We performed a comparison between Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops vs VMware Horizon View based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops seems to be the more favorable solution. It is easier to deploy than VMware Horizon View, and users are happier with the technical support.
"The installation and maintenance are good."
"I use Citrix DaaS to connect to devices."
"Instead of pointing to any single feature, I would say the most valuable aspect of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is the overall product itself. Virtualized apps and desktops, in theory and in practice, are very helpful to users."
"In terms of scalability, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops have a lot of technologies baked in there that allow an organization to scale up or down, as required. Further, leveraging Azure for scalability has added value to our organization. For example, pre-COVID-19, we had very few resources in Azure. We had some Virtual Desktops and no application servers. When COVID-19 came along, we knew people were going to be home. We knew that we had to ramp up very quickly. We fully leveraged MCS to be able to scale. Being able to take a single image and build 400,000 Virtual Desktops, all within minutes, was second to none in terms of any other technology out there that we could have used. The scalability to be able to do that in Azure, where we really don't have to worry about storage and compute power because Microsoft does that for us, was fantastic. It was almost like giving our environments steroids. It has been amazing in terms of that scalability. Now, as people start coming back to the office, we can just as quickly scale down so the compute and resource costs in Azure aren't so great anymore."
"It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"It has the best remote working features."
"The Provisioning Services are the most valuable feature. We have Premium licensing, so Provisioning Services is huge for us, along with the Virtual Apps and Desktops part. It allows us to have a vDisk for every region, one that can easily be copied between them if we need to, to limit the amount of updates we have to do."
"You can connect to any printer, and from anywhere you can print documents using a compressed channel. It is easy and the bandwidth is very low."
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"The solution includes good user profiles and policies."
"Ability to log in from anywhere and from a variety of devices."
"The embedded features of the solution are valuable."
"VMware Horizon View is easy to configure and deploy."
"The solution is very user friendly."
"The most valuable feature is that VMware Horizon is easy to setup."
"I appreciate how simple and straightforward the operation of VMware Horizon View is."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"Where improvement could be driven is in terms of clarity as to the functionality of some of the solutions. If you go back to the older Citrix Xen products that we had, we understood those really well. As we've come into the new workstation premium suite, there is a lot of additional functionality that we perhaps have not yet fully exploited. It is not because we can't, but simply because we don't yet understand the depth of functionality that's offered."
"There are a lot of shortfalls with supporting printing over XenApp."
"In the bank, a major part of all our applications is Microsoft App-V. If App-V is at end of life, then we need a new technology to replace it. As of today, I haven't seen in Citrix Studio that there is a new technology embedded directly in it to replace App-V."
"The solution's technical support is not so good."
"There is room for improvement on the hypervisor side, providing better integration between the hypervisor and the product line. I suspect that they haven't put the work into that because of the move to the cloud. They want everything to be cloud-hosted. But for folks like us, who will always be a hybrid model, that's of some concern."
"Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops are not easy to set up. However, I have the experience and I can do it easily. It could be easier to set up."
"Pricing and technical support need improvement."
"The initial setup has room for improvement."
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"They need to make troubleshooting, diagnostics, and error reporting a little better."
"The initial setup was complex, and you need system experience to walk through it."
"In the latest versions, the deployment of certificates on the console has been implemented. Although it is functional, it is not working as well as I would like. I hope this feature can be improved in the future."
"The storage expansion in the product is a bit difficult to manage, especially when I have to modify a storage requirement of a particular area since it comes across as a complex job."
"The solution must be faster and smoother."
"Lacking in documentation for app settings."
"The technical support offered by VMware is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Deployment and configuration could be simplified."
More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is ranked 5th in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 90 reviews while VMware Horizon View is ranked 4th in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 67 reviews. Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is rated 8.4, while VMware Horizon View is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) writes "Flexible Deployment, reliable performance, and fast transmission speeds". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware Horizon View writes "User-friendly, reasonably priced, and simple to install". Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is most compared with Amazon Appstream, Citrix Workspace, Amazon WorkSpaces, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and Apache Guacamole, whereas VMware Horizon View is most compared with VMware Horizon, Citrix Workspace, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion. See our Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. VMware Horizon View report.
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I think VMware Horizon View is a very solid product.
I think it is the most mature product on the whole spectrum. All virtual desktop environments require tuning for performance. Depending on the size of the company you don't need 1/10 of the bells & whistles that the vendors include. For example, I have a small environment - 70 employees. I don't use instant clones, personas, their analysis tools, ... Not only are they expensive (the tools) they overly complicate a complicated process. KISS.
I have honed down the environment to what is just needed. Most of the industry will tell you otherwise. And I do all this as a one-man IT department.