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Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs VMware Workstation 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Application Virtualization (1st), Remote Access (5th), Desktop as a Service (DaaS) (1st)
VMware Workstation
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
55
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 VMware Workstation is 16.9%, up from 13.2% 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 - 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.
Shambhu Narayan  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-manage solution that has really good customer support compared to other market players
VMware Workstation makes it easy to manage all the resources that we are handling. VMware Workstation has reduced our infrastructure cost. If someone wants machines, I can create them easily using the solution. VMware Workstation is easier to manage than other workstations like Oracle Workstation. VMware Workstation is an easy-to-manage solution, and its support is really good compared to other market players. Overall, I rate VMware Workstation an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a lightweight application that incorporates multi-factor authentication."
"Remote work has been enhanced"
"The architecture I built had a robust failover mechanism for the endpoints, and the interface was user-friendly."
"For the most part, overall stability is what you would expect."
"It is stable, easy to scale, and provides secure remote access."
"It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"Troubleshooting Citrix is pretty straightforward."
"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 improvement in scalability. Managing multiple OSs centrally doesn't reduce many problems, and the product remains almost on par with its competitors like VMware Vue."
"The product works well."
"The solution's technical support team is excellent."
"The tool’s GUI is very user-friendly."
"Having ten people working off a single piece of hardware reduces costs."
"VMware Workstation works correctly and has more features compared to Oracle VirtualBox."
"Great at solving connection problems."
"It is much more mature compared to Nutanix or SimpliVity when it's cross-platform based."
"I appreciate the ease of backup and snapshot creation. The ability to revert to previous versions without losing data is very useful for our team."
 

Cons

"Performance could be better if there was a low latency improvement."
"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 because it has a lot of dependency on Active Directory and other things. If they could come up with something similar and native, a complete solution portfolio would help."
"The sales team does not focus on client needs but instead focuses on selling higher-priced items."
"I heard that Citrix found some loopholes in the product, and they have yet to be covered up."
"The product advances really fast. For some customers, we need better backwards compatibility."
"Pricing and technical support need improvement."
"If there are connectivity issues, there are stability issues."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting capabilities, particularly around snapshot activity. It would be helpful to have a summary of changes made prior to deploying an application, allowing us to provide comprehensive reports to our management on a regular basis."
"Performance could be improved, it's somewhat clunky."
"The product could provide the features available in Microsoft Hyper-V."
"It could have more platforms and CPUs."
"There could be more integration with different tools."
"They could bring in many different features from VMware vSphere to Workstation."
"The product's integration capabilities are an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The interface is a little wonky and needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Citrix is a mid-range cost solution compared to some others out there."
"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."
"We don't have a lot to compare it to, but we certainly think whatever we pay is worthwhile at this point in time. It's very reasonable."
"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 pricing is a little bit high, but it's good value for the product's stability and efficiency."
"If you look at cost, then you must look at the number of users that you are covering. If you are only using it for some users, then it is very expensive. However, if you have a massive amount of users, then it begins to be interesting to use Citrix. Because once you are managing thousands of servers with one guy, your maintenance costs decrease per user."
"The licenses are affordable, but the support is a bit expensive, though worth the value.​"
"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."
"You need to pay for a license, but I don't think it costs that much. I think it's a one-time payment."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"The solution’s pricing is moderate."
"The tool is not the cheapest."
"VMware is expensive. Licensing can be tricky. For example, I recently had a client running VMware vSphere Essentials and wanted to migrate to a more scalable solution. However, they had no choice but to purchase a completely new license and deploy a completely new instance of VMware."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The price of the solution per workstation is approximately 200 Francs annually. We pay a total of 800 francs. Everything is included in the price such as the support."
"With a VDI solution, there is always extra cost running a VDI solution but it's not for cost purposes anymore. In the beginning, it was to save money on hardware but at the moment it's other aspects that are more important why you should use a VDI solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

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...
Which VMware solution would you go with - Workstation or vSphere?
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will...
What do you like most about VMware Workstation?
The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up.
What needs improvement with VMware Workstation?
The product's integration capabilities are an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.
 

Also Known As

XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

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
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. VMware Workstation and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.