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

Citrix and Omnissa are both solutions in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category. Citrix is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while Omnissa is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0. Citrix holds a 8.9% mindshare in VD, compared to Omnissa’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Citrix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Omnissa users who would recommend it.

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...

Read 125 Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) reviews

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5,393 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Horizon Cloud Service

Read 10 Horizon Cloud Service reviews

1,266 Views
1,055 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...

Horizon Cloud Service

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Citrix DaaS and Horizon Cloud Service compete in the Desktop as a Service (DaaS) market. Citrix DaaS leads in simplicity and cost-effectiveness, whereas Horizon Cloud Service excels in feature-rich offerings at higher costs.

Features: Citrix DaaS offers comprehensive scalability and security features, empowering enterprises with extensive control and customization. Horizon Cloud Service emphasizes seamless integration with existing infrastructure and advanced desktop management capabilities, offering features like intuitive management interfaces, extensive virtual desktop customization, and impressive integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Citrix DaaS could enhance its feature-rich offerings to match the robust capabilities of competitors and improve integration flexibility. Horizon Cloud Service could focus on simplifying deployment processes and reducing the dependency on advanced technical expertise. Both solutions could aim for more streamlined management tools to enhance user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Citrix DaaS offers a straightforward deployment process with excellent customer support, enabling quick setups and issue resolutions. Horizon Cloud Service provides flexible deployment models but demands more time and technical expertise. Despite delivering strong customer support, its deployment complexity remains an area for improvement.

Pricing and ROI: Citrix DaaS provides a cost-effective solution with clear ROI, utilizing an efficient licensing model and affordable setup costs, making it suitable for budget-conscious enterprises. Horizon Cloud Service requires a higher initial investment but justifies its long-term ROI with its substantial feature set, appealing to organizations prioritizing advanced capabilities over upfront costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Horizon Cloud Service Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

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

February 2025

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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

Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

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

Horizon Cloud Service

Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

10th

Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 8.9%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Horizon Cloud Service is 1.2%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Featured Reviews

Mohd Abdul Aziz Shah Sulaiman

Assistant General Manager Endpoint Application at Telekom Malaysia

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.

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Siva Kuppala

Enterprise Architect at Wipro Limited

Centralized management enhances multi-cloud flexibility with cost efficiency improvements

The cost of Horizon Cloud Service is high, however, it could be optimized. The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help. Improvements in application performance, especially for resource-heavy applications like intensive 3D workloads, are needed. More built-in automation for routine tasks like patching and upgrading could reduce administrative effort.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Security is a shining point of the Citrix Workspace. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is a very robust solution when security is a concern. Furthermore, the content collaboration data-hosting that Citrix integrates with Virtual Apps and Desktops is among the best there is."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it supports team clients."

"Citrix Workspace allows you to work in a remote environment and gives you data security."

"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 most valuable feature is the watermark because most of the time our employees connect from a remote location. In case they photograph the DDA or some data, the watermark will show which user did so and from which IP they connected. That makes it more secure."

"The ROI for us has been that when we had Hurricane Harvey last year, Xendesktop came in very handy for us. Even though people had electricity in Texas, many networks were down. Our offices could still get into our network and do work that was needed. It is an excellent virtual office that works anywhere, anytime and anyplace. It is worth our investment."

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

"XenDesktop has helped our users to work remotely with a better user experience."

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

"VMware Horizon Cloud is easy to use and the full development cloud is very good. The main features of VMware are included. It's a cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure software that allows you to permit the virtual desktops and applications to any device from the single unified management control. These are managed from the dedicated remote session desktop."

"Its advanced management features are the most valuable, especially power management. One of the really important things was to be able to have power management in a consumption world. This means that unlike a Microsoft environment, you could actually turn off virtual desktops or have them start up and shut down. If you're consuming resources in the public cloud, you want to be able to do that because when you're not using those, such as at the weekend, you want to be able to turn them off. So, the advanced options for managing the BDIs are very important."

"I honestly liked the application itself because it was just like using a desktop. You could copy and paste, inside and outside, and you could use multiple monitors. You could access it anytime, anywhere, no matter whether you were in the office or out of the office. I could leave the office, go somewhere, go back in, and everything would be there. I could just leave it up and running. I absolutely love this feature in VMware Horizon Cloud."

"The tool remains pretty stable."

"The interface is much easier to use compared to Microsoft and other VDI vendors that are well known on the market. I like VMware so much more than the others. With Horizon Cloud, you don't need to spend a lot of money upfront to buy the infrastructure. You can use it the on the cloud, so it lowers the barriers to entry. It's easier to test it and get started. Some clients stay in the cloud, but others prefer to go on-premise. It depends on the nature of the client."

"Horizon Cloud Service provides deployment flexibility across multiple clouds with a scalable architecture that easily scales virtual desktops and applications up or down based on demand."

"The most valuable feature of VMware Horizon Cloud is all of its capabilities together."

More Horizon Cloud Service pros

Cons

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

"Templating the deployment process could use improvement. When you start, there are a large number of details that are quite client-specific, although they do share common themes. To get somebody up and running in a day is very difficult to do. They should streamline by use case."

"The speed and connectivity of Citrix DaaS could be improved."

"Scalability depends on the server and the number of users in the organization."

"The visibility the solution provides across SaaS, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, for user and application traffic, is also limited if you do not enable all the services and is based on which services you are utilising. Citrix provides end-to-end visibility based on their services you are utilising."

"The initial setup is very complex."

"Some customers find the price to be a significant factor. They have a hard time understanding the extra cost of the services"

"Direct connection of USB devices on the terminals to be used by streamed applications is very important for printing and the usage of token authentication, but the current version does not support this one hundred percent."

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

"It is very expensive. Its price needs to be improved. They can do a better job with external resources such as a USB or a hard drive. When I tried to connect using these external resources, it failed a lot of times. I had to do a shared connection with a local laptop and then connect from a network standpoint, rather than through VMware Horizon point. They definitely have weaknesses with external connections. A lot of companies probably don't let people use external connections because it defeats the purpose of having a cloud solution and keeping the data in a secure area. You can copy to an external device, and you can lose the data. A lot of companies may not focus on this feature, but if you are providing it, you should make it work."

"The product has a lot of bugs."

"Logging into VMware Horizon Cloud could be made easier. Additionally, the VMs could be better in their performance."

"There should be more emphasis on the Workspace One access part of the solution. This is essentially identity management provided with Horizon. There needs to be some kind of integration because you are able to have all of these desktops on any device, but you have to have this other component to make it easier from a single sign-on perspective. That's why there should be an emphasis on Workspace One access. It actually comes free with the product, but people don't really know how powerful it can be."

"It can be very expensive to scale up because each part of scaling up requires you to have new components of the infrastructure."

"The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help."

"The cost of Horizon Cloud Service is high, however, it could be optimized. The licensing model is complex, particularly for hybrid deployments, and simplifying it could help."

"In the design phase, sometimes the tools for designing Horizon solutions have issues when they're calculating the number of nodes and platforms needed to support the VDI systems."

More Horizon Cloud Service cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is an expensive 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."

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

"The licensing, in general, is expensive. A lot of customers battle to pay the amount. It's very difficult to ensure that your solution provides the business value that the customer is after."

"In the past, the prices of the product were great. With the acquisition of Citrix by your company, the prices have drastically increased. For my company, it has become a bit of a problem to sell products from Citrix."

"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 cost of the Citrix software reflects what I would expect a product of that nature, in that market, to be. Understanding the licensing is quite a bit more complicated, because one of the things about Citrix is that you can buy licensing at different levels... Yet I still like the idea because it means that if all you need is a basic load balancing solution, then you don't need to buy an advanced or premium license."

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

"It is too expensive as compared to other solutions because of which we don't use it that much. We tend to go more for Hyper-V or Azure just because VMware licensing is quite up there. We sway people away from VMware Horizon Cloud. We have some clients who already have it. They stay on it for a little while, and then most of them end up moving off when we provide them a better solution that isn't as license heavy cost-wise."

"For what you get, it is very compelling. You've got to look at the total cost of ownership of this type of piece of software in terms of being able to utilize it as a cloud service. I don't have to run everything on-premises. When you look at the total cost of just being able to use it and then being able to point it to any public or private cloud, it is very compelling. You have one less thing to manage."

"I rate VMware Horizon Cloud pricing a ten out of ten."

"There is a license required for the use of this solution and there are different tier levels available."

"VMware Horizon Cloud is an expensive solution. This solution is approximately 30 percent more than Microsoft Azure Cloud. There can be extra costs."

"Initially, the product is cheap, but it starts to get expensive when users try to scale out."

"VMware Horizon Cloud is a low-cost solution. The model that they have is consumption-based. However, some features are expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare 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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Horizon Cloud?

The tool remains pretty stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Horizon Cloud?

Horizon Cloud Service's pricing is on the higher side. The cost management aspect could improve to increase adoption. The licensing structure is also complex, particularly for hybrid deployments.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Horizon Cloud?

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Virtual Desktop vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Compared 32% of the time

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Compared 9% of the time

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

Compared 9% of the time

Rocket Exceed TurboX vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Compared 6% of the time

Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Compared 6% of the time

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

Horizon 8 vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 33% of the time

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon Appstream vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 17% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle VDI vs Horizon Cloud Service

Compared 6% of the time

More Horizon Cloud Service Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

March 2025

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

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Buyer's Guide

Horizon Cloud Service

March 2025

Download Horizon Cloud Service product report

Also Known As

XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace

VMware Horizon Cloud, VMware Horizon DaaS

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

The VMware Horizon Cloud Service delivers feature-rich virtual desktops and applications using a purpose-built cloud platform that is scalable across multiple deployment options, including fully managed infrastructure from VMware, public cloud infrastructure from Microsoft Azure, or on-premises hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). The service supports a cloud-scale architecture that makes it easy to deliver virtualized Windows desktops and applications to any device, anytime. And, with a flexible subscription model and turnkey solutions, organizations can easily get up and running and scale quickly.

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

Marriott, Sprint

Buyer's Guide

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

February 2025

Free Report: Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Horizon Cloud Service

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