Amazon WorkSpaces vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) comparison

Amazon WorkSpaces vs. Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

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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

Amazon WorkSpaces

Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

8th

Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...

Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

3rd

Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

Application Virtualization (1st), Remote Access (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Amazon WorkSpaces is 0.6%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 8.4%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Featured Reviews

Bhaskar Rao

Network manager admin at Yamaha

Management console is very easy to use, readily available infrastructure and easy to scale

It's very stable. There is a big difference between traditional physical servers and cloud servers. With physical servers, we need to plan for purchasing, procurement, capacity, storage, get quotations, and then procure them. That took some time. Maybe it would take more than one month or maybe two months to procure and then install. With AWS, it is readily available. Just pay and immediately create the VPC, network, and everything. It is very easy. Within two or three hours, we can implement any server or launch any application. Within five minutes, we can just spin up and publish our servers on the Internet.

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DavidWood1

Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Flexible Deployment, reliable performance, and fast transmission speeds

Provisioning Server is a fantastic option for image management in Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. It offers excellent performance and reliability. On the other hand, while Machine Creation Services can be scaled easily, they can significantly increase storage consumption. For instance, creating a Windows 10 image in MCS typically requires at least 80 GB of storage, in addition to any separate disks needed. To store changes made by users in Machine Creation Services, the differencing disk must be equal in size to the base disk, leading to significant storage consumption. On the other hand, Provisioning Server uses image versioning, creating a new image version every time it's modified. As a result, virtual machines streamed from the server revert to their original state after a reboot, which is similar to their state during the first boot. Using the provisioning server, I start by configuring a virtual machine with either a 2016 or 2019 server operating system. I install the necessary Citrix client provisioning server target device software, followed by installing the required applications. After that, I capture the entire configuration to a file share. The image is then streamed from the file share to the hypervisor, which can handle multiple machines. In some large-scale deployments, we have used a single image to provision thousands of servers. Once the image is captured and stored on the file share, it is set to read-only mode, and any changes made to it are not accepted until it is put in read-write mode. When a virtual machine is rebooted, it returns to its previous state before the changes were made. This feature can be beneficial in situations like a virus outbreak, where a simple reboot of the virtual machines can remove any malicious code or changes. A provisioning server offers a faster recovery time from a bad change and is generally faster than machine creation services. With the provisioning server, changes are not accepted until the read-write mode is enabled, and if a virus outbreak occurs, rebooting the machines restores them to the previous state. On the other hand, machine creation services' speed is dependent on the storage's speed, and recovery time from a bad change can take longer, especially with a large number of devices. If a bad change is made with machine creation services, the replication process can take a while to revert, whereas, with a provisioning server, all machines can be rebooted quickly. Within thirty minutes, I can restore my system to its previous state using the provisioning server.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can work remotely using the solution."

"The product is easy to access. You can access the solution from anywhere at any time."

"The tool has low latency and multimedia support. For instance, running Zoom calls on Amazon WorkSpaces seamlessly supports local microphones, speakers, and web cameras. This feature is transparent for applications, allowing me to use the Zoom application without requiring exceptional support for remote web cameras or microphones. Amazon WorkSpaces provides this functionality at the operating system level, enabling effortless video conferencing. To my knowledge, Microsoft Remote Desktop does not offer the same support."

"The best thing about Amazon WorkSpaces is the security it provides."

"Performance and scalability are valuable features."

"The most valuable feature is the mobility. I can use it anywhere."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The best feature is that it operates very quickly. It depends on the regional location. If we choose a nearby location, nearby servers, it will be best for users to use."

More Amazon WorkSpaces pros

"The most valuable feature of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is the security and it is easy to work with."

"Remote work has been enhanced"

"Ability to connect remotely."

"The most valuable feature is connectivity. The remote connection is the reason we are using this solution."

"I can access it from anywhere."

"The scalability is fine. We have about 400 users, who are supported by six staff members. We use the product company-wide throughout 40 different locations, and we currently do not have plans to increase the scale of use."

"It is stable, easy to scale, and provides secure remote access."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the convenience and the ease of setup the tool provides."

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) pros

Cons

"An area that could be improved is it could work better on VPN."

"Configuration was a bit complicated at first but manageable."

"The agent sometimes has connectivity issues, but otherwise, it's good."

"The speed and performance are not always the greatest. It can be improved."

"The initial setup was somewhat difficult."

"I would say that it is a little complex to configure."

"One area that can be improved is the ability to install third-party apps."

"The product needs to improve its pricing. It should also improve corporate identity management and single sign-on."

More Amazon WorkSpaces cons

"We're running into all kinds of speed issues and reliability issues. There are frequent disconnects, and we're not sure whether that's a problem with the product, with the way the product has been deployed, or with server capacity or bandwidth. Our IT department pays attention to that, but we are feeling the impact of that."

"They can simplify the process of printers. Printers were quite a difficult issue. It took us a long time to iron this issue out. We have the most simple use case where people connect from home to either a virtual machine or their physical desktop. We tried more complex solutions like Machine Creation Services, and they were more overhead than they were worth for us. I found them difficult to work with and confusing, and they were not worth the work for us."

"Our experience of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is good, but the environment can become complex and difficult to manage at times."

"If anything could be improved, it might be some of the Director functionality, and some of the dashboard customization, or the overall Director customization."

"Citrix Workforce is good, but it needs improvement in diagnosing network issues. When errors occur, it is difficult to determine if they're due to network issues, Workspace issues, or environment issues"

"There is room for improvement because it has a lot of dependency on Active Directory and other things. If they could come up with something similar and native, a complete solution portfolio would help."

"The product has some bugs, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Licensing service installation and configuration was the biggest challenge for all Citrix solutions, but now they have fixed a lot of issues."

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not very cheap and it is not too pricey."

"The tool's pricing depends on company turnover and the organization's relationship with Amazon. I rate it a six out of ten."

"We need to spend some amount for the support. Without money, they won't respond."

"The bundle works out to be approximately $20.00 per month."

"They have hourly and monthly pricing, and because our use case is, more of a sporadic use, so I go for hourly pricing. Again, the details of the pricing is handled by the procurement. From an end user perspective, pay as you use hourly is suitable"

"The solution is expensive."

"The pricing is based on consumption. You pay for each process based on the transactions you make."

"It is very expensive."

More Amazon WorkSpaces pricing and cost advice

"We don't have a lot to compare it to, but we certainly think whatever we pay is worthwhile at this point in time. It's very reasonable."

"The price of the solution could be less expensive. There are different versions to their solution and the price keeps increasing."

"My company opts for the yearly subscription model to pay towards the licensing costs attached to the solution."

"Citrix is expensive."

"It's my understanding that the solution license fee for each user is around $300 US. If we buy a personal laptop for each employee every five years, then the total cost is five times $300 US, or $1,500 USD. So we could buy 100 personal laptops instead of the Citrix solution."

"It's costly in the market. But it is not expensive for the company. For the company, it's relatively inexpensive because the core of the work is compensated with the price."

"Where Citrix really needs to improve is in their support and in the way that they manage their licenses. Everything else comes second because if I'm not in a position where I can get proper support or manage my own licenses in an easy way, then it is pointless. Today, I am at a point where I may not be able to use Citrix anymore because they want to take away some of the licenses that I bought, pretending they are not valid anymore. That is frankly unacceptable. If they don't solve this, everything comes second because I cannot use my product."

"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a four out of ten."

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Government

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon WorkSpaces?

Performance and scalability are valuable features.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon WorkSpaces?

The pricing is based on consumption. You pay for each process based on the transactions you make. The investment is almost the same as having your own on-premises solution, with the added costs of ...

What needs improvement with Amazon WorkSpaces?

There is always scope of improvement in the stability.

What do you like most about Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?

My focus has primarily been on publishing virtual applications.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?

I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

What needs improvement with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?

I have found that Citrix DaaS is still a complex product, especially on the desktop side, which affects scalability. Although it works well on the apps side, the desktop aspect still has room for i...

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Product Reports

Amazon WorkSpaces

Download Amazon WorkSpaces product report

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Download Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) product report

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) report

Also Known As

WorkSpaces

XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Citrix

Overview

Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) solution provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows users to access a virtual desktop environment in the cloud from various devices, including laptops, tablets, and thin clients.

With Amazon WorkSpaces, users can have a complete desktop experience with their familiar applications and data, while the underlying infrastructure and management tasks are handled by AWS. The virtual desktops provided by Amazon WorkSpaces are persistent, meaning that user data and settings are retained even when disconnected from the virtual desktop.

Amazon WorkSpaces Features:

Desktop Experience: Provides a complete Windows or Linux desktop experience for users.
Device Flexibility: Accessible from various devices such as computers, tablets, and thin clients.
Managed Service: AWS manages infrastructure, updates, patches, and backups.
Flexible Scaling: Easily scale the number of virtual desktops based on needs.
Security and Compliance: Built-in security features and compliance capabilities.
Cost-Effective: Pay-as-you-go pricing model for optimized cost management.
Integration with AWS Services: Seamlessly integrates with other AWS services.
User Profile Management: Supports saving and applying user-specific settings.
Application Compatibility: Supports a wide range of applications.

Amazon WorkSpaces Benefits:

Flexible Accessibility: Users can access their virtual desktops from various devices, providing flexibility and mobility.
Simplified Management: AWS manages the underlying infrastructure, reducing the burden of desktop management for organizations.
Scalability: Easily scale the number of virtual desktops up or down based on business needs, accommodating workforce changes.
Enhanced Security: Built-in security features and compliance capabilities ensure data protection and regulatory compliance.
Cost Savings: Pay-as-you-go pricing eliminates upfront infrastructure costs, allowing organizations to optimize their desktop infrastructure expenses.
Integration with AWS Services: Seamlessly integrate with other AWS services for enhanced functionality and capabilities.
User-Friendly Experience: Offers a familiar desktop environment with customizable settings and application compatibility.

Reviews from Real Users

Sachin Narvekar, IT-IS LEAD at Tata Consultancy, writes that "Amazon WorkSpaces is a virtual desktop platform. So, instead of having your laptops, and desktops, you can have your data on the cloud.”, he also adds, "Security, streaming, faster performance, scalability, and the fact that it is very much cost-effective, are some of the solution's valuable features."

Ravi-Bhardwaj, Manager at Ravi RITS Enterprice, states that “The solution has improved the organization because now any user who doesn't have a corporate laptop can connect to the system, security is still high, and it uses very low bandwidth.”

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Enable secure, flexible work with the leader in virtual apps and desktops

Deliver desktop as a service (DaaS) from any cloud or datacenter

Get started with Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) in minutes to provide a familiar, high-performance digital workspace experience to your users. We’ll manage the infrastructure and security. You focus on your business.

Citrix

Sample Customers

GrubHub, Endemol Shine Nederland, CMC Property Services

Exelon, Aeronamic, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Alameda County Medical Center, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Aloysius Stichting, Amarchand Mangaldas, AmBev, Amnet Technology Solutions, Arval

Amazon WorkSpaces vs. Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)