provide self-service to all of our IT/development teams to expand and decrease their environments at will."
"We have been able to integrate with AWS to deploy continuous delivery services with an extremely quick turnaround time."
"We have definitely seen an ROI because automation is directly related to productivity."
"To manage when VM's aren't being used, we have it set up so that it will auto-destroy them after a certain amount of time, obviously with permission from the user who owns it."
"Its automated processes have brought down the overall time to a fourth or fifth from our previous manual deployment's time."
"The solution is intuitive and user-friendly. E.g., you have less number of logins."
"I like that it is easy to deploy the infrastructure."
"All the feedback that I have received so far from our administrators is very positive; the solution is user-friendly and intuitive."
"From a metrics perspective, Zesty reduced our Kubernetes infrastructure spend by about 24% in the first six months, we also cut wasted storage costs by roughly 18% and improved saving plan utilization by around 12%, and on the operational side, we saved roughly 40 to 50 hours a month in manual cloud cost tuning."
"The turnkey aspect of Zesty is very valuable."
"One of the reasons we decided to onboard Zesty was that it started supporting Windows instances."
"Zesty has positively impacted our organization by providing a good return on investment, with a total reported percentage of savings around 40 to 50%."
"I think Zesty is a really useful tool, it is really quick, it is really powerful, they are always improving it, and the customer service is flawless."
 

Cons

"It is too broad scale and complicated. It takes too many clicks to do things."
"They should make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit easier to deal with large-scale AD deployments. They need to make it a little more enterprise-ready. That is the one thing that kills us."
"Not as good, but there are some components in vRA that you can scale out a lot more quickly than other pieces."
"The upgrade process 6.x to 7.3 was a significant effort. I'm hoping that 7.3 to the next version is much smoother."
"It is not super-intuitive. It does require some skills to understand how to use it."
"The flexibility can hurt sometimes, as there are so many ways to accomplish the same task."
"The connectivity between VMs is easy, but they can be made more effective if we have a single proof point where we can configure all the biggest data at a single point."
"It has some limitations for scalability, especially for remote data center management. For some components, everything need to be centralized."
"The biggest area for improvement is still reporting depth."
"Zesty is a good solution; however, the learning curve can be complex for new users without a solid tech background, posing a challenge in training and the initial setup process."
"It would be really useful if Zesty had more code snippets that were easy to use, an easier library instead of their documentation, and something that provided an automated finish to insert code so it could give you code hints."
"I would like to get RDS-reserved instances that I could buy and sell, but that's a limitation on AWS."
"There are different resource types that we would like to leverage and get reserved instances for, such as RDS instances."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"The solution is free of cost."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
"I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Insurance Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
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 free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
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 companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zesty?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was great, as we had a great account manager that we did not have to query too much about it. The free one was nearly good enough to start with...
What needs improvement with Zesty?
I find myself using the online editor the most often, and what would be better is if you could have multiple windows open to work in, something like an actual program rather than having to shift be...
What is your primary use case for Zesty?
My main use case for Zesty is the CMS. For our corporate website, my team uses Zesty's CMS to allow users from any point in the company to upload content, add posts, add pages, and promote the comp...
 

Also Known As

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Walkme, Wiz, Gong, Grubhub, Singular
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation vs. Zesty and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.