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VMware Cloud Director 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 Cloud Director
Ranking in Cloud Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 Cloud Director is 2.5%, down from 6.0% 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 Cloud Director2.5%
Zesty1.0%
Other96.5%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

KuldeepSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Experienced users benefit from resource isolation and valuable self-service portal while seeing potential in enhanced infrastructure visibility
VMware is not going further with VMware Cloud Director. They are integrating the VMware Cloud Director feature with Aria Automation only for the upcoming versions, primarily with the VCF 9, and slowly they are integrating some of the parts they have already integrated, and they might not continue with VMware Cloud Director in the future. They can make it more granular to ensure hardware-level segregation, the underlying infrastructure level of segregation for the end user, and a separate security boundary where users can access the end-to-end layer. End-to-end layer means my software layer along with the hardware layer. If they want to do a certain level of troubleshooting primarily on the ESXi part, that is what I feel is lacking for now because for an end user accessing the SSP, the underlying infrastructure is a kind of black box for them. For VMware Cloud Director, it can be more comprehensive if we enable public cloud integration as well. In today's date, customers are adopting a multi-cloud environment where VMware Cloud Director is much feasible to leverage the underlying VMware backend architecture. If VMware Cloud Director could be made to have more integration with the public cloud and do the day one, day two jobs for public cloud interface as well, that would be beneficial. Additionally, I recommend leveraging the VMware Cloud Director layer if a customer has a multi-cloud environment and is planning some cross-cloud migration capability. Cross-cloud migration refers to if a customer has something on Azure, wanting to bring it up on VMware or maybe from VMware to AWS, vice versa. In that case, VMware Cloud Director should provide some cross-cloud migration capability as well.
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

"The self-service portal is the most valuable. We are acting as a service provider, so our customers can take care of their virtual data centers with the self-service portal. Therefore, we don't need staff for it."
"The most valuable feature of vCloud Director is its ability to host customers on their own cloud."
"Their technical support is great; we had some difficult cases and they were able to solve them in a timely manner, and overall we are satisfied."
"Via the Meet the Expert sessions I spoke to Ninad Desai and Gurusimran Khalsa from VMware who were both very helpful (thanks guys) and I even tried the VMware stand in the Solutions Exchange but they didn’t have anyone to talk about vCD."
"Customer Service: Excellent. Technical Support: Excellent."
"The most valuable features of the vCloud Director are global management, added services, and automation."
"The deployment is easy."
"It is a great product."
"Zesty has positively impacted our organization by providing a good return on investment, with a total reported percentage of savings around 40 to 50%."
"One of the reasons we decided to onboard Zesty was that it started supporting Windows instances."
"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."
"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

"vCloud Director could use the vCenter database to store information. This way, we don't end up in a situation where we have things going out of sync."
"The solution should integrate with other cloud systems such as Azure ARC and OpenStack."
"vRealize Orchestrator is an expensive tool."
"The initial setup of the vCloud Director was not complex and not easy, it was in the middle range of difficulty. It could be made easier."
"vCloud Director should improve by having support with other cloud providers, such as Microsoft Azure and Google cloud."
"I would like to see mode accessory recovery and integration with SD-WAN."
"We are not happy with the frequent upgrades."
"Lacking additional services reduces the level of cloud integration companies just love with Amazon and Azure."
"There are different resource types that we would like to leverage and get reserved instances for, such as RDS instances."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to get RDS-reserved instances that I could buy and sell, but that's a limitation on AWS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are paying around $ 15,000 per month for vCloud Director, and it would be nice if it could be made cheaper."
"We pay monthly for all of the licenses."
"The licensing costs are pretty high, but it might depend on the size of the company."
"If one means a very bad price, and ten means a very good price, I rate the price as a five on a scale of one to ten."
"The solution is costly, efficient, and robust versus alternative solutions."
"My company has no problems with the pricing of the product as we got good discounts from VMware."
"It is better than other solutions out there when it comes to cost."
"We are able to provision new clients faster. Every month, we take on more customers."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
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 Business24
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise39
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Would you change anything about VMware vCloud Director if you could?
VMware vCloud Director works very well and there are not many things that I would like to see changed. However, a single thing comes to mind when I think of improvements and that is integration. In...
What is the biggest improvement you saw at your company after you started using VMware vCloud Director?
For my company, VMware vCloud Director noticeably increased operational efficiency. When I started working here a few years ago, my organization was using another cloud management tool. We switched...
Is vCloud Director convenient for building applications?
When it comes to building applications, vCloud Director offers you various methods to create cloud-ready ones. For example: Your DevOps team is supported through Infrastructure as Code services w...
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

vCloud Director
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.
Walkme, Wiz, Gong, Grubhub, Singular
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Cloud Director vs. Zesty and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.