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

Amazon WorkSpaces vs Horizon 8 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
8.1
Users find Amazon WorkSpaces boosts ROI with easy setup, quick deployment, and enhanced productivity over on-premises solutions.
Sentiment score
7.1
Horizon 8 users experience ROI within 2-3 years through reduced expenses, improved efficiency, and effective virtual desktop management.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Amazon WorkSpaces customer service is praised for support quality but has occasional long response times, with faster help costing extra.
Sentiment score
5.8
Horizon 8's customer service is responsive and knowledgeable but faces issues with technical expertise and support variability.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Amazon WorkSpaces' scalability and pay-as-you-go model benefit diverse businesses, providing flexible user capacity and resource management.
Sentiment score
8.2
Horizon 8 is praised for adaptability and flexibility, supporting diverse needs despite technical challenges and cost concerns for some users.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Amazon WorkSpaces is stable and reliable, but performance depends on good internet connections and can be affected by latency.
Sentiment score
8.1
Horizon 8 is rated highly for stability and performance, but requires proper configuration and support for integration issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon WorkSpaces requires performance improvements, enhanced conferencing capabilities, simpler configurations, faster updates, better pricing, and user management features.
Horizon 8 struggles with cost, Linux integration, setup, documentation, support, remote management, multimedia, Azure, Teams, and licensing issues.
We have limited capabilities since we are not using a multi-instance solution, just single instances.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon WorkSpaces pricing ranges from $85-$150 monthly, with additional costs for storage and services impacting overall expense.
Horizon 8 has high costs, but offers long-term value and potential savings through bundled licensing and subscription flexibility.
I rate the cost-effectiveness of GenApp of Citrix equal to our CMS; it is quite cost-effective.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon WorkSpaces provides secure, scalable remote access with easy provisioning, supporting video conferencing and multimedia with low latency.
Horizon 8 offers centralized management, scalability, enhanced security, and high performance with VMware integration and user-friendly interfaces.
The solution has data leak prevention features that ensure data is not copied from the base machine to VDI.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon WorkSpaces
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Desktop as a Service (DaaS) (2nd)
Horizon 8
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
User Virtualization (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Amazon WorkSpaces is 0.7%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Horizon 8 is 8.0%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Bhaskar Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Tim  Abboud - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly, reasonably priced, and simple to install
It can be challenging to assess the stability of Horizon because it relies heavily on the underlying infrastructure, including vCenter, network, and storage performance. It is important to pay attention to these factors when evaluating the stability of the system. We rely on vCenter, network, and storage performance, and any weakness in these areas will affect the performance of Horizon. When discussing this with customers, I always emphasize the importance of these factors. If the foundation is solid, Horizon should not experience any performance issues. If the fundamentals are weak, we will encounter issues with Horizon on a regular basis. However, the product itself, VMware Horizon, is highly stable. While the Horizon product itself is very stable, it is important to be well-informed about any potential side effects from using other related products.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions are best for your needs.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

WorkSpaces
VMware Horizon, VMware Horizon View, Mware Dynamic Environment Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GrubHub, Endemol Shine Nederland, CMC Property Services
LCMC Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon WorkSpaces vs. Horizon 8 and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.