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BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 7, 2024

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

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Remote Access
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
248
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (2nd), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
BeyondTrust Privileged Remo...
Ranking in Remote Access
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (10th)
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...
Ranking in Remote Access
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Application Virtualization (1st), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (3rd), Desktop as a Service (DaaS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Remote Access category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.5%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access is 2.7%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 4.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Remote Access
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi - PeerSpot reviewer
Everything has worked better since we started using it
Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.
Hahn Rolf - PeerSpot reviewer
Securely manage high-privilege remote access with granular configurations
I recommend that we improve integration with other products like PasswordSafe, aiming for smoother integration. Better alignment between products would enhance manageability from a single point. Additionally, BeyondTrust should focus on automating the update process to reduce unnecessary ticket creation. Improved quality control for non-English language versions is needed to avoid translation and layout errors.
Mohd Abdul Aziz Shah Sulaiman - PeerSpot reviewer
Delivers secure and unified access to apps, desktops, and content for enhanced productivity
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. The error messages are too vague, just stating "connection error" without specifying if it's an IP address issue, connectivity problem, or something else related to the network. This lack of detail makes troubleshooting difficult. We often have to reinstall everything in Workspace, without knowing the root cause. Even after engaging with Citrix and sending logs, the feedback is often unsatisfactory, not meeting my expectations. This trial-and-error approach isn't effective problem-solving. While these issues aren't everyday occurrences, when they do happen, they can be catastrophic for our operations team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If the product works, remote access will be a benefit. To this point we have not had reason to have confidence in achieving that access."
"I particularly appreciate the administration and security features, which can be deployed easily."
"Great for software update needs, operating system version updates, and security policy enforcement."
"One valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is the enrollment process, which is user-based, making it easier to manage compared to AirWatch."
"The feature I like the most is that we can perform remote tasks. If we want to retire or wipe out personal data or corporate data from a device, we can use Microsoft Intune remotely, and with the click of a button, data is removed automatically. Nothing needs to be done from the end-user side."
"Among the most valuable features are the Company Portal that is built into Intune, and the update rings so that we can manage what types of future updates the devices get."
"Microsoft Intune's autopilot has been nice to have."
"It's very informative when there is an error. It allows us to backtrace where the error is and resolve that ourselves. It's a bit of a Swiss Army penknife. We find that it fixes most issues."
"This product is very stable and scalable. This is an excellent platform."
"We like the integration with Active Directory. It allows us to discover the endpoints and user accounts that need protection. It's a good way of securing our privileged access."
"The privileged remote access platform is able to track and record everything that happens within a session."
"The security provided by PRA when it comes to access for remote and privileged users has been outstanding. It has met all of our objectives, everything from password rotation to securing and allowing us to clamp down access to the auditing and monitoring features."
"It is a real fortress. Its security is very strong. Multi-factor came as a feature out-of-the-box, which was big for us. That helps us meet another compliance requirement. It enforces encryption. Nobody can see what we are doing in our remote system if they happen to be listening for unencrypted traffic. That is its biggest strength."
"The most valuable feature is that this solution can be implemented regardless of the operating system."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"I like all of it. You can access computers that are on a DMZ. You can access computers that are off the network and on the network. You pretty much have access to computers wherever they are. As long as they have the client on them, you can get to them. So, it is convenient, but its main feature is that you can use your smart card to elevate your privileges remotely. That's a great feature."
"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."
"Citrix Workspace allows you to work in a remote environment and gives you data security."
"There are many features that I like, but the stability over the Internet is exceptional. Even if there's bandwidth fluctuation or network jitter, it performs well, offering a seamless experience to end-users without noticeable disruptions."
"The remote desktop feature allows employees to work from home."
"I can access it from anywhere."
"For our company's customers, I feel that the product is stable."
"Before we adopted a VDI storage solution, our customers' personal information was leaked. This happened a lot. But since we adopted a VDI solution, these kinds of issues have happened rarely."
"The installation and maintenance are good.​"
 

Cons

"Intune's areas for improvement revolve around security and certificate management."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Integrating certain group policies can be challenging and may necessitate using on-premises systems to integrate them with Microsoft Intune."
"Intune doesn't provide much control over Windows servers. It's something we struggle with."
"There are challenges with Intune, specifically in reporting. Many third-party companies offer single-pane-of-glass reporting that shows you what your update environment looks like, how your patch is doing, application status, etc., but Intune's reporting is not intuitive."
"The solution needs to improve reporting. Sometimes, it shows double or triple entries of the same thing, which affects the count's accuracy. Also, some applications onboarded in Microsoft Intune do not get updated. When we look for solutions online, there is often no clear answer."
"Reporting could be improved. It needs to be more expensive and robust."
"Sometimes, it takes time to synchronize the policies between the portal and the devices, you don't have a way to estimate how long it will take to deploy. You have some kind of gray area, where it can deploy in 30 minutes or three days."
"At the moment, I don't see any major problems with it. If anything, they can just change the look and feel of the login screen because it looks too simple to me. It does not have so much information. When you get to the login screen of the solution, you should have more information. We also have BeyondTrust Remote Support, and the login page looks similar to BeyondTrust Privilege Remote Access. I would love to see more rich information on the login screen or landing page so that rather than having a regular sign-in screen or page where you just provide a username and password and get into the solution, you should have more insight into what the solution does. I've mentioned this to them every time I have had an opportunity."
"They could probably integrate a wizard or something like that to add a new use case. It could be something that makes it easier to add a new use case."
"Its management is through two different portals, and you can't get from one portal to the other. I have to literally open up another website and go into it a different way. There are no inner links between the two. They should interlink the actual virtual server and the appliance. In general, there should be one interface for management for admins."
"The integration client, backup solution, and SSO setup and provisioning could be improved. There isn't any documented or supported user provisioning currently, which slows down the processes of onboarding and assigning permissions. I would like to see this improved soon."
"The solution is very flexible, which is a plus, but I would say the implementation requires someone with knowledge and experience, as it can be easy to get lost in all the details. The implementation process could be streamlined and simplified. Though the complexity of the solution provides greater flexibility, it requires a lot of time to understand it fully."
"One of our gaps or pain points is having multi-factor authentication at the endpoint and using the PRA password injection from BeyondTrust, which does not work in our environment. We can only have MFA at the login of BeyondTrust to check out the password. Therefore, we can't meet our security requirements of having it on the endpoint."
"Its access process for third-party vendors needs to be simplified."
"The price is pretty expensive."
"The speed and connectivity of Citrix DaaS could be improved."
"I think improvement around the Analytics piece is super important. There has been a lot of maturity over the last year in that area, though a lot more needs to be done. Also, a lot more of the value of those Analytics needs to be sold to end users. Citrix is working on a lot of things that are ahead of the curve and a lot of organizations aren't quite there yet with implementing those technologies and capabilities."
"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 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."
"Some customers find the price to be a significant factor. They have a hard time understanding the extra cost of the services"
"The initial setup is complex."
"Pricing and technical support needs improvement."
"If anything could be improved, it might be some of the Director functionality, and some of the dashboard customization, or the overall Director customization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is fair. It's a normal price. It isn't too expensive or too cheap."
"We are partners, so we receive some discount. However, from the customer's perspective, Microsoft Intune's pricing is competitive with non-Microsoft technology, and the price is good compared to other market competitors."
"The pricing for Intune and the competitor products are all within the same range, there is no true advantage when it comes to cost."
"The product is relatively pricey, but considering its benefits, I'd say it's fair. The benefits outweigh the expensive licensing fees, especially for large organizations, but medium-sized and smaller businesses may be unable to afford it."
"It is average. Some of the costs are quite high depending on what the customer currently uses, but overall, it is not bad. I would not say that I would not recommend Intune based on the cost. I definitely would, but they can definitely improve on the cost. So overall, its cost is not bad."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Every customer used to purchase licenses based on their needs."
"Intune is available as an individual product, but it also comes with Office 365 Premium or an Enterprise license, and the price varies for each version."
"Its price is pretty good for the features and services that it provides. It is not outrageous. I'm not aware of any additional charges or anything like that."
"PRA was one of the cheapest solutions that we evaluated."
"My client found the solution a bit expensive but considering their use case and requirements, they didn't have any other choice. As far as I know, implementation and licensing are the only costs."
"The price is pretty expensive, but you get what you pay for and this is a great product."
"Though the solution was a bit expensive, the overall pricing was average."
"I rate the product's pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is high, and ten is low. It is an expensive product."
"Don't get into a situation where you are licensing per desktop or per person until you fully understand the licensing."
"I wish it was a little bit cheaper, but when a product is as solid as this, I understand what the cost does. It helps them to make sure it stays that way. If you want a reliable, solid product, you're going to pay more."
"It is an expensive solution. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten."
"Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is an expensive solution."
"The purchase price was around $300,000 USD and then the maintenance fees were 20%. There are no other additional fees."
"The Citrix licensing scheme is really straightforward and simple. It doesn't have hidden costs. You get what you pay for. It is easy to understand what is on the product, so it's simple to get a clear idea of how much it costs. Licensing is not an issue."
"The pricing is a little bit high, but it's good value for the product's stability and efficiency."
"Based not only on the cost of Citrix, but additional costs like firewalls, IPS, and other solutions, the total cost of switching users from using normal laptops with VPNs to connection via Citrix were so huge that the CEO of our company decided to postpone the deployment process."
"You can buy an on-cloud or on-prem license. You can switch between on-cloud users and on-prem users. Its licensing is cheap. It is from $8 to $15 per user. It is not that expensive when you compare the cost of buying new hardware with the cost of the license. For example, at $15 per user, it costs around $180 for a year, which is cheaper than buying a $600 PC that at a certain stage, you will again have to change because its hardware is not supported. It may also get damaged or stolen. So, you can compare the cost of the actual hardware that you have to buy and the time spent in supporting the clients with the cost of its license."
"The licensing of Citrix Workspace is worth it. However, it is expensive. Citrix is probably more competitive now than VMware, but it is still a costly solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What do you like most about BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
The product has improved remote support capabilities since it works fine.
What needs improvement with BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
I recommend that we improve integration with other products like PasswordSafe, aiming for smoother integration. Bette...
What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
We use the tool for vendor access, providing secure vendor access to manage systems. Most of our use cases involve se...
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. ...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Bomgar Privileged Access
XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Horizon Beverage, Air Liquide, Gateway Bank of Florida
Exelon, Aeronamic, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Alameda County Medical Center, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Aloysius Stichting, Amarchand Mangaldas, AmBev, Amnet Technology Solutions, Arval
Find out what your peers are saying about BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access vs. Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,549 professionals have used our research since 2012.