Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) comparison

Citrix and SonicWall are both solutions in the Remote Access category. Citrix is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.6, while SonicWall is ranked #24 with an average rating of 7.0. Citrix holds a 4.5% mindshare in VUS, compared to SonicWall’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Citrix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of SonicWall users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) and SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about TeamViewer, Microsoft, Citrix and others in Remote Access.

To learn more, read our detailed Remote Access Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Remote Access

March 2026

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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

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Remote Access category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 8.9%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 4.5%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Remote Access Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune	8.9%
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)	4.5%
SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE)	0.7%
Other	85.9%

Remote Access

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble

Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24

Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license

The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.

Read full review

Sorin Neacsu

Technical Lead on Virtual Desktop at Orange

Has delivered consistent desktop experiences across remote locations and has supported multimedia workloads efficiently

I have utilized the HDX protocol for compression and audio-video capabilities. When users need to conduct meetings with customers or colleagues, they can use Teams solutions and open a bridge where video and audio are encapsulated within the ICA protocol, which is protected by SSL and certificates for security. This provides secure communication at good quality through the HDX protocol. HDX protocol has improved application performance as it is specifically designed for multimedia applications. If processing audio or video files, such as in telecom where discussions are recorded and then prepared as video or audio, this does not consume excessive bandwidth during the operation compared to a normal remote desktop connection provided by Microsoft. Everything is compressed and provides sufficient bandwidth for multiple people to perform similar tasks without interruption or session disconnection. All multimedia-related activities, such as playing content on YouTube, deliver a better experience with this protocol overall. I use multi-factor authentication for opening sessions to the data center where users access their machines or software. Multi-factor authentication has helped secure applications because users typically have two-way authentication software on their phones. They use a password first and then authenticate themselves through their mobile application to grant access to resources. This approach is effective because if a hacker attacks a user, they need more than just the password and username. They must also possess the device that provides authentication. The device typically has facial recognition, a password, and provides better security overall.

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Kallamuddin Ansari

Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize

Remote access has become more secure and flexible but reporting still needs deeper analytics

SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) offers excellent features including Zero Trust Network Access, VPN as a service, and Cloud Access Security Brokers. One of the standout features is Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) for Software as a Service, providing visibility and control over cloud applications employees use, not only regarding whether they can use them but also regarding the actions they perform within those applications. This is especially useful in organizations utilizing many SaaS tools such as Office 365, Salesforce, and cloud storage, where consistent security policy enforcement is required, even from personal devices or remote locations. The secure web gateway feature is critical for modern-day internet security. SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) provides secure web gateway features for users accessing the internet, including URL filtering, domain filtering, blocking malicious websites, preventing phishing or ransomware threats, and enforcing acceptable use policies. SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) has had a very positive impact on our organization as our workforce becomes more distributed, with noticeable improvements including easier and more secure remote access. Previously, managing VPN clients and hardware gateways was difficult for new or non-technical users, but with SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE), users simply authenticate and get secure access to only the applications they need. There are numerous improvements I notice, such as improved BYOD security, reduced risk of lateral movements, simplified management, lower hardware dependency, and better visibility and compliance reporting. After moving to SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE), we saw a 38% reduction in VPN-related tickets. Users are no longer facing client errors, tunnel failures, and certificate issues, which saves nearly 25 hours per month on troubleshooting remote access problems. Onboarding remote users has become 60% faster, now taking only 10 to 15 minutes instead of 30 to 40 minutes. Additionally, there has been a 52% reduction in risky connection attempts primarily from devices with outdated operating systems or disabled antivirus, with zero lateral movement and a 30% drop in failed login anomalies.

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

"The standout features of Intune are its excellent mobile device management and highly effective application management capabilities."

"A valuable feature is user enrollment, where users can enroll their devices in their organizations themselves."

"When managing a large number of devices in an organization, it becomes easy to handle them on one platform using Microsoft Intune."

"The best feature in Microsoft Intune is zero touch deployment, which allows me to automate many tasks compared to manually installing Windows and applications one by one, making it easier to enroll devices with Autopilot and pre-deploy applications."

"The Advanced Endpoint Analytics in Microsoft Intune has improved and helps us proactively detect and remediate anomalies in endpoints."

"Dynamic groups allow us to set conditions for automatic membership, eliminating the need for user intervention or manual review and ensuring a seamless workflow."

"It is quite policy-enabled, so you can build pretty much any policy to manage remote endpoints."

"Microsoft Intune scales very effectively with our growing needs."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"We've been able to scale the environment quite nicely by using the Citrix Remote PC. I can't say enough about that. And because that relies on utilizing your existing hardware resources, and making those available as a part of your Citrix farm — with a second level of authentication and security pieces around it — we added some 4,000 workstations without an additional overhead or cost."

"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."

"I can access it from anywhere."

"Citrix offers a range of products that can be used straight out of the box."

"Instead of pointing to any single feature, I would say the most valuable aspect of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is the overall product itself. Virtualized apps and desktops, in theory and in practice, are very helpful to users."

"The most valuable feature has to be the non-persistent desktop. If one of my users messes something up and blows away their desktop, it goes back to what it was originally, before they had an issue."

"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."

"Ability to connect remotely."

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

"After moving to SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE), we saw a 38% reduction in VPN-related tickets, saving nearly 25 hours per month on troubleshooting remote access problems, onboarding remote users has become 60% faster, and there has been a 52% reduction in risky connection attempts with zero lateral movement and a 30% drop in failed login anomalies."

Cons

"Data leak prevention can be integrated into it. Currently, it does not have data leak prevention."

"I have a lot of Apple products in my environment. It would be nice to have an improved integration of Apple products with Microsoft Intune without Jam."

"It would be helpful if there was proactive remediation."

"Additional application deployment options e.g. MSI deployment with more complex parameters or additional side-by-side files, and non-MSI deployment options."

"Microsoft Intune's support for Mac devices is lacking and could be improved."

"Intune lags all of its competitors in terms of report generation."

"The technical support could be improved."

"One big problem with Microsoft is that they're changing the names of the products quite often, or they're quite consistently doing so. Intune is now Endpoint administration. Constantly switching the user interface or the administrative interface makes it quite hard to keep pace. If you are on a two-week holiday and you come back and look at the same screen you have looked at for the last couple of months, it looks different, which is annoying. Changing things around all the time doesn't make it easy."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"This solution is resource-intensive, it takes a lot of Bandwidth and a lot of the resources of the server."

"Pricing and technical support needs improvement."

"I've recently tried to use Citrix on Ubuntu, and I don't know if this is an Ubuntu issue or a vendor issue, but you can't use Citrix right now on Ubuntu 20.04."

"It is not easy to set up."

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

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

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

"When there are technical issues, sometimes we can't get on the cloud."

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

"SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) has some areas for improvement, particularly in reporting and dashboards."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Intune is pretty reasonable. We have difficulty with Azure, which is probably why we have not put many assets in Azure. Everything we put there is very expensive."

"Based on the features that it gives, it is cost-efficient. It is not necessarily on the expensive side of the scale. It provides a hefty number of features that any organization would want. It is in a good price range."

"With one user base license, we can use Intune for up to five devices. However, with Soti MobiControl, each license is tied to a single device, meaning one license is dedicated to one device only."

"Microsoft Intune is a cost effective choice. It is less expensive than other products on the market."

"There is a cost benefit of using Microsoft Intune because of the packaging with other Microsoft products."

"Intune is linked with Microsoft. We can deploy the Microsoft E365 license to users by Intune. There are different types of licenses, such as device administrator licenses, E5 licenses for device enrollment manually, and P1 and p2 licenses for device enrollment automatically. These are the licenses required for the administration."

"It is cheap, but as compared to Google, it is costly. Google is cheaper, but quality-wise, Microsoft Intune is better."

"It is not expensive."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"The tool is expensive."

"The Citrix license model has changed. It costs around $240 per user for a single username, but a concurrent license costs double."

"The product, XenServer, is free to use, and XenApp has a one month free license."

"It is quite expensive, but so are the competitors on the market."

"It is a bit costly, but enterprise class features come with a cost."

"Citrix solutions cost a lot in comparison with competitors, like Azure Virtual Desktop or VMware Horizon. Those solutions cost around 50 to 60 percent less, per month per user, than Citrix."

"In terms of pricing with the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, I think it has gotten better over the years. Citrix has found more dynamic ways to be able to revive licensing models that fit many different scenarios that organizations have. We have been able to evolve our own licensing over the years to accommodate our situations between concurrent versus user device licenses. Now, when we move into the Citrix Workspace realm, we definitely have some awesome options there."

"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."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Performing Arts

Security Firm

12%

Insurance Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	123
Midsize Enterprise	53
Large Enterprise	166

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	44
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	69

No data available

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 ...

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

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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. ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE)?

The setup cost for SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) was minimal as most of the investment was in time spent configur...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE)?

SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) has some areas for improvement, particularly in reporting and dashboards. While it ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE)?

My main use case for SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) is for remote and hybrid work access, specifically for Zero Tr...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

February 2026

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

March 2026

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Remote Access

March 2026

SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) report

Download SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE) product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace

Banyan Security

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Microsoft

Citrix

Demo not available

SonicWall

Overview

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service designed for device management, security, and compliance. It supports automation and facilitates endpoint management for Windows, iOS, and Android devices, ensuring data protection and efficient policy enforcement.

Microsoft Intune offers seamless integration with tools like Windows Autopilot to automate device setup and deployment. Integrated with Azure Active Directory, it enhances policy management while providing robust reporting and analytics tools for compliance tracking. Despite its intuitive interface aimed at simplifying navigation and device security management, there are challenges such as compatibility issues with Linux and Mac, limited policy support for Android, and demands for better third-party integration. It's widely used for both corporate-owned devices and BYOD scenarios in dynamic IT environments.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Windows Autopilot: Automates device setup for rapid deployment.
Azure Active Directory Integration: Enhances user policy management.
Reporting and Analytics: Improves compliance visibility.
Mobile Application Management: Ensures app security without compromising personal data.
Cloud-Based Management: Allows management from any location.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Time Efficiency: Automation reduces time in policy enforcement and configuration updates.
Enhanced Security: Ensures data protection across corporate-owned and BYOD devices.
Improved Compliance: Advanced reporting tools enhance compliance visibility.
Flexible Management: Cloud-based nature supports management from any location.

In industries such as finance and healthcare, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure data protection and compliance with regulatory standards. Manufacturing sectors utilize Intune for managing a distributed workforce across global locations, while educational institutions employ it to secure and manage devices in learning environments supporting both students and faculty.

Microsoft

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

SonicWall Cloud Secure Edge (CSE), formerly Banyan Security, easy to adopt Security Service Edge (SSE) solution, enabling your workforce to securely access any resource from any device. It delivers simple, secure, zero trust access to private and internet resources for all your employees and third parties, regardless of their network location. To accomplish that, CSE combines the functionality of multiple traditional network appliances – remote access VPN, web proxy, firewall, etc. – into a unified cloud-delivered solution, improving the security posture and user experience for the entire workforce.

SonicWall

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

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

Redox, Byton, Veeva, BlueVoyant

Find out what your peers are saying about TeamViewer, Microsoft, Citrix and others in Remote Access. Updated: March 2026.

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