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Pros & Cons summary

Buyer's Guide

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Managing all operating systems in a single environment helps in organizing and integration, which improves business operations.
The most valuable features include Instant Clones, AppStacks, and secure remote access, making Horizon 8 highly functional and reliable.
VMware Horizon 8 offers a stable and scalable virtualization environment, providing flexible deployment options and easy setup.
Users appreciate the seamless integration of Horizon 8 with VMware environments, offering enhanced vertical integration benefits.
The platform offers robust security features, including data leak prevention, ensuring secure access to resources from various devices.

CONS

High initial startup costs make Horizon 8 expensive and less accessible, especially for small businesses and organizations looking for cost-effective solutions.
Performance and connectivity issues in Horizon 8 need significant improvement, particularly in remote connections and error handling, which affects user experience negatively.
The integration with non-Intel hardware is limited, leading to diminished performance and support challenges, causing inconvenience to users reliant on diverse hardware configurations.
Technical support for Horizon 8 remains average, requiring enhancements for faster, more knowledgeable responses to ensure user satisfaction and efficient issue resolution.
Horizon 8 faces challenges in integration with cloud services, specifically with Azure and Teams, impacting seamless functionality and user flexibility for cloud-based operations.
 

Horizon 8 Pros review quotes

it_user1068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Jul 1, 2012
View not only makes desktop management, storage, and provisioning easier, but also reduces the cost of management as well as automation of routine and storage duties performed by administrators.
it_user3573 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Jan 9, 2013
Organizations who buy lots of desktops or laptops, call centers, military, and high security profile organizations can benefit from it.
it_user209226 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a cloud solution provider with 51-200 employees
Mar 24, 2015
In my opinion, this product should be the first environment that an enterprise company must consider.
Learn what your peers think about Horizon 8. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user271026 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 10, 2015
We used to have desktops in our class rooms, and now 30% of our classrooms are on VDI, which is very easy to manage centrally and has reduced complaints about PCs in classrooms to less than 5%.
it_user320130 - PeerSpot reviewer
Tech Lab Engineer Analyst at AARP
Sep 29, 2015
They share information, they communicate well, and they give you a comfort zone to make sure you’re ok with everything.
it_user320286 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Processing Manager 2 at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 29, 2015
The ability to log in from anywhere is huge.
it_user320616 - PeerSpot reviewer
Process Control Network Manager at Georgia-Pacific LLC
Sep 30, 2015
With virtual environments, we are highly scalable; before, when we had a physical environment adding a server was a whole process, now we have a base VM and we just add it, provisioning servers is nothing and now it takes two to three hours instead of two to three weeks.
it_user320910 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Site Support IV at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees
Sep 30, 2015
We had to deal with re-imaging hard drives and managing PCs, so having images and desktops to deploy wherever people are without the hardware was really helpful.
it_user320988 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 30, 2015
We were using Citrix, and Horizon had better features and was easier to adapt.
it_user321318 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 30, 2015
The ability to spin up desktops as quickly as possible; you just build one image and then set multiple images and be ready quickly.
 

Horizon 8 Cons review quotes

it_user1068 - PeerSpot reviewer
Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Jul 1, 2012
I had a few challenges when using VMware's View that included support for desktops that are offline and services at the terminal as well as their management.
it_user3573 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Jan 9, 2013
Expensive / ROI
it_user209226 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a cloud solution provider with 51-200 employees
Mar 24, 2015
Deployment is not very easy, because there are many implications with the underlying infrastructure (which must be used only as a VDI infrastructure) and Active Directory GPO, which cannot be directly handled by View Administrator.
Learn what your peers think about Horizon 8. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user271026 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 10, 2015
The pools and virtual machine management console should be improved, as there is no way to group PCs in different pools, etc.
it_user320130 - PeerSpot reviewer
Tech Lab Engineer Analyst at AARP
Sep 29, 2015
The design was complex to understand.
it_user320286 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Processing Manager 2 at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 29, 2015
Not so stable – there’s a lot of new issues that we have not experienced before on the physical desktop side that become challenges for us when trying to solve on the client side.
it_user320616 - PeerSpot reviewer
Process Control Network Manager at Georgia-Pacific LLC
Sep 30, 2015
One thing is I'd like to be able to see I/O acceleration within VMware instead of having to use a third party, like VMTurbo.
it_user320910 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Site Support IV at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees
Sep 30, 2015
I think that simplifying cross-platform use on different devices could be better. Different client versions sometimes don’t work quite as well.
it_user320988 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 30, 2015
If we can go into a cloud environment, then I see a lot of things I would need.
it_user321318 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sep 30, 2015
I wish there were more standardized instructions and rules. There are too many gotchas.