Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs Horizon 8 comparison

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Horizon 8

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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

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...

Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

Application Virtualization (1st), Remote Access (5th), Desktop as a Service (DaaS) (1st)

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 January 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 8.0%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Horizon 8 is 9.2%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Featured Reviews

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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Tim Abboud

Key Account Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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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

"Citrix Virtual Apps is the most valuable feature. Many customers use this feature to publish only applications, and not the full desktop. They can publish the internal resource or allow the end-user to reach a site or an application without having the full desktop. That's why they love this feature. It helps them save on resources."

"The App is the most valuable feature."

"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."

"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."

"The feature that I like is that it is fast."

"The basic virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) feature is most valuable. We were lucky to have it in place when the pandemic hit. It is used very heavily now."

"It has the best remote working features."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the desktop virtualization, which allows me to connect from anywhere."

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

"Users can log in from anywhere and from a variety of devices."

"It is a stable product."

"The embedded features of the solution are valuable."

"The product helped us deploy complex applications."

"The solution is seamless and easy to use."

"Ability to log in from anywhere and from a variety of devices."

"We have found the link loans for desktops most valuable."

"The most important feature of this solution is the connectivity with every device, such as iPad, iPhone, and other terminals. The security of the solution is very good."

More Horizon 8 pros

Cons

"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"

"Citrix has to support all of the hypervisors including KVM and OpenStack KVM."

"There are many latency and slowness issues, which are things looked after by Citrix."

"For us, pricing is the most important feature to improve."

"The solution's cost has almost doubled this year, and it could be made cheaper."

"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."

"The product is currently not working well in hosting conferencing software like Zoom, Team, and Salon."

"Dependency on server virtualization after v7.x is an issue which I encountered in small environments."

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

"VMware Horizon View can improve by making it easier to use for first-time users. You should learn the whole concept of VMware to be able to use it."

"Reporting could be improved, we currently have to export manually."

"Considering the tool's weaknesses, the product probably has scope for some improvement in the context of how the applications or Linux operating systems are delivered using VMware Horizon View."

"The initial setup is a little complicated."

"Lacks sufficiently robust audio redirections."

"VMware Horizon could be improved with more integration. It is also very costly for Enterprise Plus, which is a drawback. The renewal costs for the license are very, very high."

"I would like to see the VDP or other features for backing up the VMs."

"The primary concern lies with licensing. There’s confusion regarding licensing terms following the new management’s takeover. Consequently, our resellers and distributors are confused."

More Horizon 8 cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"As for the cost, it is neither cheap nor expensive. Personally, I find it quite expensive, especially if you want to add more features. The security features we use include App Protect and Endpoint Protection."

"We recouped 60 to 70 percent of the hardware costs."

"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."

"Their licensing model used to be on a per-year basis, where you would negotiate the cost per user for a year. For instance, if you had 25,000 users, you could negotiate the cost accordingly. However, they are transitioning to a subscription-based model where the cost is incurred monthly."

"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."

"I think it is a little high priced."

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

"At present, they provide decent pricing in terms of bundled licenses."

"We pay for the solution annually at a cost of approximately 10,000 HKD."

"It is an expensive product. We purchase its yearly license."

"Pricing for Horizon is relatively high, earning a rating of one out of ten."

"The solution is expensive."

"I don't know about the price. I know there are different tiers with the license, but I'm not sure exactly what it costs anymore."

"VMware Horizon View is an expensive product. My company needs to opt for a subscription-based pricing model when it comes to the licensing costs attached to the product."

"This solution is expensive. A lot of companies in Mexico find that the price is too high."

More Horizon 8 pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user8922

Architect at Unisys Global Services India

Aug 23, 2013

Comparison of VMware View 5.2 VS Citrix XenDesktop 5.6

Recently I attended the VMware Partner Exchange 2013 and there was a session called “Technical Battleground – View VS XenDesktop”. In this post I will try and cover the differences that VMware showcased during their session and I am going to add an additional column for my comments and thoughts on…

Read full review

Answers from the Community

Dante Dano

Systems Engineer at Evaluation Services Inc.

Oct 26, 2021

VMware Horizon View vs Citrix XenApp: which is the better product and why?

See 2 answers

Evgeny Belenky

Director of Community at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)

Jun 29, 2021

Hi @Abbasi Poonawala, @David Grudek, @Payman Maher, @Michal Sadlik , @Tonatiuh Torres Zamorano , @JacquesBodenstein, and @Dan Withrow. Can you help @Dante Dano with your professional experience? Thank you.

Read full answer

Dan Reynolds

Director of IT at BLDD ARCHITECTS INC

Oct 26, 2021

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.

Read full answer

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

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 ...

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Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

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

Horizon 8

Download Horizon 8 product report

Also Known As

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace

VMware Horizon, VMware Horizon View, Mware Dynamic Environment Manager

Interactive Demo

Citrix

Demo not available

Omnissa

Overview

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

VMware Horizon is a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution designed to allow users to create secure and scalable virtual desktops and applications that work on any device, from any location. These virtualization capabilities help simplify and speed up application delivery and greatly reduce enterprise costs.

VMware Horizon’s centralized management console provides IT admins with comprehensive control over all of their virtual desktops and applications, making them simple to manage and secure. The solution enables using features such as identity and access management, multi-factor authentication, and encryption, to ensure ultimate data protection.

VMware Horizon benefits:

Some of key the benefits of using VMware Horizon include:

Increased security: VMware Horizon includes multiple security features such as identity and access management, multi-factor authentication, and encryption, to ensure a high level of security and data privacy.

Compliance: Meet regulatory and compliance requirements by providing users with secure and controlled access to data and applications.

Reduced costs: By using VMware Horizon, organizations can reduce the costs associated with managing and maintaining physical desktops and applications, as well as reduce the costs associated with providing secure remote access to these resources.

Easy management: VMware Horizon provides IT administrators with a user-friendly centralized management system, making it easier and faster to manage and secure their virtual desktops and applications.

Enhanced user experience: Users are able to access their virtual desktops and applications from any device, and from any location. Work from any location, without being tied to a specific device or area.

VMware Horizon features:

Some of the top features of VMware Horizon include:

Virtual desktops: Create secure and scalable virtual desktops, with a choice of operating systems and settings.

Virtual applications: Create virtual applications that can be run from any device or operating system.

Central management: Control and manage virtual desktops and applications from a single pane of glass.
Quick duplications: Clone virtual machines and applications instantly.

Scalability: VMware Horizon can scale on demand to meet the needs of any business large or small.

Reporting and analytics: Gain insight into user activity and behavior with detailed analytics and reporting.

Security features and ID management: Ensure the security and privacy of data with a wide variety of security features, including encryption, multi-factor authentication, single sign-on (SSO), and network security.

Seamless integration: VMware Horizon integrates easily with other VMware solutions, including VMware vSphere, VMware NSX, and VMware Workspace ONE.

Reviews from Real Users

VMware Horizon stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its high performance, flexibility, and powerful virtualization capabilities.

Natnael A., a consultant at IWM Network Solutions, writes, “The app virtualizing is a great feature. The system developers use it to deliver apps to targeted staff. It basically reduces the server infrastructure resource. The solution provides good functionality.”

Rob M., a systems administrator at Saint Tammany Parish Hospital, says, “The solution has provided flexibility by allowing an end user to remote in, log in, and get their VM. VDI session and have all the icons and applications they need to use and retain the same booking view regardless of location.”

Omnissa

Sample Customers

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

LCMC Health

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Horizon 8