Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Horizon 8 vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
Horizon 8 reduces IT costs and boosts productivity, offering hardware savings and efficiency improvements in education and business.
Sentiment score
1.0
VMware Workstation enhances cost savings, enabling efficient application testing and integration, resulting in improved job performance and satisfaction.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.6
Horizon 8's support is knowledgeable and reliable, though some customers report delays and varying service quality.
Sentiment score
2.9
VMware Workstation's customer service is mixed, with varying responsiveness and reliance on community resources after HP acquisition.
The main areas needing improvement are response speed and quality of answers.
Systems Engineer-Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The support team is helpful and offers assistance.
Owner at CoBSS
Our support from VMware expired last December.
Sr. VDI Engineer at Afiniti.com
On a scale of one to 10, I would rate their support or customer service a two or three since they never did anything.
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The documents provided for Workstation were not hard to understand.
Owner at Inforex
It's a very special way of working with VMware Workstation.
Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Horizon 8 provides high scalability, allowing organizations to easily expand users and devices with flexibility and efficiency.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware Workstation is versatile, supporting multiple VMs, though opinions vary on scalability for larger operations and single installations.
VMware Workstation is scalable enough for larger companies, though it requires some skills.
Owner at Inforex
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Horizon 8 is stable and reliable, scoring 7-10/10, with minor issues often linked to infrastructure.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMware Workstation is highly reliable, with improved stability post-v6, though minor virtual network issues may occur in specific scenarios.
Especially with the integration of NVIDIA, we experience multiple problems including crashing applications, crashing desktops, spontaneous logoffs, black screens, and systems that no longer respond or cannot reconnect.
Owner at CoBSS
We can scale by adding additional servers and connection servers.
Systems Engineer-Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
We are using the network in a very specific way, and this network adapter causes crashes in the VM.
Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC
 

Room For Improvement

Horizon 8 needs enhanced usability, cloud integration, security, Linux support, documentation, analytics, and clearer licensing for cost-effective deployment.
VMware Workstation needs performance, usability, and cost improvements, enhanced stability, better documentation, and streamlined integration and scalability.
I would like to see improvements in Horizon 8, specifically integration with NVIDIA for graphical performance upgrades because it creates many issues such as crashing and black screen systems, causing users to lose access to their current desktop and work.
Owner at CoBSS
We have limited capabilities since we are not using a multi-instance solution, just single instances.
Sr. VDI Engineer at Afiniti.com
For Horizon 8, it would be beneficial to integrate more monitoring capabilities in advanced editions.
Systems Engineer-Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Eventually, we had to get some licenses with Broadcom, and all the costs went up dramatically.
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
We faced challenges with backup due to limitations in the free version, requiring us to switch to a paid version.
Owner at Inforex
The problem we are facing with stability is that the network adapter causes crashes of the VM when we're using it for developing purposes.
Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC
 

Setup Cost

Horizon 8 is a premium solution with high initial costs, offering cost-effective long-term benefits and flexible licensing options.
VMware Workstation is pricey but offers integration benefits with cost-saving opportunities through sales and varies by user needs.
After VMware was bought by Broadcom, the pricing was ridiculous, but now that Onmises has VMware Horizon 8, the pricing is back to an acceptable level.
Owner at CoBSS
I rate the cost-effectiveness of GenApp of Citrix equal to our CMS; it is quite cost-effective.
Sr. VDI Engineer at Afiniti.com
 

Valuable Features

Horizon 8 offers centralized management, virtual machine provisioning, and cost-effective scalability for seamless integration and diverse device support.
VMware Workstation offers user-friendly virtualization, multi-OS operation, and superior testing flexibility, outperforming alternatives like Oracle VirtualBox.
Centralized management of desktops is one of the main reasons customers choose this solution.
Systems Engineer-Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The solution has data leak prevention features that ensure data is not copied from the base machine to VDI.
Sr. VDI Engineer at Afiniti.com
From a security point of view, security in Horizon 8 is one of the main points in keeping the system resources from the company away from bad actors. You can keep the desktops completely isolated, and you don't need to share your file shares or database with the end-user system.
Owner at CoBSS
VMware will just create a new machine immediately if we have a problem.
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
VMware Workstation works correctly and has more features compared to Oracle VirtualBox.
Owner at Inforex
Simply being able to run several Windows PCs with different development environments has had the largest impact on our operational efficiency.
Owner at Secacon Gygli Engineering LLC
 

Categories and Ranking

Horizon 8
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
User Virtualization (1st)
VMware Workstation
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Horizon 8 is 6.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Workstation is 13.4%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Workstation13.4%
Horizon 86.7%
Other79.9%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

MB
Owner at CoBSS
Experience with remote access facilitates seamless user management, though improvements in integration and analytics are desired
From the analytical aspects, we used Horizon 8 Advanced Analytics and most companies switched to another product to gain insights because the insight is not as helpful as other products that are built for it. What was missing in Horizon 8 to make it a better tool was in analytics, specifically getting the right information and the drill-down process to find out where the problem is. If a user has an issue, it is crucial to determine what the issue is that the user is having and since when they have the issue. For example, if a user reports back that they had an issue yesterday evening, getting that information and ensuring that you have it was hard to find, especially to pinpoint if the issue lies with the network or the Horizon 8 platform. We utilized the multi-factor authentication, conditional access in Horizon 8, but we are not satisfied with that. It lacks some integration options that make it easy to run with Microsoft Entra, for example, and authenticate using your regular authenticator besides just getting a pop-up that says, 'I'm the one that's trying to log on.' Nowadays, there are many more complex authentication methods, but even a basic confirmation with a number to verify that you are the person connecting is not supported. I would like to see improvements in Horizon 8, specifically integration with NVIDIA for graphical performance upgrades because it creates many issues such as crashing and black screen systems, causing users to lose access to their current desktop and work. This is a real issue at the moment for many customers worldwide.
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions are best for your needs.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business61
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise44
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

How does VMware Workspace One compare with VMware Horizon 7?
VMware Workspace One has a powerful set of helpful features. The solution offers very good documentation, the initial setup is easy, and the product is very stable and reliable. I think the fact th...
What do you like most about VMware Horizon 7?
VMware offers a friendly environment, and it's easy to provide the user with the package. It is a bundled solution that is readily deployable. The advantage lies in its simplicity, it requires mini...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Horizon 7?
We paid a lot of money for software that is not really fully operational out of the box. We had to have patches from VMware to get it into production. Hence, we lost a lot of time implementing the ...
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 Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will...
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, VMware Horizon View, Mware Dynamic Environment Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LCMC Health
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Horizon 8 vs. VMware Workstation and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.